Weezer — Hurley

This is the credit people don't expect when they look at my portfolio. String arrangements and conducting for Weezer — one of the biggest rock bands of the last thirty years — on their eighth studio album, Hurley. The strings were recorded at Luscar Studios at the Banff Centre.

Rivers Cuomo's songs on this record required orchestral arrangements that could sit inside a power-pop production without overwhelming it — strings that added emotional weight and cinematic sweep while still letting the guitars and vocals drive. It was a masterclass in restraint and in understanding how acoustic instruments function inside dense, compressed rock mixes.

The album debuted at #6 on the Billboard 200. Other collaborators on the record included Michael Cera, Ryan Adams, and Dan Wilson. For me, it was a formative experience in working at major commercial scale — the budgets, the timelines, the label expectations — and it proved that the skills I'd built in indie and art-film contexts could translate to the biggest stages in the industry.