Mr. Kaska, I want to thank you for the exemplary work you did on Intrada's new "Red House" recording. I'm sure you love Dr. Rozsa's music as much as I do, and this project is fantastic. Everything- performance, sound, booklet- WOW!!!!! I am very grateful for this release and hope that you will be doing more in the future! God Bless!
If his tone poems (on Denouemont Records) are anything to go by, he is a fine craftsman. Too bad he's often wasting his talents in trying to turn Hans Zimmer's keyboard samples into music.
Just heard his score for the film "THE WAR OF THE VERDEE" and it is excellent. Can someone give me more info on Kaska? He is associated with Zimmer? how dreadful!!
I remember going to 3 concerts at the Royal College of Music in London over the years - one had John Williams conducting his film work and the other two concerts had Michael Kamen conducting various suites from his scores and Leonard Slatkin conducting his New Moon/Old Moon piece and Mr Holland's Opus, with Kamen in the audience for that one. Anyway, I think it was during the Williams concert that some young members of the RCM conducted their original works and one of them was the Millenium fanfare by Kaska. IT BLEW ME AWAY!!!! It was the best piece of music I had heard that sounded in the same Williams-verse. It was Talgorn-like in it's brilliance. Years passed by and I didn't hear much about Kaska during that time. He worked on the Varese SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE Debney CD, reconstructing a lot of that score when it seemed the original tapes were lost forever. I also (depressingly) started to see his name on various Zimmer scores, doing arrangements and orchestration. Then, a thread here a few years ago alerted me to the two Denoument CD's by him (Tone Poems and Chamber Works) and they are really good. I also met and chatted to him at Ubeda in Spain a few years back at the Final Night party (I think it was the Broughton one) and he seemed like a pleasant fellow. He's still relatively young (42) and I hope his major successes and film works are ahead of him.
I remember going to 3 concerts at the Royal College of Music in London over the years - one had John Williams conducting his film work and the other two concerts had Michael Kamen conducting various suites from his scores and Leonard Slatkin conducting his New Moon/Old Moon piece and Mr Holland's Opus, with Kamen in the audience for that one. Anyway, I think it was during the Williams concert that some young members of the RCM conducted their original works and one of them was the Millenium fanfare by Kaska. IT BLEW ME AWAY!!!! It was the best piece of music I had heard that sounded in the same Williams-verse. It was Talgorn-like in it's brilliance. Years passed by and I didn't hear much about Kaska during that time. He worked on the Varese SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE Debney CD, reconstructing a lot of that score when it seemed the original tapes were lost forever. I also (depressingly) started to see his name on various Zimmer scores, doing arrangements and orchestration. Then, a thread here a few years ago alerted me to the two Denoument CD's by him (Tone Poems and Chamber Works) and they are really good. I also met and chatted to him at Ubeda in Spain a few years back at the Final Night party (I think it was the Broughton one) and he seemed like a pleasant fellow. He's still relatively young (42) and I hope his major successes and film works are ahead of him.
I clearly remember James Shearman's METROPOLIS (which is terrific) from that june 1996 concert. Don't remember Kaska. I have to check my program.
I will bow to your greater memory governor. I reckon Metropolis was the piece that sounded like amazing Williams. I have confused it down the years with Kaska! Is that Shearman piece available on CD, do you know?
Thanks to the recent heads up from RM Eastman about his score to War Of The Vendee, it got me digging out my old Kaska CD's and hoovering up anything I'd missed previously. Anyone wanting to visit the wonderful world of Kaska, so far, his released work consists of...
Harp Concerto (plus 3 songs for Mezzo-Soprano/Orch), together with John Williams' Essay for Strings and Trumpet Concerto on Denouement Records.
4 separate pieces for Brass/Timpani/Organ on Heroic Sounds (Hymn of Praise is sublime) also on Denouement.
Chamber Works (mainly Kaska) and Tone Poems (all Kaska), two separate CD's on, you guessed it, Denouement Records.
