Tag: Musical

Jo – The Little Women Musical

We are thrilled with the release of the beautiful London recording of Jo – The Little Women Musical. For three years, SoS has been working with composer Dan Redfeld on the new musical based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women. SoS has provided music preparation for multiple orchestral recording sessions in Los Angeles and London. Jason Poss was in the engineer’s booth as score reader and providing feedback during the initial orchestral and vocal recordings in Los Angeles.

With the song “Fly Away” already an internet sensation, the full album release is over 2 hours of music by Dan Redfeld, book and lyrics by Christina Harding and John Gabriel Koladziej. Jo features a mix of Broadway, West End, and international stars and a 29-piece orchestra recorded at Abbey Road Studios. The album is produced by five-time Grammy nominee and three-time Emmy winner Nigel Wright and Dan Redfeld.

The cast includes Tony Award winner and five-time Tony Award nominee Laura Benanti as Marmee March, two-time Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole as Aunt March, Olivier nominated West End and Broadway star Julian Ovenden as Father, Grammy Award nominated Christine Allado as Jo March, two-time Tony Award nominee Bob Gunton as Grandfather, West End star Kelly Mathieson as Meg March, TV star Sophie Pollono as Amy March, Eleanor Grant as Beth March, Rob Houchen as Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, Chris Mann as Professor Bhaer, Liam Tamne as John Brooke, Tobias Turley as Fred Vaughn, and Miyuki Miyagi as Sallie Gardiner.

For more information along with videos, audio, and links to purchase sheet music, to visit the Jo – The Little Women Musical website.

Snow White (2025) film poster

Snow White

Transcription of Songs Old and New

SoS’s latest Disney feature is Snow White; a musical with over a dozen songs featuring choirs and multiple characters that needed transcription to sheet music for localization. In addition, some songs had separate edits for the film’s soundtrack album, requiring review and sometimes completely different sheet music.

One of the highlights of the project was the inclusion of some of Disney’s earliest songs, like “Heigh Ho”. Our work provided the opportunity to dissect and marvel at the superb musical craft that causes these songs to remain classics nearly 90 years later. And, yes, there was some whistling while we worked!

Wish Multi-Language Video

Asha sings "This Wish" in 29 languages

Disney created a multi-language video of the song “This Wish” from the film “Wish”. The video features vocal performances in 29 different languages. Each of the non-English performances, as for all songs in the film, was created with the vocal transcriptions produced by Symbols of Sound.


The video is an excellent example of how accurate transcription and sheet music creation enables dubbing that can match the quality of the original language. It also showcases the highly-skilled localization teams around the world working in conjunction with Disney Character Voices International. A dizzying array of performers, translators, engineers, cultural consultants, and many others coordinate to create Disney magic in dozens of languages.

Click the video image to watch.

Wish

SoS transcribes a Wish for Disney

Symbols of Sound’s latest film musical project is Disney’s “Wish”. The film contained eleven song tracks which needed to be transcribed from audio to sheet music for use in localization.

This was a project that spanned several months. Various countries needed to start preparing performers to create the localized versions before final edits on the film were complete. SoS had to work from versions of the songs in an early edit of the film, and review later edits for any changes that affected the sheet music. SoS would then provide Disney’s localization teams with updated sheet music and a list of any changes.

While this may sound cumbersome, and presents obvious challenges for localization; it enables films to be released to audiences worldwide simultaneously. Otherwise audiences in some countries would have to wait weeks or months to see a film until local language dubbing is completed.

Journey to Bethlehem

SoS takes a journey with Adam Anders

Adam Anders’ directorial debut, “Journey to Bethlehem”, is currently in theaters in the USA. The film, starring Antonio Banderas, Fiona Palomo, and Milo Manheim, imagines the biblical story of Christmas as a pop musical.

Anders and Sony Pictures realized that they needed more than standard film localization materials to translate a story told through eleven songs in varying styles. Symbols of Sound was tasked with transcribing all vocals from the film and creating foreign vocal sheet music guides for international translators and dubbing performers.

“Journey to Bethlehem” will have theatrical releases in numerous countries over the next month.