Xaque Gruber: Wendy & Lisa's Fine 'Touch'

Whether you remember them as the women who played with Prince in The Revolution or as a pop duo or as the Emmy winning composers of Nurse Jackie, Heroes, Crossing Jordan, and now, the new FOX series, Touch, the innovative musical force that is Wendy & Lisa is a hard act to define, and certainly one of the best in the business when it comes to sheer musicianship and experimenting with the new. Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland, is the duo's third partnership with television showrunner, Tim Kring.Coleman says, "Tim tells stories the way that I write music." Touch Trailer:
Melvoin agrees: Tim's mind and Lisa's mind are a perfect combination especially for this show. Just the way Lisa plays music in general, with a lot of polyrhythms, harmonic oddness, and different tempos all together, but no matter how crazy it can get, you never lose where home base is. The storyline idea of Touch is that what seems to be randomness is ultimately related to one experience that's happening, though you may be unaware that it's happening. For Touch, Wendy & Lisa experimented with acoustic instruments to create loops and other electronic-esque sounds resulting in a uniquely warm and richly textured soundscape. An unlikely instrument to play a key role in Touch's score are the duo's old-fashioned toy music boxes with which they fashioned a melody to represent the thoughts and story of Jake, Touch's numbers-obsessed mute boy who can predict the future. Touch Trailer:
While the jump from pop records to scoring may seem odd to some, it is perfectly natural for Wendy & Lisa. Melvoin explains: We were always around it. Our fathers (Mike Melvoin & Gary L. Coleman) being in the business. We used to see sessions with Jerry Goldsmith, and Elmer Bernstein, and even Lalo Shifrin when our fathers did the title sequence to Hawaii 5-O. It was just in our blood. I also knew being Wendy & Lisa pop stars, yes, lovely, but is that going to sustain us when we're old and grey? You can't really do that unless you're a HUGE pop star, and ...

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