Returning to the RSNO in Glasgow—My Adventures in Underscore, part 22.
The trip to Scotland seemed strangely familiar. Which I wouldn’t have expected, having made the trek to Glasgow only once before. The first time, in January of 2023, was particularly vivid—the days were short and sharp at that time of year, with the sun barely skimming the horizon before it sets again, and the cold air cut like a knife blade. And of course, I’d never attended a symphonic recording before.
This time, in early September, the days were longer and the air warmer. I was still jet lagged from the 16-hour journey (with a layover for customs in Ireland) but seemed to adjust more easily. Maybe it was the good company—Intrada VP Roger Feigelson brought his wife Rebecca, store manager Jeff Johnson joined us this time with his spouse Stacey, company stalwart Rick Hauserman flew in from SF and Mary Ann Fake arrived from Denver. It was quite a party—if only Doug could have been here.
Ah, there’s the rub. The elephant NOT in the room. We were all here for Intrada’s fourth soundtrack recording with the RSNO—our most successful Kickstarter campaign to date—but the man most responsible for our continuing success was missing. Douglass Fake, our founder, producer and good friend had passed just seven weeks earlier. After working closely with him for over 25 years as the company's art director, I wondered how we would fill the void.
There’s no lack of talent in the room. For starters, we’ve got conductor William T. Stromberg (everyone calls him “Bill”) and his wife and musical partner Anna Bonn Stromberg back at the podium. Together they have experience with nearly 100 film score recordings and reconstructions, not to mention their day jobs working on some of the biggest soundtracks in Hollywood today. For all of that, there’s absolutely no pretension—they love what they’re doing and we love them for it.
Ordinarily, Doug would have been in the booth during the recording, reading the score and consulting with Bill on each take. We’re very lucky to have another friend ready to step in—Leigh Phillips, back home in the UK from his current position as a producer and orchestrator at Smecky Music Studios in Prague. There are few musicians working at his level in the business, and fewer still with an ear for recreating the classic sound of movie music from the 20th Century. We’re in good hands.
Sadly, we lost another hand at the controls, engineer extraordinaire Mike Ross-Trevor. His career stretched from the 1960s when he assisted on Bob Dylan albums, thru classical recordings with James Galway and film scores with Jerry Goldsmith, to name a few. Notably, he worked on some of Intrada’s earliest Excalibur records and was delighted to come out of retirement for last year’s Bernard Herrmann double feature. His delightful, impish presence brightened any room he entered and his precise professionalism put us all at ease. Fortunately, we have the RSNO’s able Hedd Morfett-Jones and his team at the mixing board, who worked shoulder to shoulder with Mike last year and understand what we’re listening for. Still, he will be missed as a collaborator and friend.
This is where I begin to take comfort amid the loss. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is a fairly young ensemble, whose average age is in the late 30s. Most of these musicians aren’t old enough to know the music that we’re recording, much less the films it was written for. Yet we’ve chosen to record with the RSNO because they are a crack, state-of-the-art film recording ensemble. They know contemporary film scoring, having worked on recent big films like Horizon, The Expendables IV, and Argyle.
As film score aficionados are quick to point out, modern film scoring is a very different animal than the likes of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Which makes me wonder if they can relate to it. When I ask the players what they think of the music, I’m surprised by the answer. More than one says that this music “feels like the classical repertoire” and they simply approach it that way. “We have plenty of experience with that kind of music in our concert seres.” Our music contractor, Paul Talkington, goes further: “When you have world class musicians playing great music in a state-of-the-art room, you get fantastic results.” That’s a lot of superlatives, but I have every reason to believe him.
Friday, September 6 is the first day of recording. We arrive early to sign in and get our access badges. The recording stage is cordoned off by a maze of interlocking security doors, that require the electronic passkey. We follow our guide closely, trying to memorize the twists and turns of the blandly identical hallways on the second and third floors of RSNO’s headquarters. (I will still manage to get lost on at least one occasion.) In a moment, we’re on the recording stage, a large windowless room about the size of a basketball court. It’s buzzing with activity as sixty players take their seats and unpack their instruments.
