Lyle Workman

Lyle Workman hasn’t just had a successful career—he’s had three. As a sideman and session musician, he’s toured and recorded with the likes of Beck, Sting, Frank Black, Todd Rundgren, Norah Jones, Sarah McLachlan, Michael Buble and Tony Williams; as a composer for film and TV, he’s written music for blockbusters that have earned over a billion dollars worldwide, including Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall; and as a songwriter and solo artist, he’s penned a hit and earned praise from guitar heroes and world class musicians alike. Now, Workman has brought all three of his worlds together with ‘Uncommon Measures,” a stunning new instrumental collection featuring a 63-piece orchestra captured live at Abbey Road. Bursting at the seams with soaring arrangements and virtuosic performances, ‘Uncommon Measures’ plays like the score to some epic film from an alternate dimension, crossing genres with gleeful abandon. The songs here are living, breathing entities, constantly growing and evolving in ways both subtle and drastic, and the production is similarly unpredictable, veering from larger-than-life bombast to whispered intimacy and back, sometimes within the very same track. The result is a record as extraordinary as it is unexpected, a captivating, transportive song cycle that manages to scale the heights of joy and sadness, love and friendship, self-discovery and celebration, all without a single word.