GAME ART: ANDREW NORMAN'S GRAN TURISMO (2004)
In 2004, Andrew Norman wrote a score for violin octet inspired by watching his roommates playing the car racing simulation Gran Turismo on their Sony PlayStations. The work is available here. As Norman writes,
Rewind my life a bit and you might find a particular week in 2003 when I was researching the art of Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla (right) for a term paper, watching my roommates play a car racing video game called Gran Turismo, and thinking about the legacy of Baroque string virtuosity as a point of departure for my next project. It didn’t take long before I felt the resonances between these different activities, and it was out of their unexpected convergence that this piece was born.
Below, A Far Cry octet performs the score:
Andrew Norman (born October 31, 1979) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Norman studied composition at the University of Southern California and Yale University. Much of his music is influenced by architecture, in which he has had a lifelong interest. He was composer-in-residence for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project from 2011 to 2013.Among his notable works are the 2004 Gran Turismo for violin octet, the 2010 The Companion Guide to Rome for string trio, the 2013 symphony Play, the 2015 fantasy for piano and orchestra Split, and his opera A Trip to the Moon.
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