Off to the side, our group of civilians gather, including a few backers who earned their seat at the recording. Longtime film music fan Mark Bagby and his wife Heidi have come the furthest, from southern California; followed by Bob Tevis, an entertainment writer from the east coast. Holgar Nedderhut makes his second trip to the stage (after the Dial M for Murder sessions in 2019) from relatively nearby Hamburg, Germany. But the award for shortest commute goes to Peter Timoney, a fan who literally walked across town (thirty minutes, across the Clyde river) to join us. (He confessed to me that his proximity to the hall helped him decide to up his donation.) Some take seats in the balcony above the stage, the rest stay on the floor behind the podium.
That’s my preferred seat. From here, I can look over Anna’s shoulder as she follows the score on paper and her laptop—right behind her husband on the podium. Roger takes the stand first, to offer a brief invocation. “This is a bittersweet occasion—to be here with you all, but without our friend and founder Doug Fake… That said—I hope you all have fun today!”
The heaviness in our heart is dissipated with the first downbeat. The orchestra comes roaring to life, playing Frank Skinner’s “Emblem and Main Title” from Frankenstein, a brash and boisterous piece that wakes up the room. I watch as the orchestra passes the music back and forth, from xylophone and brass, to the bass and flutes, across to the strings and back again. After a minute-and-a-half, Bill drops his baton and says “Good reading. Excellent, in fact!”
No kidding—most of the players have not seen the scores before arriving this morning, and already they’re 90% of the way to a good take. That just goes to show what top flight musicians can do. Leigh and the folks in the booth agree, “Yes, quite wonderful!” He proceeds to enumerate a short list of tweaks, which Bill translates for the players. Within minutes, we have a second take which sounds even better—tighter, more syncopated—and I marvel how a room full of individuals begin to coalesce around something so ephemeral as music—to make a lasting work of art.
Our two days of recording are spread out over four three-hour sessions, and the rule of thumb is that the orchestra can record 15-20 minutes of music per session. That’s just enough time for the 75-minute album that we have planned, and to those of us in the peanut gallery, it feels almost impossible to fit it all in. The first hour of recording is a process of discovery and re-acquaintance. The team has all worked together, although not for eighteen months and never exactly in the present configuration.
I drop by the new control booth, installed since our last visit. The deep blue room is transporting, a strange but soothing interdimensional space. Which I suppose it is, in the realm between live players and digital recording. Jeff has chosen to listen to the session from here, so he can follow the transformation first hand. I feel a twinge at the sight of Doug’s usual seat, to the left of the engineers. Not for that reason alone, I return to the floor.
After the first break, I’d like to think that our founder would have been pleased. The pace is picking up, along with the precision of the players as they get comfortable with the score. Bill has front-loaded the day with several of the big action cues (“Monster Chase, Parts I, II, III”, “Dracula Hits Jackpot”) to take advantage of everyone’s morning stamina, and the energy in the room is electric. Even with these big, raucous compositions, the group manages to meet their quota before lunch.
Better still, we amateurs are marveling at what we’ve just heard. Listening to the score apart from the film reminds us how thematic it is, with the circular music of Dracula’s bat-wings, the growling undercurrent for the Wolfman, and of course the lumbering ostinato for the titular creature (as named for the composer in a charming cue title, “Franken-Skinner’s Monster”). During a quick lunch across the street, we compare the nuances we detected in the music that have been uncovered for the first time in 76 years—details that even the most attentive fans have NEVER heard in the compressed audio of old, crackly TV prints. Ah, this is why we’re here.
The afternoon’s playlist is more varied, with more subtle misterioso, lightly comic and even sensuous music (like “Sandra the Vampire”) that will be interspersed with the big action set pieces. Conductor Bill Stromberg is clearly having a grand time, as he and partner John Morgan (who’s watching remotely from Los Angeles) have wanted to record this score for 25 years. I notice that, while still glistening with perspiration, he looks supremely relaxed compared with last year, when the judgmental spirit of Bernard Herrmann hung over the proceedings. Bill had a lot of personal investment in getting that one right—this time, the hard work is all fun.
