My portfolio includes scoring, arrangement and composition work for video games, feature film and television. As a musician and producer I have released over forty albums of jazz, folk, electronic, punk and modern classical music. I am currently accepting new commissions.
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Why Chris Schlarb?
The world is full of musicians, composers and producers. The hard part is matching the right person with the project they are best suited for.

Here is a quick example: if you want to approximate an orchestra of instruments with a single keyboard, I am probably not the right one for the job. My best work utilizes any number of unique, real world instruments including tabla, euphonium, mandolin, marimba and upright double bass. I thoroughly enjoy working with real instruments, in real spaces, with real musicians.

If your film, video game or album requires texture and atmospheric depth, unique or unusual live instrumentation, and thoughtful arrangement, I would love to hear from you. For the last decade I have explored the ambient, jazz, folk, electronic and modern classical genres as a member of both the American Composers Forum and ASCAP.

I specialize in taking small and medium sized budgets and turning them into expensive sounding recordings. I operate my own mobile recording studio and engineer most sessions, saving time and cost.

My work can be heard on this site and read about in the New York Times, All About Jazz, Time Out New York, Chicago Reader and Pitchfork.

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Twilight & Ghost Stories

twilightandghoststories.jpg

ORDER

AMAZON // ASTHMATIC KITTY // EMUSIC // ITUNES

ABOUT

Four years ago I was a sleeping ghost in an empty home. After quitting my job as an insurance adjuster I found myself working through a devastating separation which soon ended in divorce. Aimless and unemployed, I lost all structure and contact with the world outside.

Weeks passed into months until a massive rainstorm birthed a curious idea. I set up a few microphones and began to record the din of street and rain for the next forty minutes. Later as I listened back, I thought about creating a composition that had no obvious center, instead it would be assembled out of order and without self-reference. Full of faith and newfound energy, I would ask dozens of artists (many were strangers at the time) to contribute to a piece of music they had not heard and that I, myself, had not yet composed.

Four years and fifty collaborators later, Twilight & Ghost Stories seems an odd choice for my first “solo” album. There are hundreds of moments taken from their chronology in time and set alongside each other anew and I have acted only as the conductor of a giant, magnificent orchestra. To that orchestra, in some small way, I owe my life.

Chris Schlarb
June 26th, 2007
Long Beach, California

AUDIO

Section I [mp3]
Section IV [mp3]
Twilight Athens [mp3]

FUTHER READING
Twilight & Ghost Stories in Austin and San Francisco
Twilight & Ghost Stories in Athens

See also Twilight Variations.

PRESS

“this is improvised music as art at its very best.”- Ian Patterson, All About Jazz

“Chris Schlarb’s Twilight & Ghost Stories is one of the most unique musical projects to come along in years… a monumental achievement.”- Nathan Atnikov, FFWD Weekly

“Top 10 Albums of 2007… an experiment in sound rather than a traditional album… a fascinating experience.”- Katherine Fulton, All Music Guide

“40 minutes of avant-garde bliss.”- Jake Brooks, New York Observer

“Twilight is jazz in the same sense as the genre-smashing stuff the Art Ensemble of Chicago played from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s. Which is to say that it both epitomizes and transcends the genre. In a world that allows the paranoid, antisocial, and self-obsessed to abuse art as a forum for vapid ’self-expression,’ Twilight & Ghost Stories is not a Statement, but a gift.”- Tiny Mix Tapes

“A triumph of minimalist folktronic gorgeousness.”- Ali Maloney, The Skinny

“Schlarb is a talented arranger, producer and all around master of ceremonies, and Twilight & Ghost Stories ends up being a cathartic, improbably organic, and engaging CD.”- Christian Carey, Signal To Noise

“One of the years more ambitious recordings.”- Robin Hilton, NPR’s Second Stage

“Top 10 Albums of 2007… These aren’t songs per se, but an amalgam of feelings that Schlarb and his vast array of contributors want to convey to the listener.”- Dave Cantor, The Cleveland Free Times

“Twilight is a unique and remarkably universal record, and one that offsets its projected loneliness with a great sense of warmth. Indeed, it’s perfect for listening to in the very circumstances that birthed the concept, when you’re alone with the weather, wondering what to do.”- Joe Tangari, Pitchforkmedia

“Twilight & Ghost Stories is a finely woven tapestry of myriad voices; meteorological elements; and deftly executed jazz, folk and post-rock, all rendered in muted watercolor daubs.”- Dave Segal, OC Weekly

“an unqualified success… it’s impossible to believe that you’ve really been listening to music (it must have been a dream.) Even more difficult to comprehend will be the fact that it has not, after all, been raining.”- Timothy Zila, Patrol Magazine

“Chris Schlarb creates beautiful, symphonic compositions.”- John Zeiss, Prefix Magazine

“A freeform, ambient composition featuring cameos by 50 musicians makes exquisite sonic wallpaper, no insult intended”- Lorraine Carpenter, Montreal Mirror

“a delightful listen”- XLR8R Magazine

“But in Twilight & Ghost Stories, his first solo album, Schlarb turns his soul, rather than his instrument, inside out.”- Phillip Buchan, Flagpole

“Rest assured, whether it’s rain or shine you came for, this disc does it. The musical musings contained herein harbor an honest array of promises and pangs. Both come distilled. Whatever you want, and whenever, here it is.”- Jonathan Scott, Stereo Subversion

“It is significant when the contributions of more than 40 musicians can be used to create a work as intimate as this… Twilight And Ghost Stories is a quiet epic…”- Craig Schum, Beyond Race Magazine

“It’s actually a quite nice minimal, flowing electro-acoustic piece utilizing field recordings (mostly of rain) and improvised contributions…”- Keith Fullerton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales

“There are far too many twists and turns to this record to really to list here, but the fact that it’s all cemented together by that omnipresent rainfall and traffic flow really does lend an overarching sense of coherence to this beautiful collection of vignettes.”- Boomkat.com

“Album of the Week. This is a wonderfully resonant piece of work, a beautiful modern challenging composition and a piece of wonderfully creative art – most of all though this is just simply a very beautiful, highly original and very easy to listen to album that you’ll want to get lost in again and again.”- Organ Magazine

“Chris Schlarb’s debut album is, although more off the wall than anything this reviewer has listened to for a long time, a complex, but oddly moving sonic production… rather lovely after three listens.”- Will Dean, Drowned In Sound

INTERVIEWS

All About Jazz by Ian Patterson
The District Weekly by Chris Ziegler
XLR8R Magazine by Josiah Hughes
Paper Thin Walls by Jessica Suarez
37signals by Matt Linderman