Captain Phil welcomes composer Craig Safan (https://craigsafan.com/) to discuss his new album “L . A . Ex”, Craig's love letter to Los Angeles, in the 3 pm hour then, in the 4 pm hour he welcomes Sacha Puttnam (https://www.mayamusic.co.uk/sacha-puttnam) and his father Lord David Puttnam (https://www.davidputtnam.com/) to talk about Sacha's new album, "Spirit of Cinema"

Craig Safan
Partial film credits:
Stand And Deliver, The Last Starfighter, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
Rough Magic: Music Inspired by Paleolithic Cave Paintings, Sirens: Music Inspired by Homer's Odyssey

Partial Television Credits:
Cheers (270 episodes, 1982-1993), The Twilight Zone(1986), Life Goes on

Sacha Puttman Partial Credits:
Live Music Toured with Bush, Muse, and Moby
Partial Film Credits: Love, Rebekah, Women's Day, Black and Blue, Golos: Ukrainian Voices, The War You Don't See, We Are the People We've Been Waiting For, The Keeper

Lord David Puttnam Partial Credits as producer or Executive producer:
War of the Buttons, Memphis Belle, The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Foxes, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, Lisztomania, Stardust, The Final Programme, The Pied Piper

Craig Safan (https://craigsafan.com/)
L.A. Ex: The Los Angeles That Was
Composer’s Notes – by Craig Safan / Album Notes by Randall D. Larson
I’ve always boomeranged back to L.A. It has a deep hold on me. My father was born here as was I. I’ve lived in Boston, New York, London; but L.A. is home. “L.A. Ex” is my musical impression of growing up in Los Angeles, parts of which no longer exist. Musical memories and a resonance with the past guided my composition. – Craig Safan
With his third original music album, veteran film composer Craig Safan (TV’s CHEERS, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, SON OF THE MORNING STAR, STAND AND DELIVER) explores his memories of growing up in Los Angeles with a musical celebration of life in the City of Angels. “I call this album L.A. EX, which obviously is a play on the airport, but also because a lot of what I wrote are things that now exist only in my memory,” Safan explains. Through a mix of digital samples and live musicians playing real instruments, Safan creates sonic expressions of sounds, feelings, and images of people, places, and things in Los Angeles and its environs that have resonated in remembrance for a lifetime.

“L.A. is a city that leaves you alone,” says Safan. “It doesn’t stimulate you as literally as maybe London or New York, two other cities I’ve actually lived in, do. L.A. is very open, even if you’re an apartment dweller you usually have a pool or a back yard. It’s a very low-key, relaxed city, and yet underneath it there’s this great creative energy. There’s all kinds of people in a million different fields, a lot of really interesting and smart people, and to me it’s an endlessly interesting city.”

The tracks of this album are arranged essentially from East to West, with a variety of multicolored sounds evoking the flavors of streets, neighborhoods, parks, clubs, beaches, and more that have left resonating imprints on heart and mind. Craig Safan has reflected those imprints through an array of musical impressions, each one unique, each one a beguiling sonic landscape.
In L.A. EX, images become sound, memories become rhythm, thoughts become reactions that are reflected in music. Color and chrome, sand and surf, urban rock clubs and jazz joints, the joyful pizzaz of amusement parks and much more as we journey from sun-warmed beaches to moonlit mountaintop views and imaginary interactions. From ragtime and scat to modern jazz and psychedelica, let your mind journey through the musical memories of the L.A. that was.
- Randall D. Larson

Emmy-nominated and eight-time ASCAP award-winning composer Craig Safan has scored feature films, television, and documentaries as well as having three albums of his own music released. He has been commissioned to compose for ballet as well as for live performance of silent films and was given the Poledouris Film Music Legend Award at the International Film Music Festival in Cordoba, Spain. Safan’s music has been released on over fifty albums, most recently “L . A . Ex”, Craig's love letter to Los Angeles, released on Notefornote Music.