Which reminds me that last year’s sessions for On Dangerous Ground and The Man Who Knew Too Much looked different. Bill and Doug had decided to beef up that orchestra with extra brass and percussion players, in keeping with Hermann’s intentions. So there were fewer players at the Abbott and Costello sessions, and the woodwinds, brass and percussion were on risers this time. Paul Talkington explains that is to give a more traditional classical sound to the recording. I can’t argue with the results.
Returning on Saturday morning, we find there’s a drum kit and a percussionist added to the floor. While he has only one cue for Frankenstein (“End Title and Cast”) he’s going to get a workout with the rest of the players on Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops. In fact, this is where my apprehension returns. We’ve used up 60% of our recording time so far, which is right on schedule, but the music for Kops seems even more challenging in some ways—the three composers (William Lava, Herman Stein and Henry Mancini) have written a LOT of notes in the 30 minutes that we’re about to record.
Doug Fake had suggested that a click track might be required to match the furious tempi of the film, and all the players have their headsets ready to listen to the timer which helps them synchronize their performance. But Bill suggests a first take of the “Main Title” without the click—and we joke that his furious conducting style might be sufficient. He reminds us that Doug called him “the human metronome,” and everyone laughs. If nothing else, it speaks to the easy rapport that the musicians have with their guest conductor. They launch into the boisterous 89 second cue and we hold our collective breath…
Exactly one minute and 29 seconds later, we start breathing again. Leigh snaps on the intercom “That was… perfect, really. I suppose that we should do another, just for safety?” And that is how the rest of the day proceeds: no matter what curves the music presents (and there are a lot, including exaggerated performances, countless musical quotes like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”, razor-sharp breaks and changes in tempi) the players bat them out of the park. The word comes down from our remote brain trust (including Morgan, Ray Faiola and David Schecter) that the sound is indistinguishable from the original performance. Except that Hedd and the gang in the booth are recording it all in 64-bit sound—so it’s even better than the first time.
In the end, a few pieces are recorded with the click, particularly the four-part, twelve-minute climax of the film (“Keystone Chase”) but rarely are more then two takes necessary to nail it. I watch as smiles break across the player’s faces—they’re clearly having a ball—and one of the bassists actually spins his upright in time with the music, only to resume frantically sawing his bow through the remainder of the piece. Let me tell you, watching a room full of consummate professionals play silly cartoon music is as much fun as watching pratfalls on screen—and definitely more memorable.
Those memories matter, because by 15:15, it was all over. The sessions were complete and everyone took to their feet for a long-delayed and well-deserved ovation. This may have been just another days’ work for the RSNO, but it’s pretty special for us and the soundtrack community. As Bill noted from the podium “We wouldn’t be here without the 900 fans who came together to support this project, and the folks from Intrada who made it happen.”
Over drinks at the hotel, we gather to reflect on how incredibly unusual these days have been, for the music from a couple of semi-obscure, mid-century movies to be so lovingly reconstructed and restored for a relatively tiny audience. But that’s been Intrada’s mission for nearly forty years. Douglass Fake started his company because he believed that film music deserved to be brought to the same level of recognition as classical music—or any other genre. Eventually, the audience for this recording will grow beyond the Kickstarter backers, and the music will live on for years beyond that.
If Doug was among the first generation of film music fans to turn professional, then BIll, Anna, and the rest of the team stand on his shoulders to continue the good fight. Leigh Phillips is currently funding his own recording project—for three otherwise unavailable Jerry Goldsmith TV scores—and it’s not too late to support his campaign! Intrada will continue releasing classic scores and making new recordings as well, not just because that’s what Doug would have wanted, but because our audience wants it as well. I'm grateful to everyone who keeps the faith, and keeps listening.
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You can read more of my “Adventures in Underscore” on the blog. For comix and more frequent posts, consider becoming a member at my Patreon Page.
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