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David Minasian | |
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| Born | David Scott Minasian Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
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| Years active | 1979–present |
| Labels | Golden Robot Records |
| Website | davidminasian |
David Minasian is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and a musician, singer, and songwriter. Since the 1980s, he has worked for motion picture production companies in Los Angeles as a freelance producer and director. In addition to his work on music videos and concert films for artists including Three Dog Night; Camel, an English progressive rock band; Justin Hayward, the Moody Blues frontman, and Alan Parsons. Minasian has produced and directed over 60 documentary films [1] including The Passion Behind the Passion, a documentary filmed behind the scenes, on location in Rome about the making of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ . [2] Minasian is also a classically trained pianist. His symphonic rock album Random Acts of Beauty came out in 2010 featuring a guest appearance on the album's 12 minute opening track "Masquerade" by Andrew Latimer, the English guitarist from Camel. [3]
Minasian began playing classical style piano at the age of five and by the age of fifteen was asked to turn professional. Instead he pursued a career in film production. After graduating with honors with a degree in film and television from California State University, Northridge in Los Angeles, Minasian worked freelance for various production companies in the Los Angeles area as a producer, director, writer, editor, cinematographer, and composer. In between producing documentaries, Minasian recorded a symphonic rock album titled Tales of Heroes and Lovers which was released independently in 1984. [4] On the album, Minasian plays piano and keyboards with a band. He provides lead vocals and. Six of the album's nine tracks were written or co-written by Minasian. [5] A comedic music video was produced for the album's intended single "It's Driving Me Crazy" and it received airplay on MTV which led to him being asked by Three Dog Night to write and direct a video for their song "A Shot in the Dark". In 1996, he recorded a second symphonic rock album titled It's Not Too Late with singer William Drews. In 1997, Minasian began an association with Camel Productions, the production company owned by Camel.
Three of the nine concert and documentary DVDs released by Camel Productions are Coming of Age, Curriculum Vitae, the Opening Farewell and In from the Cold. [6] In 1998, while working as a second unit director on The Joyriders (1999) starring Oscar winner Martin Landau and Kris Kristofferson, Minasian composed the film's main theme titled "So Far from Home". [7] The song was released as the single from the soundtrack album by EMI in 2000. In 2009, he started recording a symphonic rock album with the encouragement and participation of Camel's Andrew Latimer. Random Acts of Beauty was released on October 5, 2010 by ProgRock Records [8] and David Minasian is featured on piano, keyboards, bass and lead vocals along with his son Justin Minasian on guitar. Six of the album's seven tracks are composed by David while the seventh, a 14 minute instrumental titled "Frozen in Time", is a joint composition by David and Justin. [9] Latimer appears on the track "Masquerade" on guitar and vocals and is the first recording in eight years by Latimer after his recovery from a bone-marrow transplant. [10]
In 2013, David Minasian began recording a follow-up album to Random Acts of Beauty. It was interrupted when he was contracted to produce and direct a solo concert DVD for Justin Hayward from the Moody Blues. [11] Recorded at Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta on August 17, the DVD, Spirits... Live (2014), features a concert and a documentary of Hayward's 2013 tour, directed by Minasian. [12] After its release by Eagle Rock/Universal in the fall of 2014, the DVD went to No. 2 on the Billboard Music Video chart [13] and was broadcast on PBS. [14] A concert DVD filmed in Clearwater, Florida titled Watching and Waiting, [15] and The Story Behind Nights in White Satin , a documentary about Hayward's 1967 composition, followed. Both featured Hayward and Minasian. [16] In Spring 2016, another Hayward release from David Minasian, [17] Live in Concert at The Capitol Theatre , came out. The DVD has the first live performance of "You Can Never Go Home" from the 1971 Every Good Boy Deserves Favour LP. [18] Also featured was a bonus studio recording of a new song titled "The Wind of Heaven", a joint composition between Minasian and Hayward. Intended as the main theme for a forthcoming motion picture, the song, with a video directed by Minasian, was released ahead of schedule on the DVD to coincide with Hayward's 2016 US solo tour. [19]
In 2019, Minasian released a follow-up album to Random Acts of Beauty called The Sound of Dreams which contained composition and performance contributions from a host of progressive rock icons including Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues), Steve Hackett (Genesis), Annie Haslam (Renaissance), Billy Sherwood (Yes) and PJ Olsson (The Alan Parsons Live Project). [20] Also in 2019, he signed to Golden Robot Records (headed up by Mark Alexander-Erber and Derek Shulman, the former lead singer with Gentle Giant and a Polygram Records executive). The album was released along with a remastered version of Random Acts of Beauty. [21] A remake of "So Far From Home" featuring Olsson as guest vocalist was released as a single along with a video. [22]
Another track from the album, "The Sound of Dreams (Third Movement)" featuring guitarist Steve Hackett was released as a follow up single and received nearly 250,000 hits on Spotify nearly overnight. [23] In 2019, Minasian went to Europe and the Middle East to record The Alan Parsons Live Project in concert. More than twenty cameras were used at each of the venues and two shows were released in 2020 on Blu-Ray and DVD titled The NeverEnding Show: Live In the Netherlands and One Note Symphony: Live In Tel Aviv . [24] A music video for a studio recording, also titled The NeverEnding Show was produced by Minasian along with Trinity Houston for IM3 Global Entertainment and Frontiers Records, an Italian label. [25] In 2021, a ‘greatest hits’ album, Random Dreams: The Very Best of David Minasian came out on vinyl. [26] In the summer of 2022, a song titled "I Won’t Be Led Astray," written by Minasian in addition to Alan Parsons and Kim Bullard of the Elton John Band and featuring David Pack of Ambrosia and Joe Bonamassa, was released as a single from Parsons’ latest album From The New World as well as a music video produced and directed by Minasian and Houston. [27]
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