Orchestrator Kliesch uses Sibelius to merge technology with traditional scoring

Recent Scores Include Garfield and Little Black Book

Kevin Kliesch (R) and composer Christophe Beck (L) take a break during the scoring sessions for Little Black Book, a Brittany Murphy comedy, at Paramount's Scoring Stage M.

With his seamless marriage of technology and traditional orchestral scoring, Kevin Kliesch has pushed back the boundaries in the genre of motion picture music. Kliesch uses Sibelius as his notation software to orchestrate scores for, most recently, this summer's hit Garfield: The Movie and the upcoming Little Black Book , among others.

Kliesch, who names the piano as his main instrument, also taught himself to play the trumpet, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trombone and saxophone.

“Teaching myself how to play as many instruments as I could helped me immensely when orchestrating, since I learned the idiosyncrasies of each instrument,” says Kliesch. “Also, it's great when I write my own scores, since I don't have to hire any players!”

While Kliesch has been using a variety of digital applications since the early 80s, he was “always in search of the holy grail of music notation programs.” He has been a Sibelius user since Version 1 came out, and says he is impressed with its ease of use and the speed at which he can orchestrate a cue.

“Sibelius helps me by putting all of the tools I need within one mouse click or key press,” states Kliesch. “The way the program handles page layout is completely intuitive and in real-time, so I never have to use a dialog box to reformat a page.”

Kliesch is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston , and holds dual degrees in Film Scoring and Music Synthesis. He began composing at the age of 13, and has worked with such notable composers as Danny Elfman, Christophe Beck and Mark Mothersbaugh, to name a few.

For the 2004 comedy Without a Paddle , Kliesch orchestrated 350 score pages for 85 musicians in six days, and more than 430 score pages in 11 days for the recent Garfield: The Movie . “I couldn't possibly have met those deadlines without the incredible ease-of-use factor of Sibelius 3,” he says.

“When orchestrating for Garfield , the composer, Christophe Beck, would send me MIDI files, which I opened in Sibelius in a separate window,” explains Kliesch. “I then went about transferring every MIDI track into a custom template that I created for the film. From there, I cleaned up the MIDI file and added my own orchestrational touches. The software made the process quite simple.”

Kliesch will soon begin orchestrating scores for the upcoming films A Perfect Man and Elektra , and has recently completed orchestrations for Taxi .

To date, there are more than 100,000 Sibelius users worldwide, including conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas, guitarist Andy Summers, choral composer John Rutter and television composer Alf Clausen.

Notes to editors

About Sibelius Software Ltd (Sibelius):

• Sibelius is the world's market leader in the music software business, with 17 music products for the professional, educational and home user, ranging from Internet publishing to guitar software.
• Sibelius has customers in over 100 countries.
• Sibelius is used in 50% of schools in the UK , Australia and New Zealand.
• Leading music companies such as Yamaha, Boosey & Hawkes and Hal Leonard all use Sibelius technology and it is endorsed by the Royal Academy of Music.
• Famous Sibelius users include: Steve Reich, Michael Tilson Thomas and John Rutter.
• Sibelius is headquartered in London , UK , with its US subsidiary Sibelius USA Inc in California.