Original Sound Track
by Stephen Cohn

		Listen to "A Nail Through the Heart Theme"
		Listen to "Rose"
		Listen to "Superman Chase"

About Stephen Cohn:

Stephen Cohn is internationally recognized for his music for the concert stage, scores for feature films, and television. His concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest chamber music ensembles and orchestras, both in the United States and Europe, such as the Arditti Quartet , the Prague Phiharmonic and the Kansas City Symphony. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music" and a Parents' Choice Gold Award. His classical and commercial recordings have been released by Warner Bros., Motown, A&M Records, Columbia Records, Albany Records and At Peace Media. In the early days of his career he was in a rock and roll band Tim Hallinan.

Stephen’s notes about the music:

The idea:
It was inspiring to join forces with Tim again after being out of touch for a number of years. When I read "Nail Through The Heart" I was moved on so many levels that a rush of musical ideas came pouring down. Yet I felt challenged to offer something that would represent the depth of emotion and color I experienced in reading the book. Tim and I decided that the music should be conceived in much the same way that a film score is conceived. However, in two of the compositions, "A Nail Through the Heart Theme" and "Rose" there was no need to follow the action as one would with a film and so there was a freedom to delve into the emotion without any structural limitations. The third piece, "Superman Chase" is written like a film cue which follows the action as described in the book.

The instrumentation:
Since the story takes place in Thailand with Thai characters, I felt it was important to use authentic Thai instruments along with the more standard Western orchestral instruments. I found a library of Thai Instrument samples of exceptional quality. The instruments used were:
Ranat Thun - a wooden, marimba-like instrument played with mallets.
Khlui Flute - a wooden, recorder-like flute with a distinctive, earthy sound.
Jakay - a cross between a zither and a guitar with a characteristic buzz, particularly in the lower range.
Kong Wong Lek - a circle of tuned gongs used for rapid textural figures and arpeggios.
Thai Gongs
Finger Cymbals
These instruments were not designed to play western music and their overtone series, in many cases doesn't allow for harmonies of the kind that western music employs as using them in a western context creates tuning problems. Since these pieces are written for western ears and the concept was to blend western orchestral instruments with Thai instruments, it was problematic to craft ideas that worked for both instrumental worlds. However, the contrast in textures, when the ideas were aligned, proved to be very rewarding.

The goal:
In all three compositions, the intention was to bring the listener closer to the drama of the story and the emotions of the characters as well as the ethnicity of the location - also, perhaps even some visual flashes from a mystery which is so intensely visual. More specifically:

“A Nail Through the Heart Title”: In discussing the book, Tim talked about Thailand as a place with a placid surface and a great deal of turmoil and darkness underneath. I went after that contrast - an alluring surface with the beauty of a brilliantly colored but poisonous tropical snake. The main theme of this composition is intended to say something about the intense and poignant drama that the characters and we, as observers, live through in this book.

“Rose”: A beautiful Thai woman who is complex, loving, mysterious and has a pure heart, and who is conflicted by the pain of her past life and the clash of cultures she feels in her present life. The intention of the music is to feel some of what she feels, some what she projects and some of the mystery of her presence.

“Superman Chase”: Tim's concept of this piece was to write it as if it was underscoring for an action sequence. - almost as if the reader could hear it in pace with the reading of the scene, which is actually Chapter Two of the novel. (You can read it here.)  It is, in a sense, a classic chase with the stops and starts as described in the story - leading to a fight and finally to a resolution. However, it is tempered by the fact that the main characters of both chase and fight are children. The resolution is the end of the fight but not an end of the sadness that created it.

About my web site:  My web site address is: www.stephencohn.com. It contains a Biography, Resume/Credit list, Latest News, some Reviews and some samples of my work and contact information. Come visit.

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