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<\/p>\nEmmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary has taken a reverse road to symphonic rock. Prog rockers have traditionally integrated symphonic elements; other rock bands have done orchestral versions of their songs. McCreary began creating television and film scores, discovered his inner metalhead, and has since bridged those worlds with his \u201cSingularity\u201d project. It all adds up to a different take on that time-honored formula.<\/p>\n
The second of the two albums, \u201cThe Singularity: Ekleipsis,\u201d is out Friday and features contributions from guitarist Steve Vai, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump and McCreary\u2019s younger brother Brendan, who sings on half the tracks. The multifaceted album feels like \u201cI am Bear, hear me roar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that quote,\u201d he says, laughing, during his two-hour interview with The Times. \u201cI want to put that on the posters. I feel like \u2018The Singularity\u2019 is a temper tantrum of a record from someone who had been writing music for other people for 20 years, then all these ideas exploded out.\u201d Two years after the release of the first \u201cSingularity\u201d album, \u201cEkleipsis\u201d feels more focused and personal to him.<\/p>\n
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From Anthrax dinners to sessions with Slash, Stewart Copeland and Bulgarian choirs, McCreary\u2019s restless curiosity drives genre-bending songs that wrestle with identity, diaspora and the world listeners are trying to survive.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The first \u201cSingularity\u201d double album \u2014 which featured guests like Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor, Rufus Wainwright and Joe Satriani \u2014 tied into a graphic novel about a man who repeatedly experiences loss and death at the hands of a villainous character in his every life across their multiverse. This leads to a major revelation at the end. Although McCreary says that \u201cEkleipsis\u201d is not disconnected from that universe, it is not strictly tied to a narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t setting out to write a concept album again,\u201d McCreary admits, \u201cbut there\u2019s something immediate in all the lyrics. Half of them are specifically talking about the world that we all find ourselves living in and trying to overcome in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCreary\u2019s sonic diversity continues with \u201cEkleipsis.\u201d Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier collaborated with the McCreary brothers and the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir on \u201cBlack Box\u201d to create a work of dissonant majesty. The composer improvised his way through the initial stages of \u201cPray for a Storm,\u201d his high-energy collaboration with famed drummer Stewart Copeland.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s all go into your studio with nothing,\u201d McCreary recalls telling the irrepressible percussionist. \u201cI\u2019m not even going to bring an idea. We\u2019ll plug in our instruments, set the mics up and play. I want to capture your ideas and your energy, then shape it into a song based on the pieces that I get.\u201d <\/p>\n
McCreary sees new endeavors as a learning experience. He meets his collaborators in the way they like to work. He was awed while writing with Guns N\u2019 Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith on the anthemic \u201cCool Kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cThose guys are true songsmiths,\u201d the composer declares. \u201cI think they\u2019re unrecognized as songwriters. They wrote for Ozzy Osbourne. They\u2019re focused on hammering down a riff until it works. We walked into a studio with a riff that Duff had written and walked out with this song that we brought Slash onto. We got that band experience [with them].\u201d<\/p>\n
McCreary is best known for scoring series like \u201cBattlestar Galactica,\u201d \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,\u201d along with movies such as \u201cGodzilla: King of the Monsters\u201d and the \u201cGod of War\u201d video game franchise. He gained entry into metal through a dinner with Anthrax guitarist and \u201cBattlestar\u201d fan Scott Ian two decades ago.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018I know you. You\u2019re a guy who loves Sepultura,\u2019\u201d Ian told him, invoking a musical link for the composer. Intrigued, McCreary listened to Sepultura\u2019s folk-infused Brazilian death metal and loved it. His metal journey began.<\/p>\n
Ever since, McCreary has been itching to dive into that arena. He has an important collaborator in that quest.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother\u2019s my secret weapon when it comes to rock,\u201d McCreary says. \u201cHis body of [rock] knowledge makes up for mine. Our emphasis is in a different place. He is a fantastic producer because he\u2019s got a really good radar for when things are useless, when a part of a song isn\u2019t pulling its weight. It\u2019s a very good influence to have someone like that. He\u2019s got a great lyrical sense and an incredible voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCreary says Brendan is often the driving force of their lyrical efforts, and \u201csometimes we co-write with other people. Claudio Sanchez wrote all the lyrics on \u2018Sweet Misery.\u2019 It just depends.\u201d<\/p>\n
