G&E Music Scores “PBS Arts Fall Festival” Promos & Show Package

NYC-based G&E Music recently scored the on-air promos and show package for the PBS Arts Fall Festival, which has been airing Friday nights at 9PM (ET) since October.

The PBS Arts Fall Festival is in its inaugural season

The promo campaign, which features graphics by NYC’s Click 3X, was designed to showcase the series’ diverse programming – which ranged from the Cameron Crowe documentary, Pearl Jam Twenty, to Plácido Domingo in “Il Postino” from the Los Angeles Opera, and the Gilbert and Sullivan classic, “H.M.S. Pinafore in Minnesota” – so the music needed to broadly communicate “the arts” and masterful performances of all kinds.

Longtime musical collaborators and G&E co-founders Glenn Schloss and Erik Blicker hit the studio to get started on this project as they often do, with Blicker grabbing his guitar and Schloss jumping behind the drumkit. They drew inspiration from the graphics, collaborating with Click 3X as they were developing the designs/animation.

“G&E was great about jumping in the game early, even as things were still taking shape – looking at storyboards and styleframes,” says Click 3X producer Russ Johnsen. “And once we got into the animation phase they were really good about making changes on the fly and evolving their music with our visuals as we went. When you can collaborate like that and develop the music and visuals at the same time, you’re going to land in a good spot.”

Scoring picture was important, but G&E were also focused on emphasizing a main theme that would function as a mnemonic across the whole show package and serve as sonic branding for the series in subsequent seasons.

“We did some research – looking at all the different cultural aspects of this series and network,” says Blicker. “We put together a bunch of melodies, and they selected the one they felt would be most memorable.”

This is the main, cycling melody of the piece. To emphasize this theme, G&E brought in singers and added instrumentation to the band version of the track. Then they brought in NYC-based composer/orchestrator Kevin Salchert to work up an arrangement of big string sweeps and swells.

The orchestration drove home that core theme, which G&E echoed across the other elements of the series’ branding – the open, bumps and closing credits. “For the show open, we did a more intimate take on the melody, using live acoustic guitars and solo violins, and medium-room drums,” says Blicker. “It is really woven into the fabric of every aspect of the show package.”

View a version of the series promo here:

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