After nearly five years in development and production, boasting an orchestral line-up that any major movie would relish and hosting a galaxy of West End stars, the music and literary spectacular, Bush Tales has been launched in to the public domain.
For its creator, author and composer Matthew R Jameson, Bush Tales has been a labour of love as well as an artistic and financial challenge.
Bush Tales is a unique and contemporary collection of stories rooted from the legends and folk lore of Africa aimed at families with children of all ages.
In a fun, quirky and musical way we learn how the Baboons got their red rumps, the Giraffe its long neck, how the Meerkats became united and many more madcap adventures and evolutionary conundrums of animal kind.
In the first series of 12 stories, Bush Tales introduces a great family of characters such as Hustler the Meerkat, Masavi the Lion and Bont the Baboon to name but a few.
Every tale has been cleverly crafted in lyric form and set to an original musical score to create a powerful and innovative way of telling the stories.
The album is proving to be a groundbreaking soundtrack with outstanding calibre and credentials. Matt has co-produced and co-orchestrated with Chris Walker who has been associated with many of the West End greats such as My Fair Lady, Oliver and Sondheim and has provided orchestrations for movies such as Shirley Valentine and Impromptu.
The album was produced at Angel Studios, London with the ‘Best of British’ musical talent from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and LSO fixed by Maurice Cambridge.
Pippa Ailion, who is casting director for Disney Theatrical and shows such as Wicked, Billy Elliot and We Will Rock You has worked with Matt to cast a galaxy of West End stars to perform on the album.
The soundtrack is packed with big scores and rich in musical styles including classical, big band, Nashville, a Copland hoe-down, a Western ‘Ennio Morricone’ style score, Irish jamboree and even a choral track performed by the Wells Cathedral Chapel Choir.
“I wanted the music to be at the heart of Bush Tales, the driver of the story telling but in a contemporary and intelligent way.” says Matt.
“As a parent I was fed-up of listening to nasty, synthetically produced music for my kids, especially in the car where there is no escape! Children enjoy being exposed to quality music and storytelling, so do the parents! I hope this introduces a new generation of children to a range of musical styles and new, fun stories.”
There are plans to record and release a classical suite already scored.
The album is accompanied by 12 beautifully illustrated books. It has taken 2 years to produce the 300 illustrations and 12 original oil paintings for the first series.
The CD album comes with a DVD of the stories in an automated musical storybook form featuring all of the illustrations and it will be available as an iPhone/iPad app and game.
The whole package of Books and CD/DVD can be bough as a collectible box set.
Matt first conceived the idea for Bush Tales in 1999 whilst visiting family in Zimbabwe.
One moonlit evening he was enchanted by an old Mashona storyteller who comically plucked a single guitar string and chanted the African tales of animal kind; one end of the string was tied round his front tooth and the other his big toe.
Inspired by his twanging companion, Matt returned home to the UK and for five years crafted more than 30 new tales set to original scores. In 2008 founded Zorilla Entertainment and continued production. Bush Tales will be Matt’s first work to come into the public domain both as composer and author.
