ASMAC (American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers) presents

Video Game Scoring

Forza Motorsport

with composers Kaveh Cohen & Michael Nielsen

Moderated by Joachim Horsley

LA 1pm | NY 4pm | Lima 3pm | London 9pm | Paris 10pm | Sydney 6am (+1 day)

Composers Kaveh Cohen and Michael Nielsen drive us through the intricacies of creating music for the Forza Motorsport video game franchise from development to delivery.

Topics include:

• interaction with the game developers,
• how the music composition and production was approached,
• the demo process,
• sample libraries,
• working with various software,
• orchestration,
• recording live and virtual elements,
• mixing, and
• stem delivery.

This event will be moderated by composer, arranger, and pianist Joachim Horsley.

Bios

Kaveh Cohen and Michael Nielsen

Kaveh Cohen and Michael Nielsen began their now two-and-a-half decade long friendship and collaboration in the 1990’s. Leaning into their very different musical backgrounds, they forged a creative partnership that has allowed them to contribute their innovative and constantly evolving sound to film, television, video games, trailers, commercials, and popular music.

Kaveh and Michael’s score for Forza Motorsport is their latest entry in Microsoft’s billion-dollar franchise. Written over three years, their modern hybrid score encompasses live orchestra and bespoke modular and synth elements to create a sonic landscape both elegant and intense. Forza Motorsport marks almost a decade for Kaveh and Michael helming the musical footprint of the iconic franchise. Previous scores in the series include their unique rock score for Forza Motorsport 7, Forza Motorsport 6 which garnered several award nominations for best video game score, and two Forza expansions - Porsche and NASCAR. Kaveh and Michael provided scores for the last two installments of Ubisoft’s iconic Tom Clancy games, Splinter Cell Blacklist and Splinter Cell Conviction and have written scores for blockbuster movie tie-ins Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters for Warner Bros. Interactive, and Battleship for Activision. They collaborated with Riot Games to provide scores for Riot’s wildly popular League of Legends and to compose Road to the Cup, a custom piece written for the League of Legends World Championships - a sold-out event held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, streamed to over 32 million people and with over 7.5 million views to date on YouTube.

Kaveh and Michael’s theme for Splinter Cell Conviction was recorded by The London Philharmonic Orchestra for their best-selling album The Greatest Video Game Music which reached #23 on the Billboard charts. Famed violinist Angèle Dubeau also recorded a new arrangement of the theme with her string ensemble La Pietà for her album Game Music. Their theme for Forza Motorsport 6 received it’s world premiere on the concert stage by the Hradec Kralové Philharmonic as part of a video game music concert.

Joachim Horsley (Moderator)

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and arranger Joachim Horsley is an exceptional American pianist who uses his favorite instrument to break musical barriers.

Coming from the film music world, Horsley created original scores for projects like HBO’s Gordita Chronicles, Batman: Soul of the Dragon and Disney’s Big City Greens, Horsley continues to score a story from his own imagination: a tale where the great composers of classical music infused their works with Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

“It’s an alternate universe: one where Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart are channeling Havana more than Vienna,” says Horsley. “To me, this is a way to meet old friends in a fresh context, giving our audiences a new take and a renewed appreciation for both the Classical world and the Caribbean Cultures.”

Horsley was inspired to start this project after studying music in Cuba in 2015. Rumba music in particular, both in its sound and the way it’s created, made a lasting impression and led to the first piece of this project “Beethoven In Havana,” an arrangement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony in a Cuban style. Horsley created this piece alone using the piano itself as a percussion ensemble, and the video immediately became a viral sensation. This led to two albums with classical-caribbean fusion pieces: VIA HAVANA (called “masterful” by the French publication Le Figaro) and CARIBBEAN NOCTURNES, featuring many guest Caribbean musicians. Horsley plays concerts throughout the world with both his band and as a soloist with orchestras.

Many composers, musicians, and fans in the classical and Afro-Caribbean worlds share a mutual interest in the opposite sides of this genre divide. It’s Joachim Horsley’s hope that his merging of these two worlds opens minds, expands audiences and encourages exploration.