February 26, 2020 – What exactly was Dan Brown, of the Da Vinci Code fame, recording during spring last year in Zagreb?
While he was in Zagreb in March of 2019, he was quite secretive about the whole project, but now it has been made public. Dan Brown has written his first children’s book, titled Wild Symphony, illustrated by Susan Batori (a world-renowned illustrator), filled with stories about Maestro Mouse and his musical animal friends. To accompany the stories, Dan Brown has also written short musical numbers. The fact that he’s a talented musician, who had a musical career before the literary career is not widely known, but he’s turning back to it now.
And then, when it came to the actual recording of the score which will be included in the application accompanying the book, Bob Lord, the director of the Parma Recordings company suggested the Zagreb Festival Orchestra as the solution. They have worked with the Croatian musicians before, and have received international awards for those recordings, so it’s obvious why they’d want to come back.
The Zagreb team who worked on Brown’s score were: Miran Vaupotić as a conductor, Krešimir Seletković as the producer and Tin Matijević as the orchestra manager. The Wild Symphony is to be published in Croatia in September, by VBZ, and a free application will be available along with the “book like you’ve never heard before”. The app will recognize the chapter you’re reading and start the music which goes with that chapter.
The world premiere of the project was supposed to happen during the fall in Shanghai, but that might not happen because of the coronavirus. In that case, the spectacle might take place in Zagreb, where the plan was for the European premiere to take place, with the Zagreb Filharmony participating.
