The Music Man
Award-winning Composer Brian Keane Scores "The War That Made America"

WQED Multimedia is producing a four-part documentary that will bring to life the French and Indian War, a fascinating yet little-understood conflict. Produced and filmed locally, the production is an important, regional economic-development project. "The War That Made America" is planned for broadcast on Wednesdays Jan. 18 and 25, 9-11 p.m.

Brian Keane must be running out of things to say when they hand him the golden statues. The winner of 32 Emmy Awards, including 14 for "Best Picture" and seven for "Outstanding Music Composition," 16 Peabody Awards, 37 Dupont Awards, eight Ace Awards and a Columbia/Dupont Gold Baton, Keane is one of the most sought-after composers for films and television in the entertainment business. He has worked with such notable filmmakers as Ric Burns and Bill Moyers. Last spring, Keane (pictured) agreed to bring his talents to bear on "The War That Made America." The experience has been a musical odyssey that has spanned four distinct cultures and 250 years, challenging both his musical imagination and the limits of digital-recording technology. "This has been a very unique project and a demanding score to produce because the film itself is a hybrid of drama and documentary," explains Keane.

The story of the French and Indian War posed a complex set of musical challenges, because it is fundamentally about the clash of French, Native American, British and colonial cultures. Keane needed to find a way to express that musically and be able to support the drama of scenes that revolved around many different cultural combinations - from French encounters with the British, to colonial encounters with Native Americans. Keane's solution was to compose a series of different themes, bring musicians to his Connecticut studio to record them and then digitally weave together bits and pieces of this raw material using as many as 100 channels of sound to produce a few moments of music. Fortunately, during his long career, Keane has worked with some of the most accomplished period-instrument musicians from groups like the Waverly Consort and Baltimore Consort, as well as leading Native American musicians including Douglas Spotted Eagle and Joe Firecrow. For this project he assembled 30 musicians, who brought their rare instruments with them. Together they formed a baroque-period orchestra to create the sounds of British and French court music, which Keane either composed or selected from the work of 18th-century composers like Handel. Another specialized group of musicians came into the studio to record traditional colonial folk themes playing instruments like the hammer dulcimer, lute and viola da gamba. For the distinctive and authentic sound of the military snare drums used on the battlefield, Keane had "rope drums" made for the project by the renowned craftsman Jim Cooperman. Native American singers from the Six Nations also gathered for Keane to record songs that have been preserved solely by oral tradition.

With this vast inventory, the composer then set about electronically manipulating the music, mixing electronic sound design with Native American drums, and stretching the sounds for dramatic purposes while preserving an appropriate sense of period and culture. "It was arduous," says Keane. The result is a haunting and evocative score that not only supports the film but also stands alone as a wonderful piece of music. Once the film premieres in January, it may not be long before Keane has more statues for his shelf.

More information on Brian Keane
More information about the regional commemoration of the French and Indian War

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