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F E A T U R E S

18 Soundtrack 101A recent graduate poses (and answers) practical questions about the USC Advanced Studies Program in Film Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television.By Jasper Randall

22 Shagging a Sequel ScoreComposer George S. Clinton and director Jay Roach share their thoughts on the making of Austin Powers 2.By Jeff Bond

26 Wild Wild ElmerThe master of the western returns to the genre—sort of. A conversation with Elmer Bernstein on the scoring of his summer blockbuster. By Jeff Bond

R E V I E W S

29 Shafted in the Watergate EraOur massive listener’s guide to the works of Jerry Goldsmith continues, from Chinatown (1974) through The Wild Rovers (1971), including info on Jerry’s “lost years” on TV.By Jeff Bond

34 Settling Old ScoresA host of recent reissues get the once over, including The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, 1984, Johnny Cool, Lawrence of Arabia and The Sword and the Sorcerer.By FSM staff

CONTENTSJ U L Y 1 9 9 9

Wild Wild West brings out theoutrageous in Elmer Bernstein.

page 26

Want to be a film composer?Here’s how to make the grade.

page 18

It gets weirder for Frau Farbissina and Dr. Evil.

page 22

D E P A R T M E N T S

2 Editor’s PageThe Five-PercentSolution

4 NewsOrders Are Forever; Austin Powers score news.

5 Record LabelRound-upWhat’s on the way

6 Now PlayingMovies and CDs in release

7 ConcertsLive performances around the world

9 Upcoming FilmAssignmentsWho’s writing what

11 Mail BagPolished Waxman

15 DownbeatLove, Religion and Murder

42 ScoreReviews of the latest releases, including The Mummy, The Matrix, Playing By Heart, Entrapment, and more.

47 Soundtrack RelatedInto the Dark Pool

49 RetrogradeA Harmonic Conference

15 Reader Ads

39 FSM Marketplace

Film Score Monthly (ISSN 1077-4289) is published monthly for $36.95 per year by Lukas Kendall. 5455 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1500, Los Angeles CA 90036-4201. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and additional mailing offices.

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F i l m S c o r e M o n t h l y 1 J U L Y 1 9 9 9

ON THE COVER: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND

THE SHAGADELIC. PHOTOS BY K. WRIGHT,

© 1999 NEW LINE CINEMA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

V O L U M E 4 , N U M B E R 6J U LY 1 9 9 9

STAFF

EDITOR & PUBLISHERLukas Kendall

MANAGING EDITORJeff Bond

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People have been bashing the stateof current film music for as long asI can remember. This is partially a

fan’s trapping of wishing for the “good ol’days”: first there were title songs, then jazzscores, then rock scores, then rock compila-tion scores, then synthesizers, then hip-hop,and so forth. All of these things are histori-

cal progressions which were lam-basted at first but in retrospect cre-ated great works of art.

Still, it is legitimate to complainof the inadequacy of today’s works.And frankly, we’ve reached a newlow. It was one thing when familiarcomposers began writing theirRicochets and Shining Throughs.Today, not only are most estab-lished composers treading water,but to quote Roy from CloseEncounters, “Who the hell are youpeople?” It’s become a mantra infilm music fandom that everyone

but the composers are to blame—produc-ers, directors, the whole “system.” Well Idon’t buy it.

First, however, some historical perspec-tive. There are fewer great composers thanmost people think. From the Golden Age,there are six composers being immortalizedon stamps next fall: Korngold, Steiner,Herrmann, Tiomkin, Waxman, Newman.Add Rózsa, not eligible for a stamp becausehe died less than ten years ago. Throw inVictor Young, Friedhofer, Raksin, Salter,Kaper—that’s 11. Die-hard fans can rattleoff a list of another dozen or more, but hon-estly, I don’t have a big Herbert Stothart col-lection (the music is unavailable, but that’sanother story).

How many major Silver Age composersare there? North, Bernstein, Rosenman,Mancini... going into the ‘60s, there areBarry, Goldsmith, Williams, Jarre, Schifrin,Delerue, Morricone and a few other foreign-ers. For today’s generation, major figuresinclude Horner, Elfman, Zimmer, Silvestri,Kamen and Thomas Newman.

The point is that there are only around adozen all-time great film composers whoseevery last note is worth hearing. There aremaybe two more dozen solid composers whohave done multiple memorable works, and

then many notable figures who have struckgold on rare occasion.

Look at the list of composers for whomwe’ve listed their upcoming assignments.There are over 240 of them. It’s madnessalone that 240 people have managed tosecure jobs scoring movies, but how can theybe any good? Film composers historicallyhave come from other walks of life: first theywere European refugees and Broadwayarrangers, then New York concert com-posers, then big band arrangers, then rockmusicians. Today, the most innovative com-posers seem to come from a record produc-ing/sampling background, but that’s a fieldfull of bullshit artists. The barriers to entryfor film composing have been demolished,and for every Hans Zimmer or DannyElfman that paved the way and belong,there are 80 hacks.

Many composers are in film because theylove it, but sometimes those people write theworst music of all—they’re “doing” filmmusic, and nothing sounds worse than thatkind of impersonation. The best film com-posers always came to the genre later in lifeafter they knew how to do some other kindof music; the few who started in Hollywood,like Goldsmith and Williams, not only weretalented freaks of nature, but spent over adecade doing radio and television and notclamoring for big-budget studio pictures.

We will not see any change to this in thenear future. More composers will securemore assignments, because there are moremovies being made and more people seekingout talent. We will also see more unknownson major studio pictures—even though theywill disappear soon thereafter—as A-listcomposers price themselves out of manyproductions, and agents sell new talent whogot lucky on independent films. We’re des-tined to have one or two veritable geniusesemerge, as well as a handful of people whodo not stink utterly. But for the most part,we should all be braced for film scores thatare so anonymous and boring that they shiftthe hobby of soundtrack collecting almostentirely onto works of the past.

—Lukas Kendall

J U L Y 1 9 9 9 2 F i l m S c o r e M o n t h l y

The Five-Percent SolutionAS LEGENDARY SCI-FI WRITER THEODORE STURGEON NOTED, 95 PERCENT OF EVERYTHING IS CRAP—AND REGRETTABLY, THAT GOES FOR FILM MUSIC AS WELL...

Look out—the Cranky Guy

is back!

E D I T O R I A L


Aussie ConferenceCinesonic in Australia will

hold their 2ndInternational Conference onFilm Scores and Sound Designfrom July 8 to 11 at StoreyHall, RMIT University,Swanston St., Melbourne.Scheduled guests include RandyThom (surround-sound designer

from Skywalker Sound);Francois Musy (mixer of JeanLuc Godard’s recent films);Stewart Copeland (RumbleFish, Very Bad Things—tenta-tive); and authors ClaudiaGorbman (Unheard Melodies),Joseph Lanza (Elevator Music),Evan Eisenberg (The RecordingAngel), Kojo Eshun (MoreBrilliant Than the Sun),Francois Thomas (CitizenKane) and more. ContactCinesonic at 613-9925-2193 oremail [email protected].

Sound as a PoundThe current plan for an

Austin Powers score releaseis that there will be a single

album with music from bothAustin Powers 1 and 2 at the timeof the sequel’s video. Maverick’ssong compilation to AustinPowers: The Spy Who ShaggedMe features no score tracks what-soever; Hollywood Records’album to the first film did have ashort suite of composer George S.Clinton’s work.

Missed HITS

Varèse Sarabande’s recentcompilation, Hit TV:

Television’s Top Themes (seereview Vol. 4 No. 5), was origi-nally configured to includethemes from Dharma and Greg,Buffy the Vampire Slayer andThird Rock from the Sun. When

these could not be licensed,they were removed and twonew selections were recorded:South Park and TheMagnificent Seven. The packag-ing was changed accordingly.

However, some CDs havebeen distributed using the origi-nal master, with the tunes thatwere not cleared. All of thediscs have the correct, revisedpackaging, so not even Varèseknows where or how many“wrong” CDs are out there.Happy hunting!

AnotherGrammy

The National Academy ofRecording Arts & Sciences

has added a best soundtrackalbum category to the GrammyAwards, to debut at the 42ndannual Grammy Awards nextFebruary. The new category willbe grouped into a new field:Music for Film, Television andOther Visual Media, to includebest soundtrack, best song froma motion picture, television orother visual media, and bestinstrumental composition for amotion picture, television orother visual media.

DVD NewsGood news for fans of Mia

Sara prancing around inthe forest—Universal has aCollector’s Edition of RidleyScott’s Legend in the works. Anextended cut restoring JerryGoldsmith’s score to the film(used only in the overseasrelease) is one of the tasks cur-rently being undertaken by theproduction team. Look forrelease in early 2000.

Thomas Newman talks abouthis score in the documentary onFried Green Tomatoes ($34.98);the 62-minute program, found inUniversal’s “Collector’s Edition”DVD release, includes an extend-

ed segment about the music,with Newman and director JonAvnet discussing the score’s gen-esis and usage in the film.

Bruce in a Box

Bruce Broughton andIntrada are producing a

library of authorized promo-tional CDs for the composer’sprofessional use. The discs arenot complete scores but ratherdemos organized by style andgenre: action, romance, comedy,television, western, etc. Manyunreleased cues and scores willbe represented, including piecesfrom Young Sherlock Holmes,The Presidio, Monster Squad,Krippendorf’s Tribe, Tiny ToonAdventures, Narrow Margin,Harry and the Hendersons andmore. Limited quantities will be availablethrough Intrada’s mail order ser-vice: 2220 Mountain Blvd, Suite220, Oakland CA 94611; ph: 510-336-1612; fax: 510-336-1615;www.intrada.com.

Gold is where you find itLook for some of the rare andobscure items mentioned in thesepages from the soundtrack spe-cialty dealers: Screen Archives(540-635-2575), Intrada (510-336-1612), STAR (717-656-0121),Footlight Records (212-533-1572)and Super Collector (714-636-8700) in this country.

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Broughton conducting the Sinfonia of London

E V E N T S • C O N C E R T SR E C O R D L A B E L R O U N D - U PU P C O M I N G A S S I G N M E N T S

T H E L A T E S T F I L M S

Orders Are Forever

John Barry and his frequent lyricist Don Black were both award-

ed Order of the British Empire (OBE) honors on this year’s

Queen’s Birthday Honors list. Barry’s father, a movie theatre

owner, received a Member of the British Empire (MBE) award

many years ago.

Lyricist Black andcomposer Barry

circa 1972


Airwolf Still forthcoming fromthe Airwolf AppreciationAssociation is a 2CD set ofAirwolf TV music by SylvesterLevay and Udi Harpaz. The firstdisc features 23 cues adapted andperformed on synthesizers fromvarious episodes, and the secondfeatures composer SylvesterLevay’s own, suite-form adapta-tions of his music. The release is limited to 500 copies;write Mark J. Cairns, 246 ComberRoad, Lisburn, County Antrim BT276XZ, Northern Ireland, or seewww.geocities.com/televisioncity/studio/9743/latenews.html

Aleph Coming in August fromLalo Schifrin’s label is a 4CD boxset of his Jazz Meets theSymphony albums. DueSeptember is a recording ofSchifrin’s new non-film piece, theLatin Jazz Suite. Mannix (1969TV soundtrack album plus somenewly recorded tracks) will beout in October; forthcoming butwithout a date is Voyage of theDamned (1976).See www.alephrecords.com orwww.schifrin.com.

Atlantic September 14: Threeto Tango. October 12: Anywherebut Here (various, new CarlySimon and Traci Chapmansongs). Unscheduled: On AnyGiven Sunday (various, newOliver Stone football movie).

BMG Classics ElmerBernstein’s new recordings ofThe Magnificent Seven and TheGreat Escape (The Royal ScottishNational Orchestra, prod. RobertTownson) will be out on July 27.Also due on that date are Swing(songs by Lisa Stansfield plusscore by Ian Devaney) and That’sthe Way I Like It.

Brigham Young UniversityLost Horizon (complete 1937Dimitri Tiomkin score) is stillcoming along, probably for

release in late summer. This hasbeen mastered from acetatesdonated to BYU’s film musicarchives. Coming next is arestoration of Max Steiner’s She(1935).Order from Screen ArchivesEntertainment, info below.

Chandos Due in February 2000is a new recording of music byAlan Rawsthorne (RumonGamba cond. BBCPhilharmonic). Represented filmsinclude Burma Victory, TheCaptive Heart, Uncle Silas,Saraband for Dead Lovers, TheDancing Fleece, Where NoVultures Fly, The Cruel Sea, Westof Zanzibar and Lease of Life. (Abiography of Rawsthorne is beingpublished by Oxford UniversityPress in England in July, titledAlan Rawsthorne: Portrait of aComposer.)

Chapter III Due July 13 is a“companion album” to The BlairWitch Project—various rocktracks not heard in the film(which has no music), but havingto do with the story. Planned butunscheduled is an expandedscore-only CD to TomorrowNever Dies (David Arnold).

Chapter III was formerlyCompass III, but they had tochange their name due to a con-flict with another company.

Chromatic Due July 13: DeadMan’s Curve (Shark).

Cinephile The next batch ofRoy Budd CDs will be out inOctober, to include materialfrom Soldier Blue, Catlow, SeaWolves, Zeppelin, Into the Scene,Something to Hide, TomorrowNever Comes, Foxbat. (Many ofthe scores are too short to com-prise entire discs.)

Cinesoundz Coming in Julyfrom this German soundtrackproduction company is Star

Maidens (Die Mädchen aus demWeltraum, British/German ‘70ssci-fi)—score by Berry Lipmanplus songs and dialogue. Thiswill be released on the GermanAll Score Media label.

Forthcoming: a compilationof music from the German“krimi” classic TV show, DerKommissar, and an EnnioMorricone remix CD.Write Cinesoundz, Lindwurmstr 147,80337 Muenchen, Germany; fax: +49-89-767-00-399; www.cinesoundz.de.

Citadel Due August is OneMan’s Hero (Ernest Troost).

DRG Now out are The WinslowBoy (Alaric Jans) and Tea withMussolini (Alessio Vlad andStefano Arnaldi).

Due in mid-August is Goblin Vol.4 and Watching and Waiting (akaLa Menace), the only soundtrackby jazz artist Gerry Mulligan.

GNP/Crescendo Due latesummer is Lost in Space, Vol. 3,featuring two unreleased scoresfrom the Irwin Allen TV series:“The Derelict” (Herman Stein,including the “family” themeused throughout the show) and“My Friend Mr. Nobody” (JohnWilliams). Among the bonustracks is an unused second sea-son theme for the series (not byWilliams).

Still forthcoming: Seven Days(Scott Gilman, UPN TV series)and Fantastica (Russell Garcia‘50s space music concept

album—not a soundtrack).

Hammer Due September isHammer Film Music CollectionVolume 2, with themes fromDracula A.D. 1972, The LostContinent, Frankenstein and theMonster from Hell, Slave Girls,To the Devil a Daughter,Crescendo, Fear in the Night,Satanic Rites of Dracula, Demonsof the Mind, Rasputin the MadMonk, Plague of the Zombies,One Million Years B.C., DraculaHas Risen from the Grave, TheAbominable Snowman, Curse ofthe Werewolf, FrankensteinCreated Woman, Straight on TillMorning, The Old Dark House,The Mummy’s Shroud, TheWitches, Vengeance of She,Quatermass II, Pirates of BloodRiver, and Journey to theUnknown.Hammer’s CDs are available in theU.S. exclusively from Scarlet Streetmagazine, PO Box 604, Glen RockNJ 07452; ph: 201-445-0034; seewww.hammerfilms.com andwww.scarletstreet.com.

Hollywood Coming inSeptember: Swingers Vol. 2 (vari-ous), Mumford (James NewtonHoward).

Koch Pushed back toSeptember is the Erich WolfgangKorngold film music album(Juarez, The Sea Wolf, Elizabethand Essex) recorded in NewZealand. Also due that month isthe Franz Waxman chambermusic CD (St. Clair Trio), includ-ing many film pieces.

The Korngold songs CD is tobe scheduled. To be recorded is aKorngold CD featuring the com-poser’s complete music for piano.

Marco Polo John Morgan andWilliam Stromberg’s re-recordingprojects are coming out as fol-lows: July: Mr. Skeffington(Franz Waxman); August:Devotion (Erich WolfgangKorngold); and December: TheEgyptian (Bernard Herrmannand Alfred Newman, 71 minutes,with choir).

