Grant Kirkhope joins Big Huge Games
Former Rare's musician talks about the Trouble in Paradise soundtrack
After last week’s farewell, Rare’s former composer Grant Kirkhope will join THQ’s subsidiary Big Huge Games in the role of Audio Director, accoding to Music4Games.
As Kirkhope himself confirmed on his MySpace blog “recording the stuff in Prague with Robin for Banjo“ was his last task before leaving the company last Friday, July 18th. But some months earlier, he also took part on the recording of the Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise soundtrack in the capital of the Czech Republic.
According to a recent feature from Music4Games, the score for Trouble in Paradise features over 50 minutes of original orchestral music composed by Grant Kirkhope, and was recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording sessions took place 10-12 March 2008 at Barrandov Studios – Smecky Music Studio, and were conducted by Nic Raine, who was also responsible of the Kameo soundtrack a couple of years ago.
Kirkhope assured that he’s been “very lucky” with the Piñata franchise: “it’s enabled me to write the kind of music I would probably write if I was just sitting at home composing for pleasure,” he said. Regarding his work in this upcoming sequel he added: “I was trying to capture a kind of English Pastoral mood; I was thinking Elgar, Vaughan Williams. I’d managed to get a really serene feel to the first game so I wanted to build on that and really let my Romantic side out.”
He also had very nice feelings after the recording sessions in Prague: “The overall experience has been really fantastic, I can’t praise the players of the orchestra, Nic, James, Jan and Gareth enough. For a composer to hear his music played by a quality orchestra is so special, words can’t really describe it.”
Maybe it’s still too early to know how the music for the new Piñata game will sound; but we can try to imagine what Mr Kirkhope was referring to when talking about his inspiration by just listening to some pieces from those two English Romantic composers.
Somehow related news
- Kirkhope’s resignation explanation ()
- Composer Grant Kirkhope leaves Rare ()
- ‘Serious Monkey Business’ is available for your listening pleasure ()
- David Wise, composer since 1985, leaves Rare ()
- Banjo-Kazooie 3 “won’t be a traditional platformer” ()
Beautiful conducting!
Comment by Teo-Bunny — 06.Sep.08 @ 12:54 pm