He also has two pieces on the Naxos Majestic Journey CD (original works for Euphonium and Orch). This arrived yesterday and apart from the Kaska tracks (which are great and yes, remind me of John Williams...Ballade could be labelled his Princess Leia's Theme/Love Theme from Superman tribute) also have a truly gorgeous track called Peace by John Golland and a lengthy work by Vladimir Cosma (Euphonium Concerto) which starts out like a Sci-Fi thriller and settles down to a Spanish Revolution/Zorro type work with added CE3K mothership. The Euphonium sounds to me like a tuba/trumpet/bugle hybrid, but emits some lovely warm sounds and has great range. This purchase was well worth the fiver it cost me
The only film-y stuff he's had released seems to be his War of the Vendee disc and the additional music he wrote for the video game Lair (mainly John Debney on that La La Land release). If anyone knows of anything he composed that has been released and I missed, please add it here. Cheers!
There is a CD called New England Landscapes, which includes Prelude for Piano and Chamber Orchestra by Kaska, together with works by Copland, Jarrett and Piston. It was released by Denouement some years ago but seems to be unavailable in most places.
Just heard his score for the film "THE WAR OF THE VERDEE" and it is excellent. Can someone give me more info on Kaska? He is associated with Zimmer? how dreadful!!
Mr. Kaska a fan of Miklos Rozsa??
I have been playing "TWOTV" a lot lately and I have to reiterate that is just a superb film score. The main theme is just gorgeous as is the entire score. Wow, this came out of nowhere?
Just grab this CD blindly, you will not regret it. Fans of John Williams will especially love Kaska's music!!
I'm a bit puzzled that more listeners are not shouting out the brilliance of Kaska's "THE WAR OF THE VENDEE". One of the best film scores have heard in ages!
Kevin Kaska has a brand new website: www.kevinkaska.com It has a boatload of wonderful musical excerpts, including concert pieces that must have been recorded professionally but are as yet sadly unreleased. Check out the excerpts from "Consider my Cat Jeoffrey Suite" and the "Lion and the Hare Suite." Just glorious! I truly hope these find their way onto a cd soon.
Kevin Kaska also worked on the John Williams SUPERMAN re-recording with the RSNO that Varese did in 1998. He brought some great depth and nuance to that recording's orchestration; which I still enjoy to this day and is a fresh sounding counterpart to the classic original.
I'm a bit puzzled that more listeners are not shouting out the brilliance of Kaska's "THE WAR OF THE VENDEE". One of the best film scores have heard in ages!
Just listened to some samples.Very impressive and always kind a strange that those guys ( like Erwann Kermorvant, Abel Korzeniowski etc.)are not getting any of the big assignments. Maybe they are just not in the right spot of time and just too " yesterday/ old school" for most of the younger filmmakers who are following a more "sound / Braaam " driven path like Johanson..Holkenbrog etc.
Or maybe its their names...just too hard to pronounce
(surely Debney has put in a good word for him to get his own episode of "The Orville"...)
After reading Erik (Woods) go nuts about how good Inferno was, I put it on to hear what the fuss was all about. I thought it was a decent Williams approximation, but it struggled with some nearly incoherent "overwriting" at times. Needlessly busy.
(surely Debney has put in a good word for him to get his own episode of "The Orville"...)
After reading Erik (Woods) go nuts about how good Inferno was, I put it on to hear what the fuss was all about. I thought it was a decent Williams approximation, but it struggled with some nearly incoherent "overwriting" at times. Needlessly busy.
I think it's brilliant and I love that it has some Goldsmith influences as well (thinking Damnation Alley).
After reading Erik (Woods) go nuts about how good Inferno was, I put it on to hear what the fuss was all about. I thought it was a decent Williams approximation, but it struggled with some nearly incoherent "overwriting" at times. Needlessly busy.
We should just refer to you as Emperor Joseph II from now on.