Recorded for release in 2000are a Roy Webb CD featuringmusic for Val Lewton films (TheCat People, I Walked with a

FSM ClassicsNew this month is the second

CD in our Golden Age Classics

series: Prince of Foxes (1949) by

Alfred Newman, a colorful

adventure score in the tradition

of Captain from Castile.The

score has long been one of the

most desired from Newman’s

rich career at 20th Century-Fox.

See the back cover ad for more

information.

To be released next issue is

our first Elmer Bernstein

album, a rollicking ‘60s west-

ern score. Send us your sugges-

tions for future releases; contact

info, pg. 2

Record Label Round-UpAll the albums you’ll be waiting for

Zombie, Bedlam, The SeventhVictim, The Body Snatcher); anda more complete recording ofGhost of Frankenstein (Hans J.Salter), filled out with cues fromMan-Made Monster and BlackFriday, and all of the originalmusic composed for SherlockHolmes and the Voice of Terror(Frank Skinner).

Forthcoming from Swiss pro-ducer/conductor Adriano thisyear: Georges Auric: Suites forFilms by Jean Cocteau (Orphée,Les Parents terribles, Thomasl’imposteur, Ruy Blas) andAuric: Suites from Lola Montez,Notre-Dame de Paris,Farandole. And in the year2000: Auric: Suites from Rififi,La Symphonie Pastorale, LeSalaire de la peur; and DmitriShostakovich: The Fall of Berlin(complete original version), withsuite from The Memorable Year1917.

Milan Due July 27: Twin FallsIdaho (Stuart Matthewman).August 10: On the Ropes (variousrap), Mickey Blue Eyes (BasilPoledouris), Alfred Hitchcock:100 Years (compilation with pre-viously unreleased music).September 14: Passion of Mind(Randy Edelman), PrincessMononoke (Jo Hisashi, Japanese).

Pendulum Forthcoming but

unscheduled is a limited editionCD (2,500 copies) of DestinationMoon (Leith Stevens, 1950). Alsocoming is How to Save aMarriage/Le Mans (MichelLegrand).

PolyGram Due July 20 onDecca is a reissue of the Psycho:Great Hitchcock Movie Thrillersalbum.

Forthcoming from PolyGramin England is a 2CD set of thethree Miklós Rózsa albums fromthe 1970s, Miklós RózsaConducts His Great Film Music.

Rhino Due July 6 from KidRhino and the Cartoon Networkis Cartoon Medley, a compila-tion of 38 cartoon theme songs.

Due August 3 is Iron Giant,Michael Kamen score plus clas-sic ‘50s rock songs to the newWarner Bros. animated film.

Due August 31 is a restora-tion of King Kong, featuring a24-minute suite of Max Steinermusic cobbled together fromacetates plus tracks of music,dialogue and effects (similar toRhino’s Casablanca album).

Pushed back to October 19:Miklós Rózsa at M-G-M, a 2CDset featuring extended suitesfrom Madame Bovary (1949,17:28), Ivanhoe (1952, 20:03),Knights of the Round Table(1952, 11:58), Beau Brummel

(1954), Valley of the Kings(1954, 13:24), Green Fire(1954), Moonfleet (1955), Diane(1955), The King’s Thief (1955),Tribute to a Bad Man (1956),Lust for Life (1956), The World,the Flesh and the Devil (1959)and King of Kings (1961).

Due April 1, 2000 (the releasedate is not a joke) is the 2CD setof Superman: The Movie (JohnWilliams, 1978), featuring every-thing heard in the movie (over anhour of previously unreleasedmusic) plus rare alternates andunused cues. See www.rhino.com.

Rykodisc Upcoming in theDeluxe MGM Soundtrack Seriesof United Artists Films:

Due August 3 are twoBroadway cast recordings:Promises, Promises (Bacharachand David adaptation of TheApartment) and Sugar (adapta-tion of Some Like It Hot).

September 14: For Your EyesOnly (Bill Conti, 1981, with pre-viously unreleased music) andBring Me the Head of AlfredoGarcia/The Killer Elite (JerryFielding, 1974/1975). AlfredoGarcia will be presented instereo (at least in part) for thefirst time.

Planned but without a date isJazz in Motion: MGMSoundtracks Presents Great

Movie Jazz (compilation).See www.rykodisc.com.

Screen ArchivesEntertainment Now set forsummer is Distant Drums, a 2CDset of four Max Steiner scores forUnited States Pictures films mas-tered from acetates located atBrigham Young University.Contained are Distant Drums(1951), Cloak and Dagger (1946,main and end titles), South of St.Louis (1949) and My Girl Tisa(1948, 13 minutes); 24-page book-let. Coming after this will be a CDof Steiner’s score for Pursued(1947, noir western).Screen Archives Entertainment has anew address: PO Box 500, Linden VA22642; ph: 540-635-2575; fax: 540-635-8554; www.screenarchives.com.

Silva Screen Silva Screen hasrecorded John Barry’s completeRaise the Titanic score (City ofPrague Philharmonic, cond. NicRaine, approx. 50 minutes) forrelease in August or September.The master tapes to the originalsoundtrack are believed to belost; this has long been one of themost desired Barry scores.

Coming in Europe are two2CD sets of re-recorded themes:Battlestar Galactica: The A to Zof Fantasy TV Themes (July 2)and The Wild West: The Essential

(continued on page 8)

R E C O R D L A B E L R O U N D U P • C U R R E N T R E L E A S E S


NOW PLAYINGFilms and CDs currently in releaseAustin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me George S. Clinton Maverick*Besieged Alessio Vlad MilanElection Rolfe Kent Sire**Free Enterprise Scott Spock Nettwerk**The General’s Daughter Carter Burwell MilanAn Ideal Husband Charlie Mole RCA VictorInstinct Danny Elfman Varèse SarabandeJust a Little Harmless Sex Tito LarrivaLimbo Mason Daring ColumbiaNotting Hill Trevor Jones Island*The Red Violin John Corigliano Sony ClassicalReturn with Honor Charles BernsteinStar Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace John Williams Sony ClassicalSummer of Sam Terence Blanchard Hollywood**Tarzan Mark Mancina Walt DisneyTea with Mussolini Alessio Vlad & Steffano ArnaldiWild Wild West Elmer Bernstein Varèse SarabandeThe Winslow Boy Alaric Jans

*song compilation **combination songs and score

JOHN WILLIAMS will conductthe Boston Symphony atTanglewood on July 11 in hisnewest concert work, for Seji!, aswell as Leonard Bernstein’sSymphonic Dances from WestSide Story and Mendelssohn’sviolin concerto, with Gil Shahamas soloist. At Tanglewood,Williams will be one of severalcomposers working with compo-sition fellows of the TanglewoodMusic Center. As part of theannual Tanglewood on Paradeconcert on August 4, Williamswill conduct music from ThePhantom Menace. Williams willalso conduct a Pops concert atTanglewood on August 30. See www.bso.org or call 888-266-1200for tickets to these events.

■ ■ ■

On July 17 at 7:00 PM,Williams will conduct theChicago Symphony Orchestra atthe Ravinia Festival in a concertof his own music. The programwill include Sound the Bells!,Cowboys Overture, the suitefrom The Reivers (with narratorOssie Davis), themes from Farand Away, the march fromRaiders of the Lost Ark, thetheme from Jurassic Park,excerpts from Close Encountersof the Third Kind, “Shark CageFugue” from Jaws, the themefrom Schindler’s List, the marchfrom 1941, and a suite from ThePhantom Menace: “The FlagParade,” “Anakin’s Theme” and“Duel of the Fates.”See www.ravinia.org or call 847-266-5100 for tickets.

■ ■ ■

Charles Dutoit will lead thePhiladelphia Orchestra inmusic from Star Wars at theMann Center for thePerforming Arts on July 21;also on the program will beGustav Holst’s The Planets,featuring narrator Buzz Aldrin.The program will be repeatedat the Saratoga PerformingArts Center on July 30.See www.philorch.org for furtherinformation.

Williams will conduct the LosAngeles Philharmonic at theHollywood Bowl this summer;see below.

■ ■ ■

Williams will conduct theCleveland Orchestra at theBlossom Festival in late August.On August 27 he leads theorchestra in performances ofhis Cowboys Overture andtrumpet concerto, as well asMichael Torke’s Javelin, AaronCopland’s Four Dance Episodesfrom Rodeo and Gershwin’s AnAmerican in Paris. On August28 he will conduct a concert ofhis own film music. See www.clevelandorch.com for moreinformation.

■ ■ ■

On Friday, October 1, Yo-YoMa will perform Williams’s celloconcerto with the NationalSymphony Orchestra under thedirection of Leonard Slatkin.Also on the program at theKennedy Center Concert Hallwill be Arvo Part’s Fratres fortwelve cellos and the Dvorakcello concerto. See www.kennedy-center.org or call 1-800-444-1324 for tickets.

■ ■ ■

Christopher Millard, principalbassoonist of the VancouverSymphony Orchestra, will per-form the Canadian premiere ofFive Sacred Trees with the VSOand conductor Clyde Mitchell onOctober 16 and 18, 1999 in

Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre.Also included on the program:Valley of a Thousand Hills byMalcolm Forsyth and Brahms’sSymphony No. 2. For tickets, visitwww.culturenet.ca/vso or call 604-876-3434.

■ ■ ■

Orchestra Seattle and theSeattle Chamber Singers willperform music from ThePhantom Menace on Sunday,October 24 at 3:00 PM inSeattle’s Benaroya Hall.Conducted by George Shangrow,the program will also includeRalph Vaughan Williams’sSerenade to Music and RandallThompson’s Symphony No. 2. Visit www.osscs.org or call 206-682-5208 for ticket information.

■ ■ ■

On February 19, 2000, thePlymouth Music Series will per-form Seven for Luck inMinneapolis’s Orchestra Hall.Part of their annual “Witness”concert honoring Black HistoryMonth, it will be conducted byPhillip Brunelle. See www.plymouthmusic.org or call612-624-2345 for more information.

ARGONAUTS CANCELED Theplanned July 22 concert in LosAngeles by the ArgonautFoundation has been canceled.Apparently the Tony Thomasfamily was not aware of theFoundation’s plans to give anaward in his name—and RoyceHall was not aware that the con-cert was supposed to happen attheir venue.

ENGLISH CONCERTS Anopen-air Music from the Moviesconcert (with fireworks) will takeplace at Broadlands, Romsey, onJuly 18, with the PerformingArts Symphony Orchestra con-ducted by Nicholas Smith; musicfrom Raiders of the Lost Ark,Batman, James Bond films, Mr.Holland’s Opus, Dances withWolves, Victory at Sea,Dangerous Moonlight, Bridge onthe River Kwai, Platoon, The BigCountry, Titanic, Schindler’sList, Warner Bros. cartoons, ThePink Panther, Elvira Madigan,Star Wars and more. The pro-gram will be repeated on August27 at Chirk Castle, Rexham; and

on August 28 at Leighton Hall,Carnforth. Call 01625-560-000 or see www.per-formingarts.co.uk for a complete listof concerts and venues.

FILM MUSIC AT ROYALALBERT HALL Concert 20 inthis year’s Proms at the RoyalAlbert Hall, taking place July31, is devoted to film music.Carl Davis will conduct theBBC Concert Orchestra in aconcert of Hollywood filmmusic by Herrmann, Rózsa,Williams and more; MauriceJarre and George Fenton willeach conduct their own musicas well. Richard Attenboroughwill introduce the pieces. See www.bbc.co.uk/proms.

LALO SCHIFRIN Upcomingconcert appearances for LaloSchifrin are: a Jazz Meets theSymphony concert on July 8 and9 at Teatro di Verdura, Palermo,Italy; a Gillespiana concert inViennes, France on July 13 andin Pori, Finland on July 17; aJazz at the Movies concert onAugust 13 at the John AnsonFord Amphitheatre, Los Angeles;and a Tribute to Lalo Schifrinconcert at the California Plaza indowntown Los Angeles onSeptember 18, including the U.S.premiere of Schifrin’s “LatinJazz Suite.”

See www.schifrin.com.

HOLLYWOOD BOWL TheHollywood Bowl’s summer sea-son features film music aplenty:

July 2, 3, 4: Film musicpieces will be in these concerts;the July 4 performance willinclude fireworks.

July 13: Prokofiev’s ViolinConcerto and Ivan the Terrible(with film).

July 16, 17: MichelLegrand and Marcel Marceau areguest artists with John Mauceriand the Hollywood BowlOrchestra in a celebration ofFrance: “Bastille Day at theBowl” (with fireworks).Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy fromHumoresque will be in the pro-gram; concertmaster BruceDukov, soloist.

July 23, 24: JohnWilliams conducts the Los


FILM MUSIC CONCERTSSoundtrack performances that you can attend—all around the world

“Mr. Pops” himself

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Record Label RoundupContinued from page 6)Film Music Collection (August 2).

Sonic Images Due in July aretwo Babylon 5 CDs byChristopher Franke: The Fall ofCentauri Prime and The Very Long Night of Londo Molari.Due in September: Evergreen:The Film Music of BarbraStreisand (orchestral compila-tion), Babylon 5: A Call to Arms(Evan D. Chen) and Crusade(suites from first 13 episodes,Evan D. Chen).

Sony Coming on Sony Classical:July 13: Richard III (new EnnioMorricone score to silent film)and Cinema Serenade: TheGolden Years, a new recordingconducted by John Williams(Itzhak Perlman, soloist) of

Golden Age film themes, manynewly arranged by Williams.August 10: Glen Gould at theMovies. September 7: Last Night(Alexina Louie and Alex Pauk).

Super Tracks The next pro-motional CDs being pressed forthe composers—but with limitedavailability to collectors—areEdmund Choi’s The Castle, JoelGoldsmith’s The Untouchables(TV) and Joe Harnell’s TheIncredible Hulk (TV).

Forthcoming from SuperTracks and available commer-cially are Candyman: Day of theDead (Adam Gorgoni) and FatalError (Ron Ramin, TBS movie).See www.supercollector.com.

TVT July 20: Whiteboy (various).Forthcoming but unscheduled isthe Buffy: The Vampire Slayer

TV soundtrack.Varèse Sarabande July 20:Wild Wild West (ElmerBernstein score album), TheHaunting (Jerry Goldsmith).July 27: Lake Placid (JohnOttman).

August 10: The 13th Warrior(Jerry Goldsmith, 55-60 min.),Bowfinger (David Newman, alsofeaturing songs by JohnnyAdams, Marvin Gaye, JamesBrown and more), The MinusMan (Marco Beltrami).

Forthcoming in RobertTownson’s Film Classics series,performed by the Royal ScottishNational Orchestra unlessnoted: Citizen Kane (BernardHerrmann, cond. Joel McNeely);Color, Rhythm and Magic:Classic Disney Instrumentals(light jazz versions of variousDisney songs, arranged by Earl

Rose); Back to the FutureTrilogy (Alan Silvestri, cond.John Debney).

Coming in the Fox Classicsseries are two individualBernard Herrmann releases: oneCD featuring Tender Is theNight, The Man in the GrayFlannel Suit and A Hatful ofRain (due August), and anotherfeaturing Garden of Evil, Princeof Players and King of theKhyber Rifles (due September orOctober).

A fifth Franz Waxman:Legends of Hollywood CD will berecorded for future release(cond. Richard Mills).

Virgin July 27: Dick (various).August 10: Best Laid Plans(Craig Armstrong). August 17:Stigmata (Billy Corgan, EliaCmiral, various). FSM

C O N C E R T S • R E C O R D L A B E L R O U N D U P


Angeles Philharmonic in a filmmusic concert; see above.

July 30, 31: “TropicanaNight,” to include The Old Manand the Sea (Tiomkin).

August 6, 7: JerryGoldsmith conducts the LosAngeles Philharmonic in a filmmusic concert—his first inHollywood, including a world pre-miere commissioned for his 70thbirthday.

August 8: “Bugs Bunny onBroadway II,” with GeorgeDaugherty conducting WarnerBros. cartoons live to film.

August 27, 28: “UniversalNight at the Hollywood Bowl,”with John Mauceri and theHollywood Bowl Orchestra.

September 3, 4: “Fromthe Bowl to the Moon toBeyond,” with Holst’s ThePlanets and various excerpts ofFrom the Earth to the Moon. TomHanks may host.

September 7: PremiereFilmharmonic screening/perfor-mance of 1001 Nights (DavidNewman).

September 15: Tribute toHenry Mancini with JohnnyMandel and Quincy Jones (andthe Clayton-Hamilton JazzOrchestra).Call 323-850-2000.

