• By PAM BORDELON
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 25, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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When you hear the phrase Renaissance man, the image that comes to mind is not of a 32-year-old, ponytailed, New Age rocker. But there’s no better way to describe J. Lamm.

He plays piano, guitar (both regular and bass), drums and violin. He sings. He paints in acrylics, oils and mixed media. At the moment he’s working on a painting that includes an MP3 player and music.

In between learning all these various instruments, the self-taught artist also taught himself musical composition. He spent many hours at the library studying composers whose style he admired, such as the Academy Award-winning John Williams and Bernard Herrmann, who created music for the Alfred Hitchcock classics “Psycho” and “Vertigo.”

Painting and creating music are what the Denham Springs native does when he comes home from a long day at the office. Lamm’s official job is master projectionist for the Louisiana Art & Science Museum’s Irene W. Pennington Planetarium. And after five years at LASM, he’s getting to utilize his musical talents there, as well.

Lamm and his band, Cea Serin, had already released a couple of demo CDs when he started working at the museum’s front desk.

Then the powers that be learned of his musical talent, they enlisted Lamm to compose the score for the sky show, “Digital Universe.”

“Digital Universe” is the first sky show created by LASM with its new digital technology and using its new data-level CRT projectors. Produced by Mike Smail and narrated by Bob Courtney, it features images from the American Museum of Natural History.

“All the images are 3D,” explained Lamm. “They’re manipulated in real time … it’s basically a 3D map of the universe.”
Even before he sat down to write the first note, Lamm had a vision of the finished piece.

“I had seen the software and I knew where they wanted to go,” he continued. “I could hear the finished project in my head. I’d think about the different segments … then it was just a matter of getting it all down and recorded as I heard it in my head.”

Lamm does most of his work at the recording studio at his house.

“I have no phone, TV or Internet at home; I basically just read and work on my music.”

He created the score on a keyboard using a computer interface, which allows him to manipulate certain sounds.

“It lets the nuances of each instrument come out, particularly for strings,” he explains. “I can’t afford to rent a big string section to get that sound. It’s time consuming but it really pays off.”