Recent News

​

• Commissions for compositions, arrangements and orchestrations:

  • Overture for the Moody Blues (Gordy Marshall, Mick Wilson) for Go Now! concerts with Philly Pops and dozens of other orchestras

  • Animation film trailer music for Colossal's Hollywoodland

  • London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road recording project and Pacific Symphony concert with Persian pop star Hafez Hazeri, in celebration of Nowruz (Persian New Year)

  • Boston Pops concerts entitled Tapestry: the Carole King Songbook featuring Tony-nominated Liz Callaway (the voice of Disney's Anastasia).

  • Atlanta and Houston Symphony pops concerts featuring Broadway stars Ashley Brown and Montego Glover, conducted by Michael Krajewski.

  • National tour of The Sounds of Simon and Garfunkel featuring A.J. Swearingen, with upcoming performances by the Seattle Symphony and broadcasts.

  • National tour of A Tribute to Aretha Franklin featuring DeNita Asberry, with upcoming performances by York and Yakima symphonies under Lawrence Golan.

  • National tour of David Bowie concert series entitled Space Oddity, featuring David Brighton (AXS TV), performed by Toledo Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic.

  • Orchestra Kentucky performance of orchestration of Dear Father (Jonathan Livingston Seagull), working with Lee Holdridge

  • Documentary score for Ability with Marsha Skidmore, screened at Fox Theater for Christian Youth Film Festival

  • Lillenas Publishing contract: recent arrangement of He Sends the Snow for choir and cello was recorded in Nashville and sold throughout U.S. (LifeWay Bookstores, JW Pepper)

​

• Performances:

  • AXS TV and PBS Soundstage broadcasts: star-studded Colorado Music Hall of Fame (entitled "The Rocky Mountain Way") featuring Joe Walsh, Garth Brooks, Amy Grant, Vince Gill, John Oates and Grammy-winning Gold-record artist Michael Martin Murphey, a sold-out event at Fiddler's Green amphitheater that attracted 20,000 concertgoers.

  • Actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, accompanying Steve Amerson ("America's Tenor") for Progeria research event

  • Ingrid Chun and Ingrid Hutman (violinist and violist with Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Tommy Walker for Eagle Rock Christian Assembly

  • Lorna Luft (daughter of Judy Garland) in Songs My Mother Taught Me concerts

  • John Denver Tribute concerts with Jim Curry and the Pacific Symphony, Grand Rapids, Utah, Kansas City, Detroit and Akron Symphonies and Cincinnati Pops, conducted by maestro Lee Holdridge, at venues such as Irvine's Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Colorado's Red Rocks and El Portal in North Hollywood. Included artists such as Richie Gajate Garcia.

​

Reviews

 

PHILHARMONIC RECAPTURES ITS MUSICAL FUSION

Review by Kitty Montgomery, Kingston Daily Freeman, NY

​

"Kudos to the jury that had the perspicacity to select 'Fingerprints' as winner of the Davenport competition as well as its composer, young Wills, fresh from California, for a composer-in-residency with SUNY music students before the premiere of his piece by the philharmonic. From the quiet dawning of its commencement, 'Fingerprints' evokes curiosity and expectation, fresh, organic, uncontrived in its necessary unfolding. The orchestra articulates the work's expansion, attuned to the mystery of its suspense, tension and epiphany like sonic warriors on a hunt with Fleischer sustaining their involvement and edge. More than a reading, the sensitive, fulfilling performance hopefully sends this composer of vital merits a step – nay, a quantum leap – further in his personal odyssey as a great communicator from earth to infinity to us via music."

​

HUDSON VALLEY PHILHARMONIC OFFERS FIREWORKS, 'FINGERPRINTS'

Review by James F. Cotter, The Times Herald-Record, NY

​

"After intermission, the orchestra introduced Wills' 'Fingerprints: An Orchestral Odyssey.' Surprisingly, the piece begins with a deliberate thud, repeated for good measure.

Fragmented tunes flit in and out above a rhythmic double beat while four notes emerge as the unifying subject. Based on Genesis, the work echoes the big bang or thud sounding out of chaos to the sounds of creation: thunder, waterfalls, birds and treading elephants. Abstract and yet programmatic, the music offers ample food for thought and feeling in its shaping of unity out of chaos."

​

Testimonials

​