FLANDERS FESTIVALMaurice Jarre, Stephen Warbeckand Elliot Goldenthal will con-duct and/or present their musicat two concerts at the 26thEdition of the FlandersInternational Film Festival tak-ing place in Ghent, Belgiumbetween October 5 and 16. Theconcerts will take place onOctober 7 and 8. See www.filmfestival.be.

THE OTHER WILLIAMS Theguitarist John Williams will per-form in two concerts with theBBC Concert Orchestra conduct-ed by Christopher Gunning:October 6 at Fairfield, Crydon;and October 7 at Royal FestivalHall. Program includes Ghost,Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The DeerHunter, The Godfather, TheMission, Schindler’s List, BagdadCafe, The Wizard of Oz, OnceUpon a Time in America, Poirot,and a new work by guitaristWilliams (not the Star Wars guy)for guitar and orchestra.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK TheNew York FILMharmonicOrchestra will present “Musicfrom the Films of AlfredHitchcock” at Carnegie Hall on

October 13, in collaboration withNew York University’s TischSchool of the Arts’ Departmentof Cinematic Studies. The con-cert will be conducted by JohnMauceri and will feature musicby Bernard Herrmann, FranzWaxman, Dimitri Tiomkin andothers. It will be part of a week-long celebration of AlfredHitchcock’s work.See www.NYFO.com.

The following are concerts featuringfilm music pieces as part of their pro-grams. Thanks go to John Waxmanof Themes & Variations(http://tnv.net) for this list; he providesscores and parts to the orchestras. Don’t be stupid! Due to the lead timeof this magazine, it is possible some ofthis information is too late to do anygood. Always confirm the concert withthe orchestra’s box office; call localinformation or look on the Internet.

Connecticut August 21, 22,Summer Music Festival,Waterford; Legends of the Fall(Horner).

California July 9, 10, SanDiego S.O.; The Godfather(Rota).

July 25, San Francisco S.O.;Star Trek II (Horner), Star Trek:First Contact (Goldsmith).

Colorado July 30, Vale

Summer Festival, DallasSymphony, all film music, cond.Richard Kaufman; Goodbye, Mr.Chips (Addinsel), Shakespeare inLove (Warbeck), Shane (Young),Last Starfighter (Safan), AddamsFamily Values (Shaiman), TheUntouchables (Morricone),Airplane! (Bernstein), Star Wars(Williams).

Idaho August 4, Sun ValleyS.O.; Hatari! (Mancini).

Maryland July 9,Chesapeake S.O.; The Natural(R. Newman).

July 17, Oregon Ridge S.O.,Baltimore; Star Trek TV Theme(Courage), The X-Files (Snow).

Nevada July 10, RenoPhilharmonic S.O.; TheMagnificent Seven (Bernstein),Bonanza TV theme.

New York August 5, AveryFisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NewYork City; Psycho (Herrmann),Henry V (Walton)—chamber per-formances, call 212-721-6500.

Ohio July 24, Columbus S.O.;The Magnificent Seven(Bernstein).

Oklahoma September 13,Tulsa Philharmonic S.O.; TheNatural (R. Newman).

Pennsylvania August 25,Allentown S.O.; The Mask of

(continued on page 10)


Jocelyn Pook, composer forStanley Kubrick’s Eyes WideShut, is a real person and not apseudonym for VivianKubrick, who scored herfather’s Full Metal Jacket as“Abigail Mead.” Pook is anavant-garde concert composer inEngland who got the job forEWS after the director heard atape of her music. ReportedlyVivian Kubrick did write somematerial for the film, but it wasdeemed unsuitable.

John Ottman has landed adirecting gig: he’ll helm (andscore) Phoenix Pictures’ UrbanLegend 2. Ottman is by no meansabandoning film composing, how-ever: he’ll score and act as editingconsultant on The X-Men for hisfrequent collaborator BryanSinger (due in December 2000)and is also on the look-out formore scoring gigs.

The band Garbage will be co-write and perform the title songto The World Is Not Enough, thenew James Bond film due at theend of the year. David Arnoldwill co-write and produce the titlesong in addition to scoring thepicture. Arnold is penning thetheme for the BBC TV seriesRandall and Hopkirk (Deceased),a remake of the ‘70s program.

Current AssignmentsMark Adler The Apartment Complex, Sterling Chase.Eric Allaman Breakfast with Einstein,Lumanarias, The

Last Act.Ryeland Allison Saturn.John Altman Legionnaire (Jean-Claude Van

Damme), Town and Country (Warren Beatty, DianeKeaton, d. Peter Chelsom), Vendetta (HBO, d.Nicholas Meyer), RKO 281 (HBO, John Malkovich,James Cromwell).

Craig Armstrong The Bone Collector (d. PhilipNoyce), Plunkett and Macleane.

David Arnold The World Is Not Enough (new JamesBond movie, co-writing title song with Garbage).

Burt Bacharach Isn’t She Great?Angelo Badalamenti A Story of a Bad Boy (co-com-

posed with Chris Hajian), Arlington Road, HolySmoke, Straight Story (d. David Lynch).

Rick Baitz Life Afterlife (HBO feature documentary).Lesley Barber History of Luminous Motion (Good

Machine), Mansfield Park (Miramax).Nathan Barr Hair Shirt (Neve Campbell).

Steve Bartek Another Goofy Movie (Disney).Tyler Bates Denial.Christophe Beck Thick as Thieves (Alec Baldwin),

Coming Soon (Mia Farrow), Guinevere (Miramax,Gina Gershon), Dog Park (New Line, Luke Wilson,Natasha Henstridge)

Marco Beltrami Deep Water, Minus Man, Scream 3.David Benoit Perfect Game (Edward Asner).Elmer Bernstein Wild Wild West (Will Smith, d. Barry

Sonnenfeld), Angel Face: The Story of DorothyDandridge (d. Martha Coolidge, HBO), BringingOut the Dead (d. Martin Scorsese).

Peter Bernstein Susan’s Plan.Edward Bilous Minor Details, Mixing Mia, Naked

Man.Chris Boardman Bruno (d. Shirley MacLaine).Simon Boswell Dad Savage, Alien Love Triangle,

Warzone (d. Tim Roth), The Debtors (MichaelCaine, Randy Quaid).

Christopher Brady Castle in the Sky (Disney ani-mated), Hal’s Birthday.

John Brion Magnolia (d. Paul Thomas Anderson).Michael Brook Getting to Know You, Buddy Boy.Bruce Broughton Jeremiah (cable biblical epic,

theme by Morricone).Paul Buckmaster Mean Street.Carter Burwell Mystery Alaska (Disney), Being John

Malkovich (d. Spike Jonze), Three Kings (GeorgeClooney, Mark Wahlberg).

Wendy Carlos Woundings.Teddy Castellucci Big Daddy (Adam Sandler).Gary Chang Locked in Silence (Showtime).Stanley Clarke Marciano, The Best Man.George S. Clinton Astronaut’s Wife (Johnny Depp,

Charlize Theron).Elia Cmiral Stigmata, Six Pack (French).Serge Colbert Red Tide (Casper Van Dien).Michel Colombier Dark Summer, Pros and Cons.Bill Conti Inferno (Jean-Claude Van Damme), The

Thomas Crown Affair (Pierce Brosnan).Stewart Copeland Made Men (indie), Simpatico

(Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte).Billy Corgan Stigmata (demonic possession, with

Elia Cmiral).Mychael Danna Ride with the Devil (Ang Lee, Civil

War film, Jewel), The Confession (Alec Baldwin,courtroom drama), Felicia’s Journey (d. AtomEgoyan).

Mason Daring 50 Violins (Wes Craven).Don Davis Universal Soldier 2 (Jean-Claude Van

Damme, Goldberg).Loran Alan Davis The Last Prediction (indie).John Debney Dick, Elmo in Grouchland, Inspector

Gadget, End of Days, Komodo.Joe Delia Time Served, Ricky 6, Fever.Alexandre Desplat Restons Groupes.Pino Donaggio Up in the Villa (Kristin Scott-

Thomas).Patrick Doyle East and West (d. Regis Wargnier),

Love’s Labour’s Lost (Kenneth Branagh, musicalcomedy).

Anne Dudley The Bacchae.

The Dust Bros. Fight Club (d. David Fincher).Randy Edelman The Gelfin.Danny Elfman Legend of Sleepy Hollow (d. Tim

Burton), Anywhere but Here (d. Wayne Wang).Evan Evans Table for One (Rebecca De Mornay),

Tripfall (Eric Roberts, John Ritter).Shayne Fair & Larry Herbstritt Tequila Bodyshot.George Fenton Anna and the King (Jodie Foster,

Fox), Chicago: The Musical (Charlize Theron, d.Nick Hytner).

David Findlay Dead Silent (Rob Lowe).Frank Fitzpatrick Lani Loa (Zoetrope).Stephen Flaherty Bartok the Magnificent (Anastasia

video sequel).Robert Folk Inconvenienced.John Frizzell The White River Kid (Antonio

Banderas).Craig Stuart Garfinkle Gabriella (replacing Alf

Clausen).Michael Gibbs Gregory’s Girl 2.Richard Gibbs Book of Stars.Elliot Goldenthal Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare).Jerry Goldsmith The 13th Warrior, The Hollow Man

(d. Paul Verhoeven), The Haunting (d. Jan DeBont), Reindeer Games (d. John Frankenheimer,Miramax).

Joel Goldsmith Diamonds (Miramax).Joseph Julian Gonzalez Price of Glory.Joel Goodman Cherry (romantic comedy, Shalom

Harlow).Mark Governor Blindness (d. Anna Chi).Stephen Graziano Herman, U.S.A.Harry Gregson-Williams Earl Watt (Pate Bros.).Rupert Gregson-Williams Virtual Sexuality.Andrew Gross Be the Man (MGM, Super Dave

movie), Unglued (Linda Hamilton, quirky indie).

Larry Groupé Sleeping with the Lion, Deterrence(Timothy Hutton, d. Rod Lurie), Four Second Delay,Peter York, Contenders (d. Rod Lurie).

Dave Grusin Random Hearts (Harrison Ford, KristinScott Thomas, d. Sydney Pollack).

Richard Hartley All the Little Animals (U.K. indie),Peter’s Meteor, Rogue Trader, Mad About Mambo,Victory.

Richard Harvey Captain Jack (Bob Hoskins).Chris Hajian Lowlife (d. Mario Van Peebles), Story of

a Bad Boy.Todd Hayen The Crown, The Last Flight.John Hills Abilene.Peter Himmelman A Slipping-Down Life (Guy

Pearce, Lili Taylor).Lee Holdridge Family Plan (Leslie Nielsen), No Other

Country.James Horner The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Jim

Carrey).James Newton Howard Snow Falling on Cedars

(d. Scott Hicks), Mumford (d. Lawrence Kasdan),The Sixth Sense, Dinosaurs (Disney animated),Runaway Bride.

Steven Hufsteter Mascara (Phaedra Ent.).David Hughes & John Murphy The Bachelor

(romantic comedy, Chris O’Donnell, ReneeZellweger).

Terry Michael Huud Children of the Corn 666(Nancy Allen, Stacy Keach).

Søren Hyldgaard The One and Only (romanticcomedy).

Pat Irwin But I’m a Cheerleader.Mark Isham Where the Money Is, Imposter

(Miramax, d. Gary Fleder), Jello Shots (New Line).Maurice Jarre A Taste of Sunshine (Ralph Fiennes).Adrian Johnston The Debt Collector, The Darkest

Luis Bacalov Woman on Top.Angelo Badalamenti Forever Mine.Nathan Barr Hangman’s Daughter.Marco Beltrami The Crow 3.Howard Blake My Life So Far (Miramax).Christopher Brady The Legacy (IMAX).Michael Brook Buddy Boy.Carter Burwell Hi Fidelity (Disney).Michel Colombier Foolproof.Eric Colvin Lifesize (Disney).Jeff Danna Boondock Saints, O (Jeff is

Mychael Danna’s brother; O is a modern-day telling of Othello).

Mychael Danna Girl Interrupted (WinonaRyder).

David DiIorio Lethal Premonition, CheerleadersMust Die.

Anne Dudley Monkey Bones.Randy Edelman Passion of Mind.John Frizzell Teaching Mrs. Tingle (replacing

Christopher Young).Guy Gross That’s the Way I Like It (disco movie).Larry Groupé Early Bird Special.Che Guevara Whiteboys.Bob Hurst The Wood.Mark Isham Rules of Engagement.Jan A.P. Kaczmarek The Third Miracle.Martyn Love The Venus Factory (Australia).

Mader Steal This Movie.Lee Marchitelli Iris Blonde (Miramax).Stuart Matthewman Twin Falls Idaho.Randy Miller Picture of Priority (independent),

Family Tree (Warner Bros.), Pirates of thePlain (Tim Curry).

David Newman Flintstones 2: Viva Rock Vegas.John Ottman Urban Legend 2 (also directing).Shawn Patterson Herd, Tales from the Goose

Lady, Magic Trixie.Nicola Piovani Hoof Beats (replacing Danny

Elfman).Michael Richard Plowman The Hot Karl.Jocelyn Pook Eyes Wide Shut (d. Stanley

Kubrick).Graeme Revell Titan A.E. (aka Planet Ice, Fox

animated).David Schwartz The Little Assassin.Ed Shearmur The Very Thought of You.Neil Smolar Deadly Arrangement.Joseph Vitarelli Excellent Cadavers (HBO).Dave Williams Supernova (replacing Burkhard

Dallwitz—director Walter Hill was fired aswell from the movie).

Harry Gregson Williams Lighted Up (replac-ing Quincy Jones III).

Hans Zimmer Mission: Impossible 2(d. John Woo).

Upcoming AssignmentsWho’s working on what for whom

The Hot Sheet New Assignments

Light, The Last Yellow, Old New Borrowed Blue.Trevor Jones Frederic Wilde (d. Richard Loncraine),

Animal Farm (d. John Stephenson).Benoit Jutras Journey of Man (IMAX).Jan A.P. Kaczmarek Aimee and the Jaguar

(Germany, d. Max Faerberboeck), Lost Souls. Michael Kamen Iron Giant (Warner Bros.).Laura Karpman Annihilation of Fish.Brian Keane New York (Ric Burns, epic documen-

tary), The Babe Ruth Story (HBO).Greg Kendall Next to You (Melissa Joan Hart).Rolfe Kent Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (Anthony

Edwards), Oxygen.Wojciech Kilar The Ninth Gate (Johnny Depp,

d. Roman Polanski).Brian Langsbard First of May (indie), Frozen

(Trimark).Russ Landau One Hell of a Guy, Nowhere Lane.Chris Lennertz Lured Innocence (Dennis Hopper, Talia

Shire), Pride of the Amazon (animated musical).Daniel Lanois All the Pretty Horses.Michael A. Levine The End of the Road (d. Keith

Thomson), The Lady with the Torch (Glenn Close, d. David Heeley).

Christopher Libertino Spin the Bottle (d. AndrewMichael Pascal).

Daniel Licht Splendor (d. Gregg Araki), Execution ofJustice (Showtime).

Frank London On the Run, Sancta Mortale, The FirstSeven Years.

Evan Lurie Joe Gould’s Secret.Mader Too Tired to Die, Row Your Boat, Claudine’s

Return, Morgan’s Ferry (Kelly McGillis).Hummie Mann Good Night, Joseph Parker (Paul

Sorvino), A Thing of Beauty, After the Rain, P.T.Barnum (A&E miniseries).

David Mansfield The Gospel of Wonders (Mexico, d.Arturo Ripstein), Tumbleweeds (indie).

Anthony Marinelli The Runner, Slow Burn (Minnie

Driver, James Spader), Fifteen Minutes (RobertDe Niro, Ed Burns).

Jeff Marsh Burning Down the House, Wind River(Karen Allen).

Phil Marshall Rupert’s Land, Gotta Dance, KissToledo Goodbye.

Brice Martin Indian Ways (d. Tom Hobbs), Chaos(d. Chris Johnston).

Cliff Martinez Wicked (d. Michael Steinberg), TheLimey (d. Steven Soberbergh, Terence Stamp,Peter Fonda).

Richard Marvin U-571 (Matthew McConaughey, d. Jonathan Mostow, Universal).

Dennis McCarthy Letters from a Killer (d. DavidCarson).

John McCarthy Boy Meets Girl.Stuart McDonald Diaries of Darkness.Mark McKenzie Dragonheart 2 (direct to video).Gigi Meroni The Good Life (Stallone, Hopper), The

Others, The Last Big Attractions.Cynthia Millar Brown’s Requiem.Sheldon Mirowitz Say You’ll Be Mine (Justine

Bateman), Autumn Heart (Ally Sheedy), OutsideProvidence (Alec Baldwin).

