Pilatus is a Swiss mountain, associated with many legends of dragons. This piece by Steven Reineke tells the story of a group of adventurers who climb the mountain looking to slay the dragon. After a beautiful but difficult climb, they reach the dragon's lair. They battle the dragon, who kills all but one of the intruders. When the mortally wounded human begs for mercy, the dragon displays compassion, restoring all the adventurers to life and placing compassion and tolerance in their hearts, and the people thenceforth lead a happy and peaceful coexistence with the dragons of Pilatus.

I'm quite proud of this one. Not only did I play on this piece with my concert band, but I also recorded and mastered it. I recorded this on 14 mics, and then mixed it all down. There was some work balancing the levels from all of those, plus some EQ, phase alignment, and a bit of judicious use of a compressor (and don't tell the horn, but I fixed a couple of sour notes...). I was really excited when I finally got done with the mastering - it ended up with that John Williams-esque sound to it: the horns (especially at the end), the palpable percussion, and that rich and enveloping full ensemble sound that you can feel in your chest. I wasn't consciously going for that, but it still makes me grin every time I listen back to it.

Thumbnail attribution: Durian - Sintel, by David Revoy, CC-BY-3.0