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Today's Piano Puzzler

Jan 10, 2016
2 min read

The Piano Puzzler seems to be on hiatus, so the current contestant is from their archives.  Here's what I wrote the time before --


"This week's contestant is from just down the road -- Chris Willis from Santa Monica, California.  I didn't have a clue on the composer style -- and I think most people won't either.  Mr. Willis , it should be pointed out, is introduced as a film composer, so it is to his great credit that he got it, on his first guess.  As for the hidden song, I thought it was a film theme -- and sounds a lot like much of it -- but it's not that.  It's guessable, and easy enough to hear when you know it, but I didn't get it.  The contestant didn't at first, but on second performance he did.


"By the way, though host Fred Child doesn't ask about any of Chris Willis's film credits, so I checked them out.  It makes even more clear why he was able to guess the composer style.  Here's what written on the iMDB --


Christopher Willis composes the music to Disney's Mickey Mouse (2013), and co-writes the music to the Emmy Award-winning show Veep (2012). He has also (as an "additional music" composer) contributed to a number of major Hollywood movies, including The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012), X-Men: First Class (2011), Winnie the Pooh (2011), Shrek Forever After (2010) and Bedtime Stories (2008). He grew up in England and was a concert pianist, musicologist and concert composer before moving to California to pursue a film music career. He read music at the University of Cambridge and studied the piano at the Royal Academy of Music. Later he returned to Cambridge to write a PhD on the music of Domenico Scarlatti. His music has been played in the BBC Proms and on BBC Radio, and he has contributed a number of articles to scholarly journals and a chapter in the book Domenico Scarlatti Adventures."

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