Fred Mollin The Fall.Deborah Mollison East Is East (British), Simon

Magus (Samuel Goldwyn).Andrea Morricone Liberty Heights.Ennio Morricone The Legend of the Pianist on the

Ocean (d. Giuseppe Tornatore), The Phantom ofthe Opera (d. Dario Argento), Resident Evil(d. George Romero).

Tom Morse Michael Angel, The Big Brass Ring.Mark Mothersbaugh Drop Dead Gorgeous (Denise

Richards, New Line), Camouflage.Jennie Muskett B Monkey.Roger Neill Big Man on Campus.Ira Newborn Pittsburgh (Universal).David Newman Broke Down Palace, Bowfinger

(d. Frank Oz).Randy Newman Toy Story 2.Thomas Newman The Green Mile (Tom Hanks,

d. Frank Darabont).John Ottman Lake Placid, The X-Men (d. Bryan

Singer).Van Dyke Parks My Dog Skip, Trade Off.Jean-Claude Petit Messieurs les enfants, Sarabo,

Sucre Amer.Nicholas Pike Delivered, Return to Me.Robbie Pittelman A Killing, The Dry Season (indie).Basil Poledouris Kimberly (romantic comedy),

For the Love of the Game (Kevin Costner base-ball movie, d. Sam Raimi), Mickey Blue Eyes(Hugh Grant).

Steve Porcaro A Murder of Crows (Cuba Gooding,Jr.), Wayward Son (Harry Connick, Jr.).

Rachel Portman Untitled 20th Century Fox IrishProject (comedy, from producer of Full Monty),Cider House Rules.

John Powell Fresh Horses (DreamWorks).Zbigniew Preisner Dreaming of Joseph Lees.Jonathan Price Sammyville (Chase Masterson),

Rustin’s Glory (indie drama), Vampire Night(horror/action).

Trevor Rabin Whispers (Disney), The Deep Blue Sea(d. Renny Harlin).

Robert O. Ragland Lima: Breaking the Silence(Menahem Golan).

Alan Reeves To Walk with Lions.Graeme Revell Three to Tango, Pitch Black

(PolyGram), Untitled Michael Mann Film (AlPacino), Gossip.

David Reynolds Warlock (sequel), George B, LoveHappens.

William Richter Bug Night (indie filmed as one con-tinuous shot).

Stan Ridgway Melting Pot (d. Tom Musca, CliffRobertson), Error in Judgment (d. Scott Levy),Desperate but Not Serious (d. Bill Fishman), Spent(d. Gil Cates Jr., Rain Phoenix), Speedway Junkie(Darryl Hannah).

David Robbins The Cradle Will Rock (d. TimRobbins).

J. Peter Robinson Waterproof (Lightmotive), DetroitRock City (Kiss movie).

Gaili Schoen Déjà Vu (indie).John Scott Shergar, The Long Road Home, Married 2

Malcolm (U.K. comedy).Ilona Sekacz Salomon and Gaenor.Eric Serra Joan of Arc (d. Luc Besson).Patrick Seymour Simian Line (William Hurt).Marc Shaiman South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,

Kingdom of the Sun (Disney animated), Story ofUs (d. Rob Reiner).

Jamshied Sharifi Muppets from Space.Theodore Shapiro The Prince of Central Park

(Kathleen Turner, Harvey Keitel).

Shark East of A (d. Ami Goldstein, David AlanGrier), Dead Man’s Curve (d. Dan Rosen), Me &Will (Patric Dempsey, Seymour Cassel).

James Shearman The Misadventures of Margaret.Ed Shearmur Blue Streak.Howard Shore Dogma (d. Kevin Smith), Chinese

Coffee (d. Al Pacino).Lawrence Shragge Frontline (Showtime).

Rick Silanskas Hoover (Ernest Borgnine).Alan Silvestri Stuart Little (animated/live-action

combination), What Lies Beneath (Harrison Ford,Michelle Pfeiffer, d. Robert Zemeckis), Cast Away(Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, d. Zemeckis).

Marty Simon Captured.Michael Skloff Cherry Pink (d. Jason Alexander).Mike Slamer & Rich McHugh Shark in a Bottle.Michael Small Elements (Rob Morrow).BC Smith Mercy (Peta Wilson).Neil Smolar The Silent Cradle, Treasure Island,

A Question of Privilege.Mark Snow Crazy in Alabama (d. Antonio

Banderas).Darren Solomon Lesser Prophets (John Turturro).William Stromberg Other Voices (dark comedy).Michael Tavera One Special Delivery (Penny

Marshall), American Tail IV (direct to video).Mark Thomas The Big Tease.Joel Timothy Waiting for the Giants.Colin Towns Vig.John Trivers, Elizabeth Myers Norma Jean, Jack

and Me.Ernest Troost One Man’s Hero (Tom Berenger).Brian Tyler Final Justice, A Night in Grover’s Mill,

The Forbidden City (d. Lance Mungia), Simon Sez(action).

Chris Tyng Bumblebee Flies Away.Shirley Walker Flight 180 (New Line).Michael Wandmacher Supercop 2 (Michelle Yeoh),

Farewell, My Love.Stephen Warbeck Mystery Men (superhero

comedy).Don Was American Road (IMAX).Wendy & Lisa Foolish.Michael Whalen Labor Pains (replacing John

DuPrez), Sacrifice.Alan Williams Angels in the Attic, Cocos: Island of

the Sharks (IMAX), Princess and the Pea (animat-ed feature, score and songs with lyrics by DavidPomeranz), Who Gets the House (romantic come-dy), Silk Hope (Farrah Fawcett).

David Williams The Day October Died, Wishmaster 2.

John Williams Angela’s Ashes (Robert Carlyle, d. Alan Parker, coming of age tale set in Irelandbased on the novel by Frank McCourt), MinorityReport (d. Steven Spielberg), Bicentennial Man(d. Chris Columbus).

Debbie Wiseman Tom’s Midnight Garden, TheLighthouse.

Gabriel Yared The Talented Mr. Ripley (MattDamon, d. Anthony Minghella).

Christopher Young In Too Deep (Miramax).Hans Zimmer Gladiator (d. Ridley Scott, Roman

movie), The Road to El Dorado (DreamWorks,animated). FSM

Concerts(continued from page 8)

Zorro (Horner).Utah July 10, Kaysville S.O.;

Star Trek: First Contact, The Magnificent Seven (Bernstein),

Happy Trails.August 4, Sun Valley S.O.;

Hatari! (Mancini).Canada July 31, VancouverS.O.; The X-Files (Snow).

England July 10, RoyalPhilharmonic, London; StarTrek V: The Final Frontier(Goldsmith).

July 14, Liverpool S.O., cond.Carl Davis; The Great Escape(Bernstein), Guns of Navarone(Tiomkin).

July 31, Royal Albert Hall,London, cond. Maurice Jarre;Tribute to David Lean.

Germany July 1-11, Baltica

Stiftung Summer Music festival,Gideon Kremer violinists group;Psycho (Herrmann).

Greece July 29, Elia KazanTribute Concert, Athens, cond.Carl Davis; Gentleman’sAgreement (Newman), AStreetcar Named Desire (North),Man on a Tightrope (Waxman),East of Eden (Rosenman), VivaZapata! (North).

Japan August 1, Osaka S.O.;Lawrence of Arabia (Jarre), TheMagnificent Seven (Bernstein),Mission: Impossible (Schifrin),Around the World in 80 Days(Young), Out of Africa (Barry),The Longest Day (Jarre), TarasBulba (Waxman), Shane (Young),Love Is a Many SplendoredThing (Newman).For a list of silent film music con-certs, see www.cinemaweb.com/lcc.


Due to the volume of material, this listonly covers feature scores and selectedhigh-profile television and cableprojects. Composers, your updates areappreciated: call 323-937-9890, or e-mail [email protected].

U P C O M I N G F I L M A S S I G N M E N T S • C O N C E R T S

Polished Waxman

Iam writing to commend youon your recent release of

Franz Waxman’s Prince Valiant.It is in my mind a perfect score,containing everything that greatmusic should have.

Ever since I heard the CharlesGerhardt recording on theWaxman RCA CD the musicremained one of the most wantedscores for me. I was not let downa week ago when I popped thedisc in and heard the fantastic“Main Titles” bouncing off mywalls. The wonderful chorale inthe middle of “Dash to theTower” and, of course, the stun-ning beauty of “Val and Aleta”—these three cues alone in theiroriginal glory are worth the priceof the CD.

It is a shame that this musicwasn’t released before, but lucki-ly the CD exists now, and sound-track fans all over are in yourdebt. Great job!

Richard HessNew York, New York

Just a short note thankingeveryone at Film Score

Monthly for releasing FranzWaxman’s Prince Valiant on CD,one of my favorite film scores ofall time. Everything about thepresentation—the booklet layoutand notes—is first-rate. And let’snot forget the music. One of themost thrilling main titles of alltime, exciting action cues (listento the variety of great music dur-ing the castle siege), and Aleta’stheme, one of Waxman’s loveliest,given a beautiful treatment dur-ing the scene near the fountain.The entire score is nothing lessthan a symphonic masterpiece.

My only disappointment is in“The Singing Sword,” for thefinal duel between Prince Valiantand Sir Brack, which is minus theelectric violin track. As the notesmention, that track is missing.That is too bad, because not onlyis it one of the best cues in themovie, it is one of the most fasci-nating cues in the film musiccanon. I remember watching the

movie on television as a youngboy and being disappointed inhow this sequence was scored.The duel is already halfway overbefore the music kicks in, andinstead of a rousing, furiousaction cue a la Korngold orSteiner, we are treated to a weird,otherworldly treatment of thePrince Valiant theme. It took sev-eral viewings of the film to makeme realize what, I think, Waxmanis saying: it is at this point thatPrince Valiant changes from animmature boy into a man.

The effect is jarring, andabsolutely brilliant. To achievesuch an effect in a movie aimed atyounger audiences is amazing.

Anyway, thanks to you andyour staff for putting out such amagnificent recording. I’ve wait-ed years for a complete PrinceValiant and the result is wellworth it. Your magazine statesyou are doing an Alfred Newmanrelease soon. Which mouth-water-ing masterpiece could it be? TheMark of Zorro? Prince of Foxes?David and Bathsheba? Young Mr.Lincoln? Captain from Castile? Ican’t wait.

Anyway, thanks again forreleasing so many titles, and Ihappily look forward to support-ing your label for years to come.

Kevin Deany408 N. Washington #1

Westmont, Illinois 60559

As you can see in this issue’s announcement,our Newman title—the first of many, wehope—is his superb Prince of Foxes.

We actually tried to recreate the electric violinfor “The Singing Sword,” but it was too difficult tomatch the timbre and performance. The fact thatthese important bits have been lost makes it allthe more important that we preserve what stillexists, while we can.

Ihad to drop a line to thank youand the crew for preserving on

a digital medium a score I’vewanted a recording of for 44years. Just listening to that stun-ning main title in true stereotakes me back in time to a warmsummer’s night in 1954 when myparents took my brother and me

to a double bill of, would youbelieve, Them! and Prince Valiant.These are two classic scores fromthat year—Kaper and Waxman atthe peak of their talent.

Waxman was the one composerof the golden age who, had he notbeen prematurely cut down atage 60, would probably have pro-vided scores that seemed quite athome in the age of Goldsmith,Williams, McNeely andBroughton. He just seemed to getbetter and better. His last majorscore, The Lost Command (1966),showed his powers not to havebeen dimmed by age or disease.

I continue to appreciate suchtouches as preserving the dam-aged sections of the score as“bonus tracks.” Actually the“wow” in these nuggets is muchless disturbing than the tragicloss of the electric violin solo from“The Singing Sword”—a fabulouseffect in the context of the film.But this is quibbling. That nowwe have this essential master-work by Waxman at our finger-tips is cause enough to say“thank you” from the bottom ofmy heart.

I look forward to future effortswith undiminished excitement.

Mark [email protected]

Music Messiah

It is quite embarrassing—theowner of my local newsstand

finds me doing RobertoBegnini-esque pirouettes of joy atthe emergence of every issue ofFilm Score Monthly. I feel asthough you have been publishingthis magazine just for me!Please—don’t ever stop!

Your Franz Waxman GoldenAge tribute article with its focuson Prince Valiant was a treat. Youalways uncover such fascinatingand hitherto-unknown factsabout these scores and their com-posers—so much better than themeatless critical reviews one findsin so many other publications.Accolades to your researchers!

For me as for so many otherswho “grew up” in the 1970s, dis-

covering movie scores for the firsttime, Charles Gerhardt was atrailblazing film music messiah.Leading us from magnificentcomposer to magnificent compos-er, he reconstructed and re-recorded their work with suchloving application of craft thatwith every successive anthologyour knowledge and appreciationof these musicians became richerand more savory. The first time Iever heard Bernard Herrmann’scomplete “Salaambo” aria fromCitizen Kane (not to mention thefabulous Kiri te Kanawa), AlfredNewman’s breathless suite fromSong of Bernadette (could it everbe done better?) and the titanicchoral/orchestral blend fromTiomkin’s Lost Horizon was onGerhardt’s albums. And, ofcourse, the harbinger of things tocome: the glorious suite fromPrince Valiant with its powerfulorchestration and leitmotifspre-dating Star Wars. CharlesGerhardt was my first film musicguru, and even though he record-ed little to match those glorious

‘70s Red Seal titles in subsequentyears, his passing leaves me feel-ing like I’ve lost a good friend.Thank you for the very niceRetrograde tribute.

Jeffrey McMunnPittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Burnishing the Silver Age

Ihave been a collector of filmsoundtracks for almost 24

years, and I must say that yourmagazine is great. It’s importantfor me to receive informationregarding past, present and futureworks. I hope to continue being a

MAIL BAG R E A D E RR A N T S &

F E E D B A C K


subscriber for years to come.I would like to congratulate

you for the incredible sound-tracks you are releasing, especial-ly from my favorite composers,John Williams and JerryGoldsmith. I was really happywhen I received my copy of ThePaper Chase/The PoseidonAdventure by Williams, since thelatter’s main title is one of myfavorites. Goldsmith’sStagecoach/The Loner is an inter-esting listen since his music forwesterns has always been out-standing. And I am not forgetting100 Rifles—your mono/stereotreatment was unique.

And what about LeonardRosenman’s Fantastic Voyage?Wow! I haven’t got many worksfrom Rosenman in my collec-tion. My favorite score has beenThe Lord of the Rings, butVoyage impressed me a lot.

I am still waiting forGoldsmith’s Patton. I have theoriginal album on cassette and theVarèse Sarabande re-recordingwith the Royal Scottish NationalOrchestra. Both are excellent, butyour issue has an extendedrecording of the original, and thatwould make me happy since thisis one of my favorite Goldsmithscores. One thing troubles me,though: why did you includeFrank DeVol’s The Flight of thePhoenix? I have nothing againstPhoenix. A friend of mine told methat it was an excellent score andthat I would enjoy it.

I am looking forward to yournext Silver Age Classics. Youmentioned that one of the com-posers for your upcoming releas-es was, or is, John Barry. WouldThe Black Hole be one of yourreleases? I am a real fan of thatscore and I am desperate about

getting it on CD.Luis Miguel RamosCaracas, Venezuela

The John Barry title we had in the works wasMonte Walsh, released last issue. I would love torelease The Black Hole but it’s not in our presentplans. We added Phoenix to the Patton CDbecause it would fit, and this way fans only famil-iar with Patton would discover it.

The Original Remake

Chris Kinsinger’s belief (Vol.4, No. 3, “Psycho Pot

Shots”) that the Psycho remake isthe first time anyone has pro-duced a shot-for-shot remake ofanother movie is erroneous,though probably commonly held,thanks to an AP story that

claimed it was the first time sucha film was made. In fact, DavidSelznick’s classic 1937 version ofThe Prisoner of Zenda (directedby John Cromwell) starringRonald Colman, MadeleineCarroll and Douglas Fairbanks,Jr., as well as a stellar supportingcast, was remade in 1952 in justsuch a manner. Besides being ashot-by-shot remake, the ‘52 ver-sion used the same score as the‘37—composed by AlfredNewman—and although I have a1975 vinyl version of it, it is thegolden age score I would mostlike to hear on CD.

