Aside from my writing, I’ve also done work composing music for a few film projects over the years. While doing so I came to realize that I loved the process, and that mixing images with my music felt like a really good fit. So I recorded an album that would act as a kind of portfolio for potential film-score/documentary work. Below are two tracks from that album which I thought might be of interest to Anansi readers.

What You Do Not Understand

The first I composed while I was writing Serafim & Claire. I was living in Brittany at the time, housesitting a white mansion on a hill with a massive bit of land that I was left to take care of. I set up my writing desk right in front of this unloved grand piano. It hadn’t been tuned in years, and I didn’t have the money to pay to do it myself, so I found a wrench that sort of fit the piano pins and tuned it as best I could (which wasn’t fantastic, let me tell you). It was while steeped in the story of Serafim & Claire that I wrote the song.

Last Train

Train sounds create all the percussion in this song. It’s sort of an era piece. I think there are elements from the story that definitely come through in the music here.

Serafim & Claire was published today. Get it on our website or at your favourite bookstore.

You can buy Mark Lavorato’s album In Autumn on iTunes or at marklavorato.com.

Read what Mark has to say about stealing moments, fielding death threats, and writing about what you don’t know in his blog post Learning how to steal.