Kurt Bestor: composing a life.

• Author: Beers, Heather

Ever thought about writing your autobiography? Would you begin somewhere with your childhood, or would you start with last week and work backward? Should you skip over the ugly spots, or let it all hang out, expose style? Sound daunting? Now try putting it to music.

That's what internationally renowned composer and performer Kurt Bestor is hunkered down to do. At a point in his life when he's composed more than 30 film scores and recorded 18 or 19 CDs (Bestor confesses he doesn't keep track), he's ready to compose the most personal of all his works: the score to his life.

"This next album, it'll be untitled, an autobiographical album," says Bestor. And how does one go about composing one's own story? "You go on a journey. You make note of the landmarks you've passed. Some of those landmarks are happy, some are pretty devastating things. I just decided to put a musical voice to all of them," he says.

Putting a musical voice to things is something Bestor has done since childhood. "I've always had a passion for music, ever since I was a little kid. Sounds to me are musical, whether it's busy traffic in New York or a serene beach in California. By junior high, that passion morphed into a curiosity about how to translate what the world sang, into music," says Bestor.

Bestor says curiosity turned to necessity when he decided to try making a living at his music. "I dream of having lived in the day when I could find a wealthy [patron] like King Leopold who paid for Mozart to write," he says, only half-jokingly. "But I've finally realized that if all I have is a stack of paid bills when I'm done with my life, I'll be dissatisfied. While I'm still taking care of the bills, I'm definitely stopping to 'compose the roses,'" says Bestor.

His fans would say...