Your Korngold issue was thefirst issue of your magazine that Iever bought (though it hasn’tbeen the last), which I boughtbecause of the cover. Althoughonly in my late 30’s I did indeedgrow up with Korngold, swash-buckler fan that I am. For thatmatter, virtually every person myage from a certain geographicalarea (I grew up in Long Island,New York) grew up with Steinerand Victor Herbert music—a cer-tain metropolitan New York sta-tion showing both King Kong and

Babes in Toyland (aka March ofthe Wooden Soldiers) everyThanksgiving for years. (We mayhave tuned in for Laurel andHardy, but we got the full dose ofearly 20th century operetta.)Good music, like good comedy, istimeless.

The first few issues I read alsofeatured letters from people com-plaining that you hate JamesHorner, so I was pleased to seeyour reviewers were so favorableto The Mask of Zorro. I personal-ly enjoy a number of his scores,The Rocketeer and Braveheartamong them. I bought Zorrowithout having heard it, becauseof trusting Horner’s name andthe genre (swashbuckler again),that it would be a great score. I’mless bothered by people reusingtheir own instrumentation andeffects than taking others’. Oneof my favorite Goldsmith scores,Star Trek: The Motion Picture,has horns in the Klingon battlereminiscent of the battle musicfrom The Wind and the Lion.

This brings me to the subject ofyour reviews/buyer guides. Onecannot buy a score based on thetalent alone—names likeGoldsmith and Morricone are soversatile you never know whatyou’ll get—you need to factor inthe genre as well. I love theGoldsmith of The Blue Max, TheWind and the Lion and Legend—and while I know Planet of theApes is a great score, it is too dis-sonant for me to listen to forenjoyment. It seems to be yourmagazine’s editorial stance aswell that Goldsmith’s comedyscores are weak, so I avoid them.I bought First Knight based onyour review. (You mentionedRobin Hood—there’s thatKorngold/swashbuckler thingagain.) Anyway, here’s my pointwhen writing about music: I wishyou’d reference it—you know, an“if you liked Willow, Zorro is veryreminiscent” type of thing. I amtempted to pick up DangerousBeauty (I’ve yet to find it) basedon Andy Dursin’s review.Unfortunately, other than it being“enchanting” and “memorable,” Iknow little about it. The film is aperiod piece. Is the scorebaroque-influenced?Pseudo-Mozart? Compare it tosomething I know and I’ll be

more confident of where to spendmy money. Your Goldsmith guidedoes this (sometimes) by referenc-ing the composer’s other works.

W. Richard MartinEdison, New Jersey

Crowning Korngold

At the risk of dredging up adebate that is now a little

old, I would like to respond to theMail Bag Korngold Debate (Vol. 4,No. 2). I will soon be 23 years old,so I am relatively young and anewcomer to film score apprecia-tion. The first soundtracks thatcaught my attention were theones I grew up with: Star Wars,Close Encounters, Raiders, etc. Itis not surprising that JohnWilliams was my major introduc-tion to the soundtrack game, withMorricone’s The Untouchablesplaying a big part as well.

In my formative years of theearly ‘90s, I sought out scoresfrom recent movies, and some ofmy favorite composers includedElfman, Badalamenti, Silvestriand Kamen. I found a lot ofHerrmann to be boring and unin-teresting, although now I refer tohim as my second favorite com-poser. In a just few years, mytastes switched from mostly ‘80sand ‘90s scores to the golden agemusic of Herrmann, Rózsa,Newman and Waxman, followedby those who came on the scenein the ‘50s and ‘60s: Barry, Jarre,Bernstein, etc. Now it’s the“quirky” Elfman sound that Ifind boring and uninteresting; myfavorite of his recent output is thepoignant and nostalgic BlackBeauty.

The point I am trying to makeis that we like what we like andthat will change without muchexplanation. Despite my largefondness for the golden agegreats, I still only appreciate asmall amount of music byKorngold and Steiner, consideredtwo of the best, and I don’t thinkthat one should be called intoquestion because he or she does-n’t like a certain work. I havenever had more than a minorinterest in the juggernaut that isGoldsmith, and I don’t ownPlanet of the Apes, a score somehave said belongs in every serioussoundtrack collection (well, it’snot in mine). My classical collec-

M A I L B A G


Cueing up MenaceOur web site, www.filmscoremonthly.com,features dozens of links to the best that

the Internet has to offer on film music.Here’s a new site that will interest fans of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace:http://members.es.tripod.de/Befan/Episode1music. html has a cue sheet listing the musicas heard in the movie and on the CD.

tion is dominated by Russiancomposers, and like Mr. Cooke, Idon’t have any Mozart.

So we all have vastly differenttastes and get hooked on sound-tracks in different ways. (I’m will-ing to bet that a lot of Star Trekfans get into Goldsmith and sub-sequently get hooked on filmscores in general), and I find thedebate stimulating, but I wish wecould all just get along. Mr.Kendall, I salute your honesty,even though you and all otherGoldsmith fans are now baffled asto how I like Williams more.

Darren MacDonald5868 Maddock Dr. NE

Calgary, Alberta T2A 3W6Canada

Addison Attack

Ijust got my copy of A BridgeToo Far (on Rykodisc) yester-

day and have listened to it atleast five times. Holy smokes!

This is one of the many warfilm scores that I instantly fell inlove with as a kid (I was 12 at thetime). In fact, before I realizedsoundtracks existed, I made tapesof film music by holding a tinycassette player up to our TVspeaker when the movie finallymade it to the tube. I still haveone of those tapes, and I can hearmyself saying, in a pathetic,squeaky voice, “Dad, be quiet...I’m recording this!” My familynever understood this weird prac-tice—I was a movie music wackoin a home of tin ears. I listened tothose tapes endlessly, complete

with the unwanted family com-mentary in the background.

But I digress. The CD of ABridge Too Far has been beauti-fully remastered. As with manysuch reissues, I feel like I’m hear-ing it for the first time—crisp,clean, and full o’ balls! In fact, lis-tening to the whisper-quiet begin-ning of the finale (single snareand flute) was a totally new expe-rience without the static andcrackle of the LP.

The overture rocks. The DutchRhapsody has a depth andpoignancy I never imagined. Andthe “Airlift” cue sent chills downmy spine, the same way the StarWars theme did at the start ofThe Phantom Menace. Thankyou, Rykodisc!

How sad that John Addisonpassed on before he could hearhis masterpiece restored. If youhave a soft spot for rousing warscores, this has to go to the top ofyour list. Invade your local CDdealer and charge it!

Bill HarnsbergerPortland, Maine

The More Things Change...

Iam writing to express my con-cern about the all-too-percepti-

ble changes to Film ScoreMonthly that have occurred overthe past few months.

One serious problem besetsany magazine wishing to writeabout film music. The factionalnature of the film score commu-nity renders it impossible for asoundtrack journal to please

everyone all the time. (Indeed, aswww.filmscoremonthly.com hasshown on its Message Board, it isimpossible to please some peopleany of the time.)

I’m well aware that all maga-zines have a commercial impera-tive, and I’m sure your financialadvisers disapprove of the way inwhich you have alienated a sizablechunk of your readership by pub-lishing disparaging remarks aboutcomposer X or Y. However, it isthis editorial policy that has madeFSM the unique publication that Ihope it will continue to be.

Whilst I disagree with quite afew of your reviews, I continue tobuy your magazine because itadamantly refuses to kow-tow. Iadmire your magazine’s uncom-promising presentation of viewsand ideas that are often at vari-ance with, or subversive of, theprevailing film-score “ideology.”Furthermore, FSM is happily freefrom the turgid and ultimatelymeaningless writing associatedwith other film score magazinesthat I read.

As a committed “FSM-ista,” Iam worried about your currentpolicy of running for cover to thespecious safety of critical complai-sance. By allowing the safety cur-tain of deferential commentary todrop between your businessimperatives and your powerfulcritical “incisors” (that have “lac-erated” many a dreadful score inthe past) you are neutralizing apowerful weapon against medioc-rity in our beloved film music

industry. Heaven forbid that youshould become yet another pop-ulist film music magazine (suchas the “European publication”mentioned by C.H. Levenson, Vol.4, No. 3, pg. 12) offering littlemore than oleaginous endorse-ments of vapid scores that arepopular with mass audiences.

Fortunately, FSM is still farfrom the fawning obsequiousnessthat mars even the best of itscompetitors. All the signs, howev-er, are that FSM is on a slipperyslope. One look through recentreview pages offers ample proof.Though you are still careful tohighlight the main flaws of thesoundtracks that you review, younow seem to be keeping a greatdeal of discussion on a safely ano-dyne level—remaining (contraryto what Mr. Levenson says) dulytentative in your overall assess-ment of any score. Jeff Bond’srefusal to name his worst scoresof the year and your constantreiteration of the fact that youare no longer engaged in “Hornerbashing” is symptomatic of thischange in stance.

Nonetheless, Bond’s blithecomment about the need to ingra-tiate himself with the Hollywoodcommunity unfortunately testi-fies to the fact that the “raw”FSM is undoubtedly being trans-lated through the PR machine,preoccupied with commercial val-ues—effectively redefining themagazine’s views in order to con-form to conservative (read: prof-itable) convention. The net result


WantedSteven Dixon (27 Redcar Lane,Redcar, Cleveland TS10 3JJ, England;fax: 44-01642-490299) is lookingfor a book publisher for the manu-script, The Morricone Arrangements(30,000 words): a detailed study ofEnnio Morricone’s work as arrangerand conductor for theatre, TV, Italianpop charts, radio and film from 1959to present day.Michael Fishberg (10 HollandWalk, Stanmore HA7 3AL, England) islooking for vinyl LPs of Smog by PieroPiccione[?] on RCA-Italiana and TheItalian Job by Quincy Jones onParamount. Please advise price andcondition.C.H. Levenson (1434 TanglewoodLn, Lakewood NJ 08701) is lookingfor a CD from the soundtrack ofItalian ‘70s cop film Blazing Magnum

(Una Magnum Special per TonySaitta) by Armando Trovajoli. If avail-able, please contact and indicateprice.

For Sale or TradeMichel Coulombe (3440 Mont-Royal Est, Montréal, Québec H1X3K3, Canada; ph: 514-529-0133;[email protected]) has the follow-ing CDs for sale: Batteries NotIncluded (Horner, MCA), Runaway(Goldsmith, Varèse), Friday the 13th(Manfredini, Milan), La Baule/Les Pins(Sarde, Philips), La RévolutionFrançaise (Delerue, Polydor) and oth-ers.Laurent Semhoun (3 rue Joanes,75014 Paris, France) has CDs for saleincluding rare items by Delerue(Summer Story), Barry (Ruby Cairo),Morricone, Horner, Elfman, Goldsmith

(40 items, including The ‘Burbs),Jarre (Dreamscape), Williams. Writefor list.Jordi Fortes Serra (Av. SanAntoni Ma Claret, 318, pta. 30,08041 Barcelona, Spain) has for saleor trade (send your list): El Nombrede la Rosa (James Horner, Spain,$35), The Cardinal (Jerome Moross,$75), Dominick and Eugene (TrevorJones, $100), The Egyptian (B.Herrmann/A. Newman, $75), TheScalphunters/Hang ‘em High/TheWay West (Bernstein/Frontiere, $50).

Both Wanted & For Sale/TradeAdam Harris (PO Box 1131,Sheffield MA 01257-1131; ph: 413-229-2884) has a small list of sound-track CDs for sale or trade. Lookingfor a good audio recording of thesoundtrack to the new movie, The

Fantasticks, currently unreleased.

1 ,000,000 SOUNDTRACKS,ORIGINAL CASTS,TELEVISION, NOSTALGIA LPs!Rare originals,limited editions, imports, reissues,most mint condition! Catalog—$1.00.Soundtrack/Television Valueguide—$10. 1,000,000 VIDEO MOVIES! Science fiction, horror, silents, for-eign, cult, exploitation, all genres! Rare titlesfound here! Catalog—$1.00. Big descrip-tive catalog—$10. RTS/FS,Box 93897, Las Vegas NV89193.

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F S M R E A D E R A D S

is a nullification of the overallimpact of FSM and a de-accentua-tion which serves to render itsfilm score “politics” subservientto mass market needs. Thus, inan attempt to assuage radical dis-affection among readers and com-posers, the magazine has endedup embracing reactionary values(previously anathema to FSM’seditor) and simultaneously “dis-enfranchising” those readers whobuy FSM for the very qualitiesthat the journal seems to be jetti-soning.

Clearly, the changes in editor-ial policy do not detract fromthe value of FSM as an eminent-ly readable magazine for theaverage film score fan; it simplymeans that it is no longer thetrenchant journal that made itan automatic first-choice maga-zine for me and soundtrack fansof my ilk.

Jerzy SliwaKrakow, Poland

Well, a few curse words ought to do the trick...except we don’t even do those anymore, do we?(I just use them in person.)

A letter like this makes my heart sinkbecause I know Jerzy’s right, but at the sametime, you know... you guys aren’t exactly criticaltheorists. We’ll get a letter like this, telling us tobe hard as nails, and then a letter telling us howoffensive we are and that we should be nicer.(By the way, we don’t have any financial ana-lysts.) What more do you want from us?

...The More They Stay the Same?

Recently, I had a long discus-sion with my brother about

life, death, work and, obviously,movies and film music. We bothhave loved cinema and film musicsince our infancy, thanks mainlyto Star Wars (what a big sur-prise!). We are 20 and 19, andnow we are trying to make ourentrance in the things we want todo: I’m aspiring to work in film asa director or writer, and mybrother wants to make an impactin comic book writing and draw-ing. Yes, it’s not easy but we bothhave this burning passion, and Ithink that, in both cases, it isworth trying.

In our long discussion wetalked also about Film ScoreMonthly and we noted that you,

Lukas, have always kept yourwork in a beautiful way, with wit,fun and also seriousness. Sinceyou started, you have been drivenby your burning passion for filmmusic and have always main-tained a happy spirit in the thingsyou do, be it writing for a few peo-ple or producing a long-awaitedGoldsmith CD. I don’t think thatyou have more money and oppor-tunities than years ago, want tobe a David Geffen of film scoreCDs, or be a sort of “soundtrackworld” guru. To me, the mostbeautiful thing, that you do withFSM is share your love of film andfilm music with other people whohave the same passion and makeit the way you want, with thegreat freedom to write your opin-ions. This is a good thing. Mybrother and I share your way ofthinking about movies and filmmusic. We admire you and also

your usual collaborators. Wedon’t feel part of an exclusiveclub, and neither do we feel like“nerds” about the film world. Forexample, we are anxious andexcited to see the new Star Warsmovie, but we are waiting for itsimply as a movie, not the eventthat will change our lives.

To me, FSM is more like a circleof friends. Your work for FSM is asort of model for me because youhave always done the things youwant to do and I think that it is animportant thing. As you said, “Iput my money where my mouthis.” It’s great.

Hey, Lukas, I don’t want toembarrass you. I subscribe toFSM mainly because I find a lotof interesting news, reviews, com-ments and interviews about filmmusic—it’s not my HolyScripture! I hope this letter is notannoying even if it doesn’t talkabout Varèse Sarabande’s 30minute CDs or how Goldsmithhas changed.

Maurizio CaschettoMilano, Italy

Actually this is all very nice. Thanks!

M A I L B A G Send your letters to: FSM Mail Bag 5455 Wilshire Blvd Suite 1500 Los Angeles CA 90036,

or to [email protected]


SCREEN ARCHIVESENTERTAINMENTLarge selection of new domestic and import releases, older releases and out-of-print CDs

Major credit cards accepted.Write for free catalog!

PO Box 500Linden, VA 22642

ph: (540) 635-2575fax: (540) 635-8554

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visit: www.screenarchives.com

STUART MATTHEWMANTwin Falls Idaho

About a love triangle involving awoman and conjoined twins, TwinFalls Idaho marks the writing and

directing debut of twin brothers Mark andMichael Polish (who also play the conjoinedtwins in the film) and features a score byStuart Matthewman (pictured at right), bestknown for his Grammy-winning work withSade and Maxwell.

“I got involved in doing this movie becauseI’ve known the two directors as friends for awhile, and I did the music to an earlier shortfilm they’d done,” Matthewman explains.While the musician has held a long interestin film scoring, he found the process of find-ing a scoring project to be a difficult one. “Itwas hard for me to get started; I met all themusic supervisors in L.A. and did the wholeschmooze bit, and they all said the samething: come back when you’ve done a film.I’ve been busy doing other projects as well.We’re doing another Sade album and I’vebeen producing and co-writing with Maxwellon an album.”

