This left me with a little more than two weeks to prepare. The problem was that I didn't have a book, meaning that I also didn't have any musical ideas whatsoever. I remembered that Daniyar was open to partnering on SoundBook, so I wrote to him once again. Telling him that there was an opportunity to do SoundBook at Starbucks, we began searching for the right book.
At first, I received a list of non-fiction business books, which is MIF's specialty. While I always love a little challenge and the prospect of trying to compose an accompaniment for a guide on how to build a perfect business seemed like one indeed, I really wanted the first SoundBook episode to be tied to a story. Daniyar pointed me towards MIF.Prose and, after spending a good hour and a half looking through every single novel, I chose two.
Unable to decide which story to go with, I asked for Daniyar's opinion: it turned out that he didn't have any of them and therefore sent me the ones he had. The research process resumed once again, with me settling for Marion Poschmann's novel,
The Pine Islands, which unravels the tale of Gilbert Silvester and his spontaneous trip to Japan after having a dream that his wife cheated on him. While there, he unintentionally saves a young man from jumping in front of a train, and the two continue on the journey together.
The book was filled with descriptions of Japan's scenery, which I reckoned was ideal for my music to fit in. Daniyar kindly gave me the novel and gifted another book to go with it too. As everything was in place, I began reading and brainstorming about the musical accompaniment. Like in most projects, as soon as one step is passed and the problem is solved, the next one comes up right after — the conductor I agreed to do the event with informed me he couldn't make it on June 1st… even though I had already pushed back the starting dates just to adjust to his schedule.
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