The younger McCreary was the propelling wordsmith on \u201cOne Fine Day.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s about our experience as being in the Armenian diaspora and exploring what that means to us,\u201d McCreary elaborates. \u201cAll the songs are very personal, which is another thing that sets this record apart from the last record. Many of them were personal, but I also had a weird song about an automaton that fell in love.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mentored at USC by Elmer Bernstein, McCreary now leaps from \u201cGod of War\u201d themes to a Higgs boson rock musical and a roaring Singularity tour that hits L.A. on Sept. 17.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Before he jammed with rock icons, McCreary was mentored by the late, iconic Elmer Bernstein for nearly the last decade of his life. The burgeoning young composer organized Bernstein\u2019s music archives, sat in on recording sessions and audited his senior-level classes for three years while studying at the Thornton School of Music at USC. McCreary says that Bernstein \u201creally set me on the path that I am now on, not because I learned how to orchestrate or how to write music from him. But he showed me the life that I could envision myself having when I was 15 or 16, that crucial time when you\u2019re really setting the rudder for where you\u2019re going to go in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
That rudder has steered him to many shores. McCreary has been co-writing the musical \u201cParticle Fever\u201d with Zoe Sarnak (\u201cGalileo).\u201d Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony winner David Henry Hwang (\u201cM. Butterfly)\u201d wrote the book, and Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (\u201cSuffs\u201d) is its director. It is based on the documentary of the same name about the discovery of the Higgs boson \u2014 the \u201cGod particle\u201d \u2014 at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. It will debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a really kick-ass, earnest rock musical about a really ambitious discovery,\u201d McCreary says. \u201cMy hope is that it actually has some of the swagger and fun that people found in \u2018Hamilton,\u2019 which also was a very dry subject that you learned about in eighth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old composer exudes an infectiously upbeat energy. He loves challenges and says he learned that charisma and charm are valuable assets to get in the door to prove one\u2019s talents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m wired to be very positive and collaborative,\u201d he concedes. \u201cBut I got so oppressively excited in my 20s that I started annoying people. My lesson was walk it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
His creative energy continues unabated. He\u2019s even scored shorts for filmmakers he met through Twitter. (\u201cI\u2019m down to work.\u201d) He has been blogging about his musical life for 20 years for a core group of followers. (\u201cIn hindsight, if Jerry Goldsmith had done that in the \u201880s, my God, my life would be different.\u201d)<\/p>\n
McCreary started as a high school keyboardist, then found the accordion in college, an instrument that gave him greater stage motion and which he later used to great effect in his music for the \u201cOutlander\u201d series. He loves to headbang while playing the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument he picked up in 2010 and later employed in the \u201cBlack Sails\u201d show and \u201cGod of War: Ragnarok\u201d video game. He learned guitar to play rhythm during his 2025 shows.<\/p>\n
Those riffs will be on display at the Wacken Open Air festival on Friday and during McCreary\u2019s eight-date September \u201cSingularity\u201d tour of the West Coast that hits L.A. on Sept. 17. McCreary has performed his symphonic scores in Europe and America with orchestras, but now he also loves to rock out (loud).<\/p>\n
A big secret of the ambitious McCreary\u2019s success harks back to lessons of simplicity that Bernstein taught him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe giant theme that I wrote for \u2018God of War\u2019 can be played with one finger on a piano,\u201d McCreary reveals. \u201cThat is the thing that it boils down to, and that is what I listen for in music. Most of the time it means there\u2019s a melody in there that sticks with you, and it doesn\u2019t matter how well it is produced or how epic it is or how loud it is. A good song is a good song is a good song, and it really doesn\u2019t matter how good a band performs. If the song is good, it will connect with people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary has taken a reverse road to symphonic rock. Prog rockers have traditionally integrated symphonic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":964390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[142680,1582,276,51251,387558,15163,49755,2961,2252,224,5337,387557,975,300223,983,86791,19514,17823,131,1628],"class_list":["post-964389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bernstein","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-composer","tag-ekleipsis","tag-god","tag-instrument","tag-la","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-mccreary","tag-music","tag-riff","tag-rock","tag-singularity","tag-song","tag-thing","tag-war","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116997151283374161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/964390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}