After gaining musical knowledge playingclarinet and saxophone in school,Matthewman decided to focus on music as acareer. “I studied electronic music byStockhausen and Cage at music college,which wasn’t particularly useful in my song-writing, but I was also studying jazz saxo-phone and then I moved to London and metup with Sade and the rest of the guys in theband—that’s when I sat down and learnedthe guitar and learned to write songs.” Hisinterest in film music extends back to west-ern scores he remembers from the ‘50s. “I’vealways been fascinated by filmmusic and the way music can havean influence, good or bad, on thescene. I was very influenced byscores like Taxi Driver, and the ideathat a single theme used throughoutcan make you feel a certain way:scared or sexy or sad or happy, theway that Bernard Herrmann didthat.”

Twin Falls Idaho introduces itsconjoined-twin characters with akind of musical pun. “We wanted tohave a Thai theme for the begin-ning, obviously because they wereSiamese twins,” Matthewmanrecalls. “But it was very awkward

because the Thai scale is an odd scale to tryand mix with Western music. So then I wastrying to do it with little samples here andthere, and I came across a CD that had an acappella vocal of a Thai folk song, and thisgirl’s voice was so haunting, and I ended uparranging some strings around it and then itkind of grew from there. I tried finding some-one in New York, a Thai group that I couldwork with, and it wasn’t happening. But thatset the mood for the rest of the film. We knewthat the music was going to have to be verydelicate, because there was so much dialoguein the movie to tip-toe around. They didn’twant it to be too slushy, and because the filmis very poignant and sad it was too easy tosend people over the edge crying.”

The string writing in the film is done in achamber style that may remind some of

scores written in the ‘60s.Matthewman’s influences for thiskind of writing took divergentpaths: “I’m a massive Mahler fan,particularly the adagio move-ments of his symphonies, andalso I loved all the Jackie Gleasonalbums. He sold millions of thesealbums for strings that he con-ducted, these massive stringorchestras doing versions ofwhatever was happening at thattime made incredibly romantic.His idea was that the averageworking-class guy in Brooklyncould have these—that wheneveryou saw someone in a movie on a

date and the guy invites the girl over to hisapartment there was this incredibly lushmusic playing in the background. He wasmaking these albums with the idea that thiswould give guys something to play when theyinvited the girl over. He released albums withtitles like How to Change Her Mind. I wasalso influenced by Stokowski—he got anamazing sound out of the strings in theorchestra, and some people didn’t like it, butit was very romantic sounding. Rob Mathusdid the orchestrations for me.”

Several cues feature imaginative distor-tions and processing of acoustic sound.“There’s one scene where they dream they’rebeing separated,” Matthewman says.“There’s a piano playing and a melotromesound and I put it on as a kind of joke,because the footage was shot onto 16mm andthey actually messed up the film by accidentand put some scratches on it. The soundsgave it a very old look and feel, as if the musicwas scratched as well.”

Matthewman found the film’s budgetaryrestrictions liberating. “It was quite goodhaving the budget I had, which was nothing;I think most people would have liked to dothe whole film with an orchestra, but we justdidn’t have the budget. I wanted it to soundlike Mahler and wanted to have this largestring section, and Rob Mathus said that notonly couldn’t we afford to have all thosestrings, but that a smaller group wouldsound much more intimate. So it’s a goodthing sometimes not to have a lot of money.We did all the strings in one three-hour ses-


D O W N B E A T

Instead ofcomplainingabout aminuscule

music budget,Matthewmanmade the

limitation avirtue.

Love, Religion and Murder SOUNDTRACKS IN THE WORKS

sion. I then had to rethink and use samplesand I also played guitar and clarinet andtried to give it this very low-fidelity sound.The thing that was hardest about the moviewas not to be too obvious and corny. There’sso many scenes where it could be really sadand you had to not go too far with it. There’sa scene where the mother finally visits thetwins in the hospital and puts a blanket onthem, and I was trying to figure out thetempo of the strings and it went through tothe next scene where one of the twins is cry-ing because his brother is dying, and when itfinally felt right to me I looked up at a heartmonitor on the screen which was reading 100beats per minute, and that was the sametempo I had the strings at. I thought ‘Wow,no wonder it felt right.’”

The film was a learning experience inmore ways than one. “I didn’t know anythingabout reel breaks!” Matthewman explains.“It’s so old-fashioned that they actually swapreels, and I didn’t know anything about that.A lot of my cues were going over these reelbreaks and they’d say ‘Well, we can’t do that.’I’d read all these books about film scoringand no one mentioned it!”

—Jeff Bond

ELIA CMIRALStigmata

It’s the age-old dilemma of creativeendeavors: after an impressive debut, how

do you avoid the sophomore slump? In EliaCmiral’s case the answer is simple—justdebut again. Cmiral’s work was introducedto mainstream American audiences with1998’s Ronin. But, despite its American ori-gins, the film was largely a European pro-duction chockablock with French vistas, tapi-oca-thick accents, and a London sessionorchestra performing Cmiral’s score. 1999’sStigmata, a religious thriller from directorRupert Wainwright (The Sadness of Sex)starring Patricia Arquette and GabrielByrne, afforded the composer his first oppor-tunity to work with the famous LosAngeles session orchestras—thusmarking, somewhat unofficially,his true American debut.

Still, Cmiral’s score is anythingbut star-spangled Americana.Here, as in Ronin, he brings asense of musical adventurousnessto the project with a combinationof ethnic instruments, technologi-cal modernity, large-scale sym-phonic forms, Eastern-styled voic-es, and a touch of European ele-gance. While the finished productis obviously a labor of Cmiral’slove, its inception and creation wasa model of blood, sweat, tears and

deprivation. The film’s destined-for-contro-versy storyline involves the discovery andensuing translation of a new scroll fromJesus Christ. The scroll appears to decry thecreation of the church and, as the Catholichierarchy tries to suppress the discovery, peo-ple suffering from stigmata—crucifixion-style wounds—begin mysteriously appear-ing.

“The score to Stigmata was one of myworst nightmares ever,” says composerCmiral, “because I was kind of affected bythis craziness. I always try to dig to the prob-lems of the movie—whatever I work on—inmy head. So to think about Jesus Christ’sscrolls, about the translation, about stigma-ta, and about dying of bleeding with holes inyour hands....” Paradoxically, Cmiral com-posed his Stigmata music during the cheeryholiday season of 1998-99. “I wrote the musicin December and January,” he notes. “I sentmy family to Tokyo [Cmiral’s wife is fromJapan] and I stayed here by myself. I feltthat, to write this, I needed to be absorbed100% by my dreams and my visions. A happyChristmas with candlelight and a one-and-a-half-year-old baby doesn’t fit, and since Iwork at my house, I would be affected. So Ilived here for two months like a monk, justordering food and writing 18 hours a day.”

For the film’s main theme, Cmiral wrote awistfully redolent minor theme featuring anIranian ney flute—a millennia-old instru-ment that actually existed in the time ofChrist. This theme is juxtaposed over and in-between all sorts of modernistic effects; high-octane drum loops, gangly twelve-tone rows,thick pan-chromatic clusters, and other-worldly synth pads each take turns converg-ing around the melodic fragments. “I like toput things to contrasts—like in life,” says thecomposer. “All our big heroes from Korngoldto Bernard Herrmann to Jerry Goldsmithuse these big contrasts.” As in Ronin,Cmiral’s music, whether it’s jarringly rhyth-mic or floating and cornerless, does a strikingjob sustaining the pitch-black mood of the

film, thus giving his contrasts arooting in emotional consistency.

Says Cmiral of his first com-pletely American scoring experi-ence, “I got a great recording ses-sion with an 80-piece orchestraone day and a 55 the next. It’sincredible, big, huge and modern.I love it, and I think it works verywell.”

Sometime Smashing PumpkinBilly Corgan also contributedsome synth-based music toStigmata, but his work was inde-pendent of Cmiral’s. Stigmata iscurrently due for release in the-aters this summer.—Doug Adams

JONATHAN PRICESammyville

Sammyville is an independent featurefrom director Christopher Hatton, loose-

ly based on a real town in which one man’sword is law. The film stars David Drayer asCam, a drifter drawn back to his hometownafter the death of his adoptive parents, andDeep Space Nine’s Chase Masterson as asocial worker searching for a missing boy.The film marks the first feature assignmentfor composer Jonathan Price, a graduate ofthe USC film scoring program whose previ-ous work has been limited to direct-to-videomovies like Merchants of Death and Vampireson Sorority Row, and assisting composersChris Young and Pete Anthony.

Price’s status as an alumnus of theUniversity of Iowa got him noticed by fellowUI graduate Hatton, who saw a letter in thealumni newspaper and asked Price if he’d beinterested in scoring Sammyville. “I sent hima demo CD and he liked it but he kept onlooking, and after about a month he calledme back and said he hadn’t found anybodybetter.”

Price’s score was shaped by the film’s elu-sively dark subject matter and its minusculebudget. “The music ended up representingthe mystery and threat of what Sammyvilleis,” Price explains. “The whole story behindthe death of the parents, because we don’tfind out what happened until the end of themovie. Musically, the bulk of it plays on thatmystery. There’s a theme that comes out ofall this, sort of a hope that they can getbeyond the mystery and the murders.”

The opening cues dealing with the depar-ture of Drayer’s character Cam forSammyville deliberately plays against theoutcome of the story. “At the beginning of thestory the music is guitar music that is playingCam’s surface qualities. It’s very much aclassic rock sound because he’s riding aHarley. At first my idea was to play Cam’sinner injury and hurt with a piano melody orsomething, but that would pretty much tipthe hat about what he’s going through,which we don’t find out about until about athird of the way through the movie. What we


D O W N B E A T

A happyfamily

Christmas bycandlelightwas no

inspiration tosophomore

scorer Elia Cmiral.

ended up doing was something that soundedlike road trip music.”

While Drayer’s and Chase Masterson’scharacters have music directly associatedwith them, Price avoided doing this for PaulWadleigh’s pivotal character of Sammy, alurking figure seemingly in control of thetown. “The character of Sammy doesn’t real-ly have music associated with him, but thetown definitely has a sort of musique con-crete atmospheric thing going on. The peopleof the town have a stick rhythm that comesin and this also is associated with Sammy inthis well-done shot where he comes back intotown and there’s no sound except for themusic. I stayed away from nailing Sammyevery time he appears in the film becausewe’re not exactly sure what his role is. Themystery music and the threat music sur-rounds the areas that he’s in.”

The film’s low budget meant that Pricehad to generate most of the score’s soundswith his own equipment. “Even if I’d had alarger budget it would probably have endedup sounding similar,” the composer admits.“I talked to Chris about getting live musi-cians but it turned out that the budgetwouldn’t make that possible. So I originallystarted scoring it for synthesized acousticinstruments on a few scenes, and I realizedthat those scenes needed things that weremore like sound design anyway. Then therewere other scenes like the hot springs sceneand the final scene that really needed a fullersound and we didn’t have the budget for anorchestra. What I did was to synthesizeeverything that I could, and whatever didn’tsound right I pulled in a live player for. Itturned out that I didn’t use much brassexcept for a solo horn, and the strings andwoodwinds were easy to fudge with, to makethem sound close enough that you could getan idea what I was going for. I ended uppulling in a live solo horn player for one cueand a guitar player.”

Despite the heavy presence of synth padsand sampling, the score often has an uncan-ny acoustic sound. “I threw a lot of the rulesof synthesizing out the window. I decided Iwas just going to go through my ear, usingreverb on reverb. A lot of people say to keepthe patches in mono and use a stereo spreadand then put everything through the samereverb patch, and what I did was record everysingle instrument differently, put themthrough a couple different reverb patches,record them all in stereo using digitalPerformer, and actually control the volumeexpressively. I decided not to do that with avolume controller in MIDI, but rather torecord everything digitally at full volume andthen go in and actually graph out the volumechart paths for each one. I think that madethe difference, because I was able to get

string attacks that made sense for eachphrase, as opposed to just going in and hav-ing the same string attacks for everything.”

For one key scene, Price tried his hand atsongwriting. “There are live instruments onthe song, ‘I Didn’t Know.’ Chris had tempedthat with a period song from Blade Runnerthat Vangelis actually wrote for the movie,and there was no way they could get therights to that. They tried to get another peri-od song that would fit, but Sammy is listen-ing to a Victrola in a long scene where there’sno dialogue and really nothing much hap-

pening except for Cam sneaking through thehouse, so it’s a tense, important scene andthe music is really in the fore. They weren’table to find anything that captured sort of abittersweet romantic love song, and I said I’dlove to do something like that. Hattan wasworried that we’d have to synthesize a lot ofthe sound but in the end not very much wassynthesized. I think the piano and some lowtrombones are in there that I didn’t bring upvery much in the mix. And the sound guystalled the frequency to make it sound like itwas coming out of a Victrola.” —J.B. FSM


Twenty years ago, the concept ofa “film scoring school” wouldnot have existed. At that time,scoring film was considered aless-than-serious job for a “seri-ous” composer. Now, however,scoring for film and television

has become a sought-after career for manymusicians, and not just classes but entirecourses and degrees have developed dedi-cated to educating the modern-day compos-er in applying his or her art to picture.

At first, these programs were not takenseriously—even to this day there is somespeculation as to their effectiveness andworth. How many top film composers actu-ally “went to school” to learn their craft?Most of them either wrote for bands, playedin bands themselves, or had the incrediblefortune of a last name like N-E-W-M-A-N.However, this is rapidly changing, both withthe frequency of new courses and programs,and with the success of composers whohave taken this route with their careers.

Though many courses and classes exist,the focus of this article will be the AdvancedStudies Program in Film Scoring forMotion Pictures and Television at theUniversity of Southern California. Havingjust finished this intensive one-year pro-gram, I feel capable of giving an extendedoverview to those who might be interestedin applying for it or one of the many otherprograms either presently available or indevelopment worldwide.

This article is in question/answer form,anticipating what the typical student orcomposer might ask about the program.Beware: I will be completely honest in myanswers. This isn’t kindergarten—it’s yourlife and career, and you must be absolutelypositive that something like this is for you.(If you want to feel warm and fuzzy put onRudy and take a nap.)

What is the Advanced StudiesProgram in Film Scoring for MotionPictures and Television?The Advanced Film Scoring Program atUSC is a one-year, intensive study course

designed to prepare the student/composerin all areas of film composition. Since it isonly a year-long course, it does not qualifyas a master’s degree program; graduatesinstead receive an Advanced StudiesCertificate. While it may be something niceto hang on the wall and stare at, a film scor-ing certificate in itself will do nothing foryou in ultimately scoring a film. In otherwords, you do not take this program inorder to put it on your résumé; you takethis program for the experience and real-life situations it creates for you.

The first thing you should realize aboutfilm scoring (or any other area of the musicbusiness) is that it is 10% music and 90%business- and people-skills. The USC pro-gram covers many non-musical topics likebudgeting, marketing, engineering, con-tracting, and any and all situations relatedto the music business and/or scoring pic-ture. While film score analysis, film orches-tration, arranging, etc. are also taught, thecourse is designed to make sure you canhandle doing a score on your own—in everyarea of production.

In the real world, the first scores you dowill consist of “package” deals (all costsincluded) that do not provide the luxuries ofmusic editors, copyists, contractors orlawyers. You will be prepared at the end ofthis course either to do a majority of thesethings yourself, or at least know enough tohire the right person for the job.

How do I get into the program? This program, unlike others, has a very lim-ited class size. USC generally accepts nomore than 20 students a year into this pro-gram. (This year, 1998-1999, there are 26students, but due to studio-time demands,the number is unlikely to grow .) With anapproximate application rate of 60 to 85hopeful students a year—a number thathas been increasing gradually—there isstiff competition. While USC does have asimilar bachelor’s degree with a film scor-ing emphasis, the program accepts only upto four undergraduate students. Add to thata large number of foreign students both

applying and accepted, and the number ofspots available for U.S. non-undergraduatestudents is quite slim.

However, I have been told that the accep-tance procedure is somewhat on a revolvingbasis. This means that the sooner you apply,the better your chances are of being accept-ed. I myself applied over a year early. I was-n’t about to take any chances, and I wouldencourage anybody else seriously interestedto do the same.

What does it take to apply? Applicants must submit a tape or CD withfive to eight minutes of music which theapplicant has composed his/herself. You arealso asked to submit a score for at leastthree of the pieces. It is suggested that themusic vary in style and form. Your materialis evaluated by a number of different facul-ty members within the music school,including Dr. Buddy Baker, the director ofthe program. If the thought of having yourcompositions evaluated makes you light-headed and sick to your stomach, quit now.

