Before he became a best-selling writer, Dan Brown was an aspiring musician. In 1989, he self-produced an album of children’s music he arranged on synthesizers, titled “Musica Animalia.” It sold around 500 copies, and Brown soon forgot about it.
He had better luck as a novelist, with page-turners like “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Lost Symbol” and other thrillers that collectively have more than 220 million copies in print.
Now, three decades later, Brown is reviving his musical career with a hybrid children’s album and picture book that grew out of the music and poems he wrote for “Musica Animalia.”
The book, “Wild Symphony,” which Rodale Kids plans to release in September, is aimed at 3- to 7-year-olds. The story features a mouse conductor who recruits other animals to perform in his orchestra, dispensing wisdom about the value of patience, kindness and respect along the way. Readers can listen to the musical accompaniments for each page with a smartphone app that uses augmented reality to scan the page and play the music for “Bouncing Kangaroo,” “Wondrous Whale” and “Brilliant Bat.”
Brown says the story and music were inspired by classical works like “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Carnival and the Animals.” He is also simultaneously releasing an album of the music that he composed, performed by the Zagreb Festival Orchestra in Croatia.
Dan Brown’s “Wild Symphony”
“Dancing Boar”
While it’s somewhat surprising that Brown — who is known for his adrenaline-fueled and occasionally bloody suspense novels — is writing for the pre-literate crowd, “Wild Symphony” has some of his hallmarks. In classic Dan Brown fashion, there are clues and puzzles sprinkled throughout the book; observant readers will find letters of the alphabet floating in the illustrations of blue whales, cheetahs, kangaroos and tropical fish. (The letters form anagrams that spell a musical instrument when placed in the right order.)
Brown was closely involved in the process, from choosing the illustrator, Susan Batori, to overseeing the development of the app, said Mallory Loehr, the senior vice president and publisher of the Random House Books for Young Readers Group. He traveled to Croatia to work with the Zagreb orchestra on the recording.
Music has long been a favorite mode of expression for Brown. As a child, he played piano to entertain himself (his parents wouldn’t allow a TV in the house). After college, he tried to make it as a musician. He founded his own record company, called Dalliance. He later moved to Los Angeles to become a singer-songwriter and pianist, and joined the National Academy of Songwriters. He still plays the piano nearly every day.
Brown wasn’t planning to make a splashy public return to his musical roots. The project came about in 2018, when his friend Bob Lord, the chief executive of PARMA Recordings, rediscovered his long-lost children’s album and asked Brown if he had thought about having the music performed by an orchestra. Brown gave a recording of “Musica Animalia” and the text to his literary agent, and proposed the dual book and album. To make the story cohere, Brown wrote more poems and musical pieces and added the mouse character to guide the reader and give the story an arc.
The orchestral music was recorded by PARMA Recordings, and is being distributed by the classical-music publisher Boosey & Hawkes.
“Wild Symphony” will be Brown’s biggest musical release to date: Rodale is printing 150,000 copies of the book, and rights have sold in 27 countries.
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
