Michael J. Veloso

I am Michael J. Veloso, a composer living in a lovely apartment in Boston; in my spare time I help make music video games. I do my best to write music I like, more or less in the classical idiom, though it's fair to say that I'm influenced by many different kinds of music. Some clips can be found on the List of Works page.

As for CDs of my music, you can buy a disc of my chamber music, Honey Glazed, through a link below, and my soundtrack for video game Point of Descent is available from CD Baby. In addition, a movement of my sax quartet is included on the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet's Quartet at the Crossroads. I've also begun work on a CD of choral music and another collection of instrumental pieces.

To the left are links to pages which may be of interest to you. If you want to talk, you can email me.

News:

11.2011 | There's been lots since the last update. Aaron-Larget Caplan has been kind enough to continue performing Little Dancer at various concerts around the country. Awesome local band Jaggery performed music I wrote for Roy Sallows's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as part of The Big Broadcast of 1954. And the soundtrack for Point of Descent is out on CD, and can be purchased for $10 from CD Baby and iTunes...or in person if you can track me down! The game itself has been delayed, but we all hope it will arrive soon.

6.2011 | It's been a busy couple of months: guitarist Aaron-Larget Caplan premiered Little Dancer, which he commissioned for his New Lullaby Project; the piece was written for my son Julian while he was in the womb. And mezzo-soprano Eileen Christiansen and pianist Carol Lubkowski premiered Goblin Year, a setting of three texts from Jack Womack's dystopian sci-fi noir novel Ambient. They'all wonderful performers, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to write for them!

And in other news, music for Point of Descent is nearly finished -- I just have a few tidbits to take care of, and my first video game soundtrack will be done!

4.2011 | I've begun writing music for indie game developers Beyond Madness and Genius, for their debut release Point of Descent! It's been lots of fun, and I've had to stretch myself a lot both musically and technically. A sample of music for the one of the levels has been posted here, and the game is coming out in Q3 2011 -- keep an eye out!

1.2011 | It was been an eventful 2010, which included the birth of my son Julian in September! Hence the lack of updates...

I provided music for another show by The Post-Meridian Radio Players, this time for a macabre short play set in Victorian England, But Oh, What Happened to Hutchings! And Parquet Deformation, part of my sax quartet Honey Glazed, was released as part of The New Hudson Saxophone's CD Quartet at the Crossroads.

Plus, Rock Band 3 was released in October, universailly hailed as the best music game yet made. In addition to authoring, I also provided my first professional sound effects!

4.2010 | Next month, on Mother's Day, women's chorus Cantilena will be premiering Letters to Little Bean, a setting of two poems my friend Rachel Barenblat wrote about her pregnancy.

I'd like to call attention to the first poem, Little Bean, written during the early weeks of Rachel's pregnancy, which is about her constant fear of miscarriage in the first trimester; many, many babies never make it past the first months, and I found her poem particularly moving in how it captures the fragility of that time, the daily terror of waking up and wondering if your baby is still alive. It's something that few people talk about -- miscarriage is, of course, an intensely personal and private trauma -- and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to bring something normally kept silent out into the open.

As for upcoming pieces, I'm working on a lullaby for guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan, and am starting to mull over ideas for a setting of Jane Kenyon's Having It Out With Melancholy and a fun, goofy number for ENSMB....as well as very nebulous ideas about an opera based on George R. Stewart's novel Earth Abides.

11.2009 | In an eventful couple of months, The Beatles: Rock Band, the first video game I've worked on, was released on September 9.

And even more importantly, Honey Glazed, a CD of my chamber music, is ready at last! The disc includes Arrhythmia, Three Sketches, Duo, Kae, and Honey Glazed. If you'd like a copy, email me; they're $10 each, plus $2 for shipping. I've also set up a Paypal button, but if you decide to use it, email me anyway just in case.

6.2009 | Since my last update, The Boston Musical Intelligencer (positively) reviewed Anthology's performance of Minority Opinion, and Theater@First's performances of The Winter's Tale were a hit! Work on Honey Glazed continues at an unfortunately glacial pace, but in the meantime Allegra and I have been making plans to record my first piece for chorus, aether.

I've also been tapped to provide music for The Post-Meridian Radio Players' Halloween production, along with Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band, which will be wicked fun...and I may also be writing music for PMRP's First Night show.

Also, the first video game I've worked on will be released on September 9.

9.2008 | The design for Honey Glazed is this close to done; unfortunately, there's an audio glitch we can't iron out, so we have to start again with that track from the raw masters. In the meantime, I now have recordings of Minority Opinion in the bag! And I've begun working at Harmonix Music Systems, a company that makes awesome video games.

5.2008 | As happens so often, things with Honey Glazed are taking a bit longer than I had hoped, but I'm optimistic that we'll be releasing it soon! In the meantime, the premiere of Executive Orders went very well, and many thanks to the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus for all their hard work; I'm very much looking forward to their encore performance on May 16th. And I just finished A Gift, a commission donated to one of Singing City's charity auctions and bought by Lauren Anderson, one of their altos. It's a setting of a poem by her grandfather, also one of the chorus's founders -- it will be premiered by them in Philadelphia on June 24th!

2.2008 | We may have found an designer to put together the artwork for Honey Glazed, as well as someone who will help us market it! Also, Executive Orders will be premiered next month; and Allegra and I recorded All-Natural Male Enhancement, Four Cats, and love is the every only god this past December. Al and I have done some work on figuring out how to splice together all the takes, though there's still more to be done...and then we have to take it to an engineer do the actual splicing and mixing.

11.2007 | Mastering on Honey Glazed is finished! Now we just need to pull together the artwork and figure out production logistics. I and my friend Allegra Martin have also begun rehearsals for my choral collection...I'm still pulling together performers for the chamber music CD, though.

01.2007 | love is the every only god was awarded First Prize in Singing City's annual choral competition! It will be performed in Philadelphia on February 24, 2007. Check out their webpage for more details.