Within a few months (or more, depend-ing on when you apply), you will receive aletter informing you of your acceptance (ornot) into the program. Understand thatthis letter does not guarantee a spot withinthe program. You must first contact USCand inform them that you are in fact com-ing. Many applicants may receive this let-ter, but only the first 20 or so who respondwill be admitted. Stay on your toes whenapplying and waiting for responses. As mostpeople know, colleges and universities arenotorious for misplacing and/or losing yourmaterial. Stay on top of things until you’reliterally taking notes from ElmerBernstein.

What kind of people are accepted into the program at USC?While this varies with every class, the stu-dents in my year came from very differentbackgrounds, ranging from purely academ-ic circles to completely commercial ones.My former classmates came from placeslike Sweden, Portugal, Montana, Korea and

S O , Y O U WA N T T O B E A F I L M C O M P O S E R ?

SOUNDTRACK101A recent graduate answers practical questions

about the USC film scoring programB Y J A S P E R R A N D A L L


Chicago. Some have been previous profes-sors, studio owners or band leaders, whileothers like myself were coming out ofundergraduate or graduate degrees inmusic. USC strives to create as varied aclass as possible. For me, this diversity wasa fascinating and valuable asset to the expe-rience.

One thing common to all students, how-ever, is the minimum of a bachelor’s degreein music. This is not the time or place tolearn diminished seventhchords. While the courses doinstruct the students in musicalareas dealing with film composi-tion, it is understood that eachstudent is well versed in compo-sition, orchestration, andarranging. This course isdesigned to take those skillsalready present, and apply themto film as efficiently as possi-ble—diminished chords and all.

Who are the instructors within the program?This varies by year, but the coreteachers have remained thesame throughout the past fewterms. The director of the pro-gram is Buddy Baker. Duringhis 28 years at Disney, he com-posed and arranged the musicfor over 40 theatrical and 125television features. Because ofBuddy’s position within themusic and film industry, he isable to bring in some of film’sbest composers—both past andpresent—to teach within the program.During this past year, some of the pro-gram’s regular instructors included DavidRaksin (Laura, Forever Amber), LeonardRosenman (East of Eden, Star Trek IV),Elmer Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven,The Ten Commandments) and ChristopherYoung (Species, Hard Rain).

In addition to the opportunity to studyand score under these well-known com-posers, our class had the pleasure of meet-ing once a week with David Vogel, presidentof Walt Disney Pictures, and Bill Green,Vice President of Music at Disney. Throughtheir generosity of time, we were able tomeet and have open forums with profes-sional music editors, producers, directors,agents, and last but not least, composers.These included people such as JamesNewton Howard, Thomas Newman, JohnFrizzell, Randy Newman and JamesHorner (he did some movie about a boat).Aside from the pleasure of getting to meetthese composers in person, it was a won-

derful opportunity to ask them practicalquestions and get open (and honest)answers.

How much does the program at USC cost?The tuition for the ‘97-‘98 school yeartotaled a little over $20,000. This is a hugefigure—especially for a graduate levelcourse. However, this program does not fallinto any normal category within the school

curriculum. While normal graduate tuitionwould be half that amount, the schoolcharges the undergraduate rate for the pro-gram. This is due to the cost of the manyscoring sessions throughout the year.

As far as financing, many of us appliedfor student loans. The typical graduate stu-dent can borrow up to $18,500 betweensubsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans.While this makes the bill a little more man-ageable, remember that these are loans,and you will be reminded of that fact everymonth for the next 15 years (or more). Ifyou are already thinking about how you canapply for scholarships, be warned thatalmost no graduate-level scholarship con-siders applicants of non-degree-grantingprograms, like this one.

The USC program is a huge sacrifice ofmoney and time, which is all the more rea-son you should think about it before you doanything. This is not the place for the faint-hearted. There is one financial ray of hope,though. During the second and final semes-

ter in the program, five separate scholar-ships are awarded averaging between twoand three thousand dollars apiece. Theseawards are given on a purely subjectivevote, so there is no guarantee of winning,but the possibility exists for any of the 20students.

Aside from the tuition, be prepared topay for food and housing, either by holdingmultiple part-time jobs, like I did, or hittingyour parents up for a “personal” loan.

[Editor’s note: USC is a lovely campus, but islocated in a terrible area of Los Angeles. You’llneed a car.]

What other kinds of opportunities will I have at USC?Aside from the class instruction, there arethe scoring sessions. These are the heart ofthe program, and what makes it one of thefinest ones available. Beginning a couple ofmonths into the term, the students aregiven multiple scenes from televisionand/or major motion pictures to scorethroughout the year. During the firstsemester (fall), the scoring sessions areapproximately two or more weeks apart.This gives the instructors ample class timeto view and analyze the scenes with the stu-dents, spot them, sketch the layout of thescore, orchestrate, and produce parts forthe players. (Multi-tasking becomes secondnature by the end of the year.)

Each session is broken into two separaterecording dates (days) and is recorded at a


FUTURE FSM COVER CANDIDATES?The graduating class of 1997-98

gathered on the USC campus

professional studio with a professionalengineer and studio musicians. While theprogram has been using a smallHollywood studio to record for the pastnumber of years, I’m now told the stu-dents will be scoring at least half of theirsessions at Paramount Pictures. As part ofthe whole learning experience, the stu-dents themselves literally run the session,

overseeing everything from production,contracting, librarian work, DAT andvideo recording—even catering (yes, food).This provides the students with valuable“hands-on” experience crucial to runninga smooth scoring session in the real world.In fact, this whole program is meant torepresent the real world, which happensto be a lot different than the classroom.

During the second semester, once thestudents are more comfortable with con-ducting, working with musicians, etc., theheat is really turned up, and you have asession every other week or less. This hadto be one of the most demanding things Ihave ever done, but one of the mostrewarding and educational experiences ofmy life. And again, schedules like this arewhat you will encounter in the real world.(Case in point: Goldsmith and Air ForceOne—two weeks, baby.)

It is actually the sessions themselvesthat attract a lot of people to USC. Theywill provide you with a nice demo once yougraduate, especially if you have not hadmuch experience or opportunity workingwith live musicians. The ensembles andinstrumentations themselves dependupon the particular scene chosen to score.(Most instructors allowed us to watch afilm they brought in, and had us choose atotal of three to four scenes.)

The instrumentations varied fromsmall string ensembles with percussion, torhythm groups with brass and vocalists, tobig bands, and ultimately, a session with

the entire 80+ member USC orchestra.On average, though, the groups hadaround 14 players, with varying instru-mentation and doublings (multiple instru-ments per player). The process of creatingmusic provides the student with incredi-ble flexibility, education, and experience.This is one area of the program where youdefinitely get your money’s worth.

How can I prepare for film scoring school?As mentioned before, knowing yourorchestration, composition, arranging, etc.is a prerequisite. Since there are so manyother topics and areas of study for the pro-gram to address, little time is spent onteaching the basics. Even providing you’rewell-versed in these, it does not hurt toread through scores and orchestrationbooks (Adler and Piston are a couple ofgreat ones) to refresh your memory. Itshould be a goal of yours to hit the groundrunning upon entering this program. Onceyou get behind in writing, you’re in serioustrouble. (I’ve been there—you don’t havetime to stop and catch your breath.)

Listen to as many scores as possible—both film and non-film. Don’t just settlefor Mozart or Haydn, take a chance withTchaikovsky, or Berg, or Holst. Exposeyourself to as many different styles as pos-sible. When you hear something you like,try to figure out why you like it. Is it thevoicing? The instrumentation? The coun-terpoint? While few if any film scores areavailable to the general public (copy-right/publisher reasons, mostly), there arean awful lot of “classical” scores guaran-teed to be available at your local library.You’d be amazed at what you can learn bysimply listening to the material over andover again—and I mean really listen, notjust for enjoyment’s sake.

Watch as many different movies as youcan—both old and new. Listen to how the

music works within the scene and withthe characters. What do you find effective?What do you not, and if so, why? This allseems like common sense, but when wasthe last time you seriously did any of thesethings? And more importantly, when wasit someone other than Williams, orHorner, or Goldsmith that you listened to?Go on, take a chance—you’ll be amazed atwhat you’ll find, especially with olderscores and composers.

For those of you who are most eager,record a scene off television, and writemusic to it—score it. There are a number ofbooks available that teach the basics of filmscoring—go ahead and get a head start onyour classmates. That way you can concen-trate more on the music itself, instead oftrying to understand things like the princi-ples behind drop frame and non-dropframe, and the process for converting froman 8-base to a 10-base system.

Last but not least, write music. I don’tmean “sit-down-at-your-keyboard-and-plunk-out-some-‘masterpiece’-in-your-sequencer.” I mean really write something.Take a pencil and notation paper, lock your-self in your room, and listen. As far as I’mconcerned, the reason there is so muchcrappy music written these days is due tothe fact that no one truly listens any more.All they care about is a paycheck—whatev-er method they use to create that music isfine by them. If the majority of your com-position is based only upon what you canplay with your ten fingers and a sustainpedal, you’ll never get past sounding likebad Yanni (if you can imagine what thatwould sound like.) I can guarantee thatyou’ll make leaps and bounds in you writ-ing and orchestration.

Are there any other programs available aside from USC’s?Yes, there are many. Some schools only havea few classes that deal specifically with filmscoring, while others have whole programs.A few even have full two-year master’sdegree programs (which would allow thepossibility for scholarships). After only a lit-tle searching, a classmate of mine was ableto find programs and courses at places likeNew York University, Cal State L.A.,Florida State, Georgia State, University ofMemphis, University of Miami, Universityof California at Berkeley, and University ofNorth Carolina (they have a two-year mas-ter’s degree). The Berklee College of Musicin Boston has a growing film scoringdepartment which probably mandates anarticle of its own.

One of the other well-known programsfound in Los Angeles is the extension pro-


COMPOSER SIZE COMPARISON CHART: Author Randall with Elmer Bernstein (left) and James Horner.

gram at UCLA. Unlike the USC program,the UCLA extension program has open reg-istration to the public, i.e., anyone whowants to take the course can. Since theUSC program is capped at 20 students, andis by acceptance only, you can be assuredthat your fellow classmates will be morethan serious—and focused—towards theircareers as film composers. After all, it is nosmall sacrifice.

Aside from these stateside schools withclasses and courses, there are many pro-grams overseas. These include those at theUniversity of British Columbia, the RoyalCollege of Music in London, the RoyalAcademy of Music, and two known pro-grams in Germany. This is not to say thatthere aren’t other programs and schoolswith similar courses. I suggest that anyoneinterested go online in search of informa-tion at these and any other schools. Everyone of them should have a web page tobrowse through.

Who do I contact to get information about the USC program?You should call the Admissions Departmentof the USC School of Music (213-740-8986).It can send you all the information youneed. Prospective students are allowed withpermission to observe class sessions duringthe school year. This would be an opportune

time to talk with the current students andask them questions about the program.They have by far the best feedback you canget. Serious inquiries only, please.

Final Thoughts I hope that this article has provided youwith some insight into film scoring school.My only concern is that you realize howserious and costly a step this is as a careermove. When my classmates and I met forour first orientation in August 1997, wewere told that this program would compressinto one year seven to eight years of learn-ing about and experiencing the world of filmscoring “on your own.” Now that I have fin-ished the program, I agree 100% with thatstatement. This is not to say that one can-not make it without this program’s assis-tance, but it sure has helped me in gettingwhere I want to go. Aside from the educa-tion and hands-on experience, you create aninstant network from all areas of the indus-try. Some use this as possible employment.

Others, like myself, use it towards a contin-uing education. Either way, that networkalone could be viewed as more valuable thananything else the program has to offer.

More importantly, you also become partof an instant “support group” with yourfellow classmates when it comes to futureprojects (or lack of future projects).Suddenly, you have an identity within thefilm music industry. Granted, it may besmall, but it is one that will grow withtime and effort. That alone puts you lightyears ahead of many other hopeful com-posers out there. Use it to the best of youradvantage.

Remember, whether you choose to go tofilm scoring school or not, don’t do any-thing without an awful lot of thought andpreparation. After all, this isn’t Kansasany more. Life is a game, and taking on aprogram like USC’s might be the onemove that wins it all for you, or costs youeverything you have. Play smart. FSM


Learn to write music—really write something. Take a pencil and notation paper, lock yourself in your room, and listen.


“If you see one movie this

summer, see... Star Wars. But

if you see two movies this sum-

mer, see Austin Powers: The Spy

Who Shagged Me!” ❦ So blared the

trailers to the second installment in the

unfolding Austin Powers franchise—and

they might have sold the film short. The orig-

inal Mike Myers spy spoof was a box-office sleep-

er that became a big hit on video and DVD, and expec-

tations for the sequel are even higher.

One of the key ingredients of the first film’s success was its mix ofretro ‘60s-style songs and an ingenious take-off by composer GeorgeS. Clinton of the John Barry James Bond scores. Clinton returns forthe sequel, noting that the approach to scoring a film as bizarre asAustin Powers is more straightforward than you might think. “WhatI try to do is come up with the score that I think the character imag-ines for himself,” he says. “Even though to us the characters are silly

SHaGGiNGaSeQueL SCoRe

Composer Clinton atthe Austin Powers 2

scoring session.

George S. Clinton and Director Jay Roach on AUSTIN POWERS 2:

THE SPY WHO SHAGGED MEby Jeff Bond

and funny, they don’t know that. They think they’re really hip orevil, in the case of Dr. Evil.”

Clinton wrote a lengthy score that created an unshakable 007 vibefor both the original movie and its sequel, The Spy Who ShaggedMe, with input from music consultant Chris Douridas, director JayRoach and others. “We made a choice early on not to do comedicmusic or to directly parody anything,” Roach recalls. “We wanted toembrace the styles rather than mock them. We figured that Austinwould be as broad as we needed to be, so we would go the other wayon the music, the visual style and the way the film was shot andcast: to do everything very straight and in the genres from whichwe were inspired.” Inspirations for the first film’s score includedBarry’s Thunderball, Henry Mancini’s The Party, JerryGoldsmith’s scores for the Derek Flint movies, and other influ-ences which Clinton was able to weave into a cohesive score.

The movie’s title music came courtesy of legendary composerand producer Quincy Jones, whose wild “Soul Bossa Nova”formed the basis for an instantly indelible opening dance number.Music consultant Douridas (former host of NPR’s MorningBecomes Eclectic in L.A.) suggested using the tune. “The dancecredit sequence was not in the film or in the script until two orthree weeks before we started shooting,” Roach explains. “Chrissent us the song and we immediately fell in love with it. We hadnot found a place for it in the movie, and we said, ‘This is thespirit of Austin, so let’s create a sequence that we can use tointroduce the character that’s based on this song.’ So we cameup with the visuals and the whole concept of the credit sequenceafter the song was chosen.” Star Mike Myers’s wife actuallycame up with the idea of the opening dance number after Myersplayed her the music in a car.

Despite the bizarre sound of “Soul Bossa Nova,” Roach did-n’t find the effect of the piece immediately comic. “It feltmuch more swing to me, like the joy of that particular kindof movement. It feels comic now to me because it’s forevertied to shots of Mike running up and down Carnaby Streetwith his bad teeth and big glasses. The film has manyfathers—it’s partly from the Bond tradition but certainly asmuch from Woody Allen and Peter Sellers, and we derivedsome of the sound from a vintage approach to that kind ofcomedy, like Casino Royale.”

For the sequel, Clinton got the opportunity to re-record theQuincy Jones piece. “The main title this time is a scene that’s

Mike Myers as thetitular hero and Gia

Carides as Robin(Spitz) Swallows

hullaballoo.


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another version of the last scene in the first movie wherethey’re naked and all these things are choreographed tohide him,” Clinton notes. “I re-recorded the ‘Soul BossaNova’ because there was no real ending on it and theywanted certain things to happen with the choreogra-

phy—there’s a big synchronized swimmingthing with Austin coming out of the water likeEsther Williams. So the challenge was to takethat beat and record it in a retro way andhave it sound as if Quincy had done a versionof it with strings at the end so it gets real big.I guess the highest praise was that when oneof Quincy’s people heard it, he said, ‘Gee, Ididn’t know Quincy had done a differentarrangement.’”

One of the key ingredients of The SpyWho Shagged Me’s 007 music homageis derived from John Barry’s “spacemarch” from You Only Live Twice: a

steady pulse of snare drum and timpani that’sreworked to underscore Dr. Evil’s doom-ladenplans for Earth as concocted in his secretmoonbase. “The space march was an obviouschoice because they’re in space and it’s an inter-esting mode that Barry got into with that,”Clinton explains. “And also there’s asequence where Felicity comes out of thewater in a white bikini like in Dr. No and thecamera pans up and she shakes her head in

slow-motion, and in the next scene thecamera is pan-ning up Austin,who’s also wear-ing a white bikiniand shaking hishead in slow-motion. So that’sa n o t h e r p l a c ewhere I used asimilar approachto You Only LiveT w i c e , t h e b i gs w e e p i n g l o v etheme: melodicallyi t ’ s d i f f e r e n t , harmonically andorchestra l ly i t ’ ssimilar.”

