
Photo by TSO
On Arcade Fire's Reflektor, Owen's orchestral arrangements are performed by FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague. Strings are performed by Owen, Sarah Neufeld, Marika Anthony-Shaw, and Richard Reed Parry. The current live band includes:
In my opinion, the most unique set so far was the acoustic one at the Bridge School Benefit (33-minute video, Owen shows up from "Awful Sound" on). Also, I have colour coded the Arcade Fire shows on the tour pages to distinguish them from the other types of shows.
Working with Todd Terje, Owen provided strings and string arrangements for Franz Ferdinand's song "Stand on the Horizon", which appears on their album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action and on their single "The North Sea" as the Todd Terje Extended Mix.
Owen was commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada to score a 28-minute ballet titled Unearth by choreographer Robert Binet. It will be one of four ballets in the Innovation series running from November 22 to 28 in Toronto. The program note begins:
"When we began our collaboration, composer Owen Pallett and I explored the idea that when a civilization reaches a certain level of advancement, it can lose its curiosity and become inert. Unearth looks at how this inertia is created and maintained and, more importantly, how we can push past it…"
For The Sound It Resounds, Owen talked about his favourite album, A Promise by Xiu Xiu. The 5-minute video took place in his Toronto flat, before he moved to Montreal.
Red Bull Music Academy Radio did an hour-long feature on Owen. The playlist is interspersed with segments of Owen talking about various topics: he moved away from Toronto because condos are ugly and exploitative; The Hidden Cameras' importance is underappreciated relative to Broken Social Scene's; in pursuing music as a career, rather than ditch your job to become a full-time musician, it is better for your opportunities as a musician to force you out of your job; his income comes primarily from solo work and licensing, and he does pay-what-you-can arrangements for small bands; he prefers songs to be challenging to perform, as songs that become easy are boring; he writes lyrics in the morning with coffee; he met Arcade Fire when they opened for Jim Guthrie; and Heartland Festival.
You may know that Owen has covered Céline Dion's “The Power of Love”. The first occasion was back in 2008 at the book launch of Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a book in the 33⅓ series ostensibly about Céline Dion's album. (Carl Wilson of zoilus.com was responsible for a lot of early coverage on Final Fantasy.) An expanded edition of the book, titled Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste, will contain 13 new essays by others, one of which is written by Owen and titled "When I Come Home". Its release date is March 13, 2014.
Sean Brady, fan of Stuart McLean's Vinyl Café, wrote an article describing his experience seeing and hearing Final Fantasy for the first time in 2004, at one of the earliest shows.
The Maniacal 4 Trombone Quartet performed "Many Lives → 49 MP", arranged by Carl Lundgren.
The piece "Pain Changes" from David Lang's Death Speaks, performed by Shara Worden/Owen Pallett/Bryce Dessner/Nico Muhly, has a new video directed by David Lang featuring Shara Worden. Stereogum has the video premiere as well as an interview with David Lang by Shara Worden.