Description
Austin, Texas based, Composer-bandleader Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs and concert halls with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater to DJ Spooky to the Austin Symphony Orchestra. As bandleader of the jazz-based but far reaching Golden Arm Trio, Reynolds has repeatedly toured the country and released three critically acclaimed albums. As Co-Artistic Director of Golden Hornet Project with Peter Stopschinski, Reynolds has produced more than fifty concerts of world-premier alt-classical music by more than sixty composers, as well as five symphonies, two concertos and countless chamber pieces of his own. Reynolds music has been heard through-out the world on TV, on stage, in films, and on radio, from HBO to Showtime, Cannes Film Festival to the Kennedy Center, and BBC to NPR. His score to the 2006 Robert Downey, Jr. feature "A Scanner Darkly" was named Best Soundtrack of the Decade by Cinema Retro magazine. 2011 sees the twin CD releases on Innova Records, the label branch of the American Composers Forum, of "Three Portraits of Duke Ellington", a triptych of band, strings, and remixes in tribute to and inspired by the seminal composer-bandleader, and "The Difference Engine", a triple concerto for violin, cello, piano, and string orchestra. Lots more at grahamreynolds.com. I love comic books. I grew up with super-heroes and continue to devour graphic novel after graphic novel. So when Matthew Hinsley, Austin Classical Guitar Society's director and the commissioner of this piece, was over at my place, Powerman was sitting there at the desk with us, as a printed figure on the water glass I handed Matthew. Looking at Matthew and the glass and with this composition on my mind, the name immediately struck me as one that captured something about the piece. Matthew agreed. As a composer, I try to get my hands on as many instruments as I can and over the years guitar has been one of them. But until now, it was not classical guitar, but rock. On this project I tried, with Matthew's expert guidance, help and advice, to meet classical and rock techniques in the middle. The grace, precision, and expressiveness of classical playing opens the piece, followed immediately by the forward pulsing drive, the intense energy, and tight rhythms of rock.