Clinton has built aseemingly indestruc-

tible approach to Austin Powers’s comedy, but timing andeffects for punctuating jokes remains a delicate and mys-terious art. In one of the film’s scenes, Dr. Evil’s stuntedclone Mini-Me becomes enraged at Evil’s son Scott (SethGreen) and attempts to destroy him by using Evil’s table-mounted personal-destruct button, to the tune of a vastbrass stinger from Clinton. When Mini-Me’s attack isthwarted, the miniature clone resorts to viciously givingScott “the finger.” Deciding what should play with thathumorous coda became a particular challenge for thecomposer. “I hadn’t scored anything there at all becauseI thought it was absolutely hysterical to see this little guy,Mini-Me, giving the finger with this huge grimace on hisface. And they wanted me to try and put something there

and eventually I did, and I tried playing it seriously andin a more comic way with a trombone slide and glocken-spiel; the comic effect was out of context and a little car-toony.”

Jay Roach agrees that it can be difficult to determinehow “comical” an accompanying cue needs to be. “I thinkpeople don’t want to be forced to laugh. It’s always aquestion of how far you should go in clarifying that some-thing is funny. We want to play everything fairly broad,but not so broad that it gets, as Mike would call it,‘sweaty.’ When we added that extra trombone hit underMini-Me flipping the Bird, that was just one step toosweaty. We’re working too hard for it and the audiencesenses that.”

According to Clinton, there are still possibilities forwriting light comic music, however. “There’s a couple ofthings in this score that are under dialogue: because thedialogue itself is not funny but what you’re seeing physi-cally is funny, there’s some pizzicato stuff that I’ve donewhich is neutral enough to not appear to be hitting it soobviously, but is orchestral and light, and it just sort ofsupports the moment. I’ve done that in a couple of cases.There’s a scene where Dr. Evil’s explaining his laser tohis henchman and it’s a real stop-and-start kind of thing.That’s more lighthearted and has a more up-tempo feel-ing than some of the other stuff.”

Most of Clinton’s approach involves playing off of morestraight-faced scoring traditions. “One of the things thatwas taken to a new level that we started in the last filmis that sometimes I pretend I’m a conductor in an orches-tra pit and I’m watching Mike Myers act on stage. And hegets to a place where Dr. Evil forgets his line and Austinhas to remind him of what he’s supposed to say, and theorchestra’s doing this big number—you think it’s goingto go into this action cue—and suddenly it stops asAustin reminds him of his line, and then it kicks in again.Pretending it’s a live orchestra there in the pit createsthis great feeling of interaction.”

“It’s a way to underline a comic moment,” Roachpoints out, “and let the audience know that there’s abit of tongue-in-cheekiness going on without addingthat ‘waah waah’ or some kind of big thing—you justtake it up to a key point and then drop it out to makethe audience pay a little bit closer attention to the dia-logue or a comedic situation. The audience is aware ofit, but it’s not sweaty.”

The primary point of reference for The SpyWho Shagged Me’s score remains JohnBarry’s 007 music, on which Clinton admitshe’s become something of an expert.

Nevertheless, doing a new Austin Powers score requiresadditional research. “I don’t study the written scores butI do have CDs that I listen to and I rent the Bond moviesagain,” he says. “It’s hard to divorce myself from theexperience of watching the films to just study the music,because they’re such great films.”

While Clinton is heavily involved in the orchestrationof his scores, he does get help. “I have two orchestratorswho work with me, Suzie Katayama and RickGiovinazzo, and they’re excellent. Suzie is an excellentcellist and she’s the librarian at Sony Music. What I do iscreate sequences that are very complete because I alwayshave the director, editor, producer and anyone else


Myers as Dr. Eviland Verne Troyer ashis clone “Mini-Me”(top); Robert Wagner

as Number Two (bottom).

involved in music decisions over to my house, and wesit down and go through every cue before we go to therecording studio. I make sure they sign off on every-thing; that way when we actually get there they’renot thinking about whether it works or not, they’rethinking about ‘Hey, what if we do this or what if wedo that?’ It’s a different level of creativity. So mysynth sketches have to be fairly realistic, and I’msure that’s the case with a lot of composers. We havea system where I separate the instruments in everytrack: violins, violas, cellos, basses, trumpets, trom-bones—I have all the parts written on a separatetrack, so by the time I give the sequences to theorchestrators they’re expanding them into scoreform on sheet music, and making suggestions anddouble-checking ranges and stuff like that.

“One of the things I always loved about Barry’s com-posing was its redundancy,” Clinton says. “It’s almostlike minimalist music. It starts with this kernel, like thespace march, and gathers momentum and density as itgoes along orchestrally. His use of woodwinds, it’s almostStravinsky-like with the piccolos and percussion whenyou hear his action pieces. Woodwinds are there mostlyfor effect. You very rarely in a James Bond score hear anoboe soaring out or a clarinet.”

While you may not hear a clarinet in The Spy WhoShagged Me, you will hear bagpipes in connection with anew villain created for the film: Fat Bastard. “FatBastard is Scottish,” Clinton explains, “and Mike Myersplays this big, fat Scottish fellow who’s a henchman of Dr.Evil and steals Austin Powers’s mojo. The first time wesee Fat Bastard he’s playing the bagpipes, and MikeMyers actually studied with this guy to get the fingeringright. He didn’t play it, but he did do the fingering. He’splaying ‘Scotland the Brave’ when we first see him, andas he’s stealing Austin’s mojo, he starts up the bagpipesand under his dialogue you hear the drone of a bagpipestarting up as he’s feeling the mojo. I had a piper come innamed Eric Riggler who played in Braveheart and did allthe solos in Titanic. So from that moment on, every timewe experience Fat Bastard he’s characterized with theLoch Lomand bagpipes. We found a lot of fun ways to usethe instrument.”

Clinton acknowledges that his love theme for Austin’snew “bird” Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) followsthe pattern of love music set by the original film. “ForFelicity, I wanted a love theme that was still Mancini-esque, because that’s Austin—when he falls in love that’sthe music he hears in his head. So I came up with a realpretty theme that’s done by the same guys I did it withlast time, some of whom played with Mancini.”

Unfortunately, while the original Austin Powerssoundtrack effectively sampled both Clinton’s score (in abrief suite) and the film’s mix of kitschy ‘60s-style hits,The Spy Who Shagged Me is a different matter. “Thesoundtrack to this film has very little to do with themusic that’s in the movie,” Clinton notes. “Because peo-ple know that it’s going to be successful, it’s been a feed-ing frenzy to get songs into the soundtrack. When peoplego to the store to buy a CD they want to extend theirexperience of watching the film, and they think thatthey’re truly getting the music that helped create thatexperience, when in fact in the case of this score, they’llhave two songs that are in the film—one by Madonnaand the Burt Bacharach/Elvis Costello version of ‘What

Do You Get When You Fall in Love?’Everything else is either a remake of a song that was inthe film, Lenny Kravitz’s ‘American Woman’ forinstance, or something new. And you don’t even have theoriginal person redoing the ‘60s version; you have a cur-rent superstar remaking it.”

Clinton is disappointed that no score album will beimmediately forthcoming, but he is cognizant ofthe realities of the business, and still hopes that arelease will happen. “I did record-length versions

of things this time because in comedy writing you havethese short pieces that have to stop and start and youdon’t really have long thematic moments that you candevelop,” he adds. “So I decided to take the time to recordsome record-length versions, and hopefully what we’retrying to work out is either a CD that is totally score or aCD that would be a compilation.”

Jay Roach acknowledges the disadvan-tages of promotion-oriented soundtracksbut admits that they are a necessary evil.“One of my favorite recent soundtracksis Rushmore,” he notes. “It has all ofyour favorite pop or vintage tunes fromthe film, and several of the great scorecues are interwoven, and it completelyevokes all of the great moments in thefilm. I think that’s the downside of thetrend to use soundtracks primarily as apromotional tool—they don’t give youthe feeling that you’re taking a littlebit of the film with you in your car oron your boombox. I will say that as afilmmaker we love our films and wewant people to see them. If the sound-track draws attention to our film,that’s good and we appreciate thatvery much; I wish that radio stationsand press people would pay moreattention to the more traditionalkind of soundtracks. I think thesoundtracks for Titanic and ThePhantom Menace, which have sold very well, will teachpeople that the score can be a popular and marketableaspect of the soundtrack. But I’m torn because I do rec-ognize the promotional power. There’s a deal that youdon’t like to make where you’re willing to give up someconnection to the movie to sell the film.” FSM

Director Roach andClinton review thescore; CIA agentFelicity Shagwell(Heather Graham)has her, um, hands full (below).


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elmer Bernstein has extricated himselffrom just about every example of type-casting conceivable. He languished as theMaster of the Western in the ‘60s, provid-ing an endless series of rousing scores for

John Wayne films, then found himself pigeonholed asthe Master of Comedy in the late ‘70s and early ‘80safter creating a new style of super-serious comic scoringin movies like Animal House, Airplane!, Stripes andGhostbusters. In recent years he’s managed to avoidscoring comedies (“We don’t count Bulletproof!” heinsists), concentrating on high-class dramatic efforts forthe likes of Martin Scorsese and Martha Coolidge. Sowhy is Elmer now returning to both the western andcomedy genres with Wild Wild West, the rethink of the‘60s adventure series?

“I did it because I loved Men in Black,” Bernsteinexplains. “And when I got a chance to work with BarrySonnenfeld and Will Smith, I thought cool, I’d like to dothis. And when I met Barry I really liked him and we’vehad a great relationship.” Nevertheless, Bernstein doesadmit that he was mired in comedy at the beginning ofthe ‘80s. “That was the kind of film everyone wanted meto do. I enjoy the idea of writing a score, going to themovie and watching everybody laugh, but after a whileI said I didn’t want to do comedies any more. I was savedreally by My Left Foot (1989), and I was back in the seri-ous world.”

But Bernstein insists that Wild Wild West isn’t asmuch of a return to the genres he was once trapped inas you might think. “The Shootist (1976) is the laststraight western I did. But the funny thing is, this isn’ta western. As I got into the score, I realized that this filmis very much its own thing; you can’t describe it, really.There are western elements in it, there are comedy ele-ments in it, but it’s its own kind of film. I mean, thereare guys riding motorcycles around in the 1860s and fly-ing around in airplanes.” Contrary to early reports, themovie does not open with Will Smith’s rap number(that’s relegated to the traditional end credits spot) butwith title music by Bernstein. “The movie is an any-thing-goes sort of thing and I think the score basicallyreflects that. In the main title, for instance, it starts likea conventional western, until you get to the title and itsays Wild Wild West, and suddenly you get into a rocklick. The whole score is like that.”

Bernstein notes that he was unfamiliar with the orig-inal series (which starred Robert Conrad and RossMartin as secret agents working for the U.S. govern-ment in the 1860s) and its theme music by RichardMarkowitz. “Some people do remember the show,although when they did the focus groups they found outthat the old show wasn’t that important to the youngpeople. But we thought of tipping our hats to the oldshow (I did know Dick Markowitz and we were friends):unexpectedly after everyone’s assumed that we’re notgoing to use the theme, about two-thirds of the waythrough the picture suddenly we spring it in, flat out.”

Bernstein also had to provide music for a giant,steam-driven mechanical spider operated by the film’svillain, Dr. Loveless (Kenneth Branagh). “In the spirit ofanything goes, the spider theme is kind of early-20th-century music that could have been written byProkofiev or some early-20th-century composer. The vil-


wild wildelmer

the master of the western returns

to the genre—sort of.a conversation with

Elmer Bernstein by Jeff Bond

lain is treated with very familiar villain rhythms, becausevillains are very identified by rhythms and bleak, mono-chromatic orchestrations.”

bernstein has noticed a lot of changes in filmscoring aesthetics since he began half a centu-ry ago, many of them reflected in Wild WildWest. “The general length of the cues here isshorter than usual,” he points out. “They’re

not very short, but it’s the rare cue that’s over two min-utes. The end of the film, of course, has continuous musicfor over 12 minutes. They’re short cues but they’re allstrung together. You really can’t write a fully developedmelody any more. Herrmann was the master of all thecomposers, of being able to take four notes and makemore out of those four notes than most composers coulddo with ten. And I find myself doing much more of thatnow. There was no way in this film to have a full-blown,huge theme. It’s the nature of the film.”

What have not changed are Bernstein’s workinghabits. “Generally speaking, I try to get the film to talkto me. The first two weeks I’m on a film, I get the

[video]cassette of it and look at it about twice a day anddo nothing. I want the film to tell me what it is.Interestingly enough, that’s an intellectual process,because you’re trying to make the film make you think.”Despite that, Bernstein points out that it’s in the actualcomposition that one discovers the film’s true nature.“On Wild Wild West, we were amazed by one thing: thebalance is on the villains. There are three main strains,not themes in a big sense because of the wacky nature ofthe film. There is a hero theme, the traditional western-sounding hero’s theme, which you don’t hear a lot actu-ally. Then there’s this sort of mild, polite rock and rollsensibility for Will, and the bad guy stuff. But, the film isdominated ultimately by the bad guy stuff, and we neverexpected that. You find out about that when you start towrite the score.”

Bernstein derives most of his understanding of themovie by talking at length with the director, but avoids asmuch as possible the standard process of creating mock-ups on computers for the director to hear. “I’ll play thingsfor them. I’ll say this is the theme for this character, andsometimes I’ll pop it on a Kurzweil so they’ll get a senseof what the actual colors will be.” When working withMartin Scorsese, the process has become much more inti-

mate: “We’re basically composing the score as he’s edit-ing, and I will send him stuff. In the case of Age ofInnocence, we actually went abroad and recorded stuffthat eventually he could listen to and decide whether heliked it and incorporate it into the score itself.”

Bernstein has managed to avoid another demon of themodern composer’s working process. “I have a hard-and-fast rule in my life,” he explains. “I will not even listen toa temp score. I don’t mind talking about it; I want to hearwhat the filmmaker is looking for. It’s very funny,because temps sort of crept into my life late. It never hadto be an issue until recently. Sometimes a director willhave a temp score and there is one particular thing that’sreally important to him and he’ll want me to listen to itand I’ll do that, because it’s a clue to the filmmaker’sthinking. But it’s too confusing to listen to temp scores.If somebody wants me to do a score, I think they’re enti-tled to the best thinking I can do, and the minute mythinking is colored by something else, they’re not gettingthe best thinking I can do. You can’t help but be influ-enced; no matter how strong you are, you’re going to beinfluenced by a temp score, good or bad.”

temp scores are just one aspect of Bernstein’schosen profession that has soured him on thebusiness. “It’s gotten so mechanical,” he elabo-rates, “and it is hard for the young people,where all you are is a number at an agency andthey send out a tape. The young people never

get to meet a director, they never get to read a script, theyjust get a synopsis. It’s pathetic. They get a synopsis andare told ‘make me a tape’ based on the synopsis. Theyoung person is not a person anymore, he’s just a tape insomebody’s office. It’s awful. The tape thing is ridiculous.Tapes tell you nothing.” Bernstein used to joke with hisson, Peter, also an established composer, that they couldstart a business of making demo tapes for composers,“because you make a tape and who knows that you evenwrote it? It’s so stupid. I said to Peter, “Let’s get musicfrom some composer nobody’s ever heard of, that’s neverbeen recorded—we’ll make tapes and make all the youngcomposers pay for them.”

The composer’s remedy for the impersonal nature ofthe business is to bring back the human approach. “If Iwere an agent and somebody was looking for someone todo a score, I’d try to match the person up with the score:‘Meet this person, let this person talk to you.’ You make


TRANSFORMERS:Classic TV heroesget reinvented byKevin Kline (asArtemus Gordon)and Will Smith (as James West) inBarry Sonnenfeld’supdate of Wild Wild West.

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a human contact. The kids I teach I worry about, becausethey are good. Any one of them could score a movie bet-ter than 50% of the people who are doing it now, butwhat’s going to happen to them, I don’t know. You can’tdiscourage people from doing it if that’s what they wantto do, but very few of them are going to make it.”

while his demeanor is cheerful to the pointof joviality, Bernstein’s view of currