Daniel Alcheh Creates Greek-inspired Score For Star-studded Indie "the Trouble With Bliss"

March 28, 2012 - PRLog -- Award-winning film composer and orchestrator Daniel Alcheh provides a modern Greek-inspired folk score for Michael Knowles' newly released comedy-drama, The Trouble With Bliss, winner of Best Picture at the San Diego Film Festival. Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel East Fifth Bliss by Douglas Light,  The Trouble With Bliss stars Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels), Peter Fonda (Easy Rider), Brie Larson (21 Jump Street), Chris Messina (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Brad William Henke (Justified). The Trouble With Bliss is now showing in select theaters and available on iTunes and Video On Demand.

For his score to The Trouble With Bliss, Alcheh employs traditional and contemporary instrumentation including bouzouki, accordion, clarinet, mandolin, saz, violin, guitars and strings performed by world-class musicians and conducted by Alcheh. Additionally, the classically-trained composer wrote and arranged original songs featuring vocals by celebrated Greek artists Sofia Papazoglou, Vasilis Lekkas and Pantelis Thalassinos with lyrics by Maria Papadaki. The songs will appear on the upcoming soundtrack release.

The Trouble With Bliss tells the story of 35-year-old Morris Bliss (Michael C. Hall), who is clamped firmly in the jaws of New York City inertia. He wants to travel but has no money; he needs a job but has no prospects, and he still shares an apartment with his widowed father (Peter Fonda), who treats Morris with a mix of disdain and exasperation. When he finds himself juggling a bizarre relationship with the sexually precocious 18-year-old daughter (Brie Larson) of a former classmate (Brad William Henke) and the advances of his very forward neighbor (Lucy Liu), Morris begins to realize that even though his life is unraveling, it's also opening up in ways that are long overdue.

"In all my years of writing I had composed music of many cultures, but I never had the opportunity to write a Greek-sounding score," says Alcheh. "The director did not know this when I was hired, but as it turns out my family from my father's side is from Thessaloniki, Greece. It was a great pleasure to connect with my ancestry."

Alcheh began playing the piano at age seven, and was seriously pursuing the path of a composer by his teens. He completed both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in composition at The Music Academy at Tel-Aviv University, completing his thesis as a visiting scholar at Chicago's Northwestern University, by invitation of the Music Technology Department. While still a student, Alcheh's career in film music began as a soundtrack producer for Dover Kosashvili's feature Late Marriage, one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Films of 2002 and Newsweek's Top 15 Films of 2002. Alcheh's score for the award-winning horror-comedy feature The Man Who Collected Food was named "The Discovery of 2011" by AmericanMusicPreservation.com and selected among the "Top 10 Film Scores of 2011" by AintItCoolNews.com. Other recent film and television scores include the Chinese features Son of Stars and Together In Guangzhou (the official 2010 Asian Olympic Games film) and Iris Bahr's HDNet comedy series, Svetlana. Simultaneously with his passion for film scoring, Alcheh is an accomplished concert composer who is currently working on several American and European commissions for 2012.

For more information on Daniel Alcheh, visit: www.danielalcheh.com.