Safan has composed the scores for the classic “The Last Starfighter”, the iconic “Nightmare on Elm Street IV”, as well such diverse films as “Stand and Deliver”, “Mr. Wrong”, “Remo Williams”, “The Legend of Billie Jean”, “Warning Sign”, “Fade to Black”, and “Major Payne”.
For television Safan composed the music for the multi Emmy-winning series “Cheers” plus “Amazing Stories”, “The New Twilight Zone”, and “Tales from the Crypt” as well as the Emmy-winning mini-series “Son of the Morning Star” and “Mission of the Shark”. Safan also scored the top-selling National Geographic documentary “Secrets of the Titanic” and the Oscar-nominated documentary “The California Reich”.

Safan began his musical career while still in college arranging albums for Warner Brothers Records. He was awarded both the Senior Prize in Music as well as the Senior Prize in Drama and received the Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to pursue his music work in Europe.

Cinema has always been a part of Sacha Puttnam’s life, his dad being the iconic and multi-award winning producer David Puttnam whose films have won 10 Oscars and 25 BAFTAS. Living, breathing and absorbing a world where he was surround by filmmakers, illustrious composers and music producers such as Mark Knopfler, Michael Kamen and George Fenton Sacha’s obvious aptitude for music flourished. Having been mentored by the likes of legendary film composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner) and Quincy Jones (Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis), Sacha studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and then Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory where he conducted Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony at the Bolshoi Hall on Christmas Day, 1991.

Sacha has scored over 30 films with prestigious directors including Robert Lepage and John Pilger.
For long term collaborator director John Drydon Sacha created the sound-tracks to several multi-award winning BBC Radio 4 dramas such as A Suitable Boy and Bleak House. Along with a successful career in classical composition and film, Sacha was the long-standing keys and sometimes bass player for the multi-platinum selling band Bush and his best friend, front man Gavin Rossdale, headlining Woodstock in 1999 to 250,000 fans. Sacha has written and arranged for, and collaborated with, numerous big names in the pop and rock world, including Sia, Marcela Detroit (of Shakespeare’s Sister fame) Reef, Regina Spektor, and Andy Taylor. He released an album in 2005 entitled Remas-terpiece on EMI Classics and has written for and featured on hundreds of other records in-cluding favourites on Café Del Mar.

"I’m thrilled to share my musical tributes to the iconic film scores I grew up around. I know the melodies will resonate with many and I hope that bringing the orchestra to the elec-tronic will enable many more to get to know and love them,” Says Sacha. “This album has allowed me to thank and honour [the] great musicians who generously gave their time and shared their knowledge, inspiring my path as a composer.”

You could say Sacha was destined to create Spirit of Cinema, with his background in film and sensitive ear his versions of these classic film score pieces for piano and orchestra not only do the originals justice, but bring a fresh new perspective to these varied genres of music.
https://www.mayamusic.co.uk/sacha-puttnam

Sacha Puttnam trained at the Moscow ‘Tchaikovsky’ Conservatory (Conducting and Composition) and Berklee College of Music. Having completed his classical and jazz training he went on to tour the world with Bush. His comprehensive experience and knowledge in all music genres shows in his imaginative and sensitive scoring of over thirty films (working with directors including John Pilger, Robert le Page, Andrea Arnold and John Dryden), numerous radio dramas, podcasts and adverts, as well as his re-working of classic film and his original, intimate piano and full orchestral compositions. Sacha has written and arranged for some of the pop and rock world’s biggest names, scoring multi-platinum albums, and has worked with Moscow, Hallé, and London Studio Orchestras

Most recently Sacha scored Breuer’s Bohemia, a documentary feature directed by James Crump about the Bauhaus designer and architect Marcel Breuer, a ten-part podcast documentary about the 1981 Pakistan Airlines hijack, and a two-part drama for BBC Radio 4, The Jungle Book set in modern day Mumbai.

He is currently working on two independent films, one a period drama set in Ireland, and the other a Hollywood quest filled adventure.
Sacha’s most recent album, Spirit of Cinema, was released in November 2020 with a podcast of the same name accompanying each track discussing the original pieces, his versions of them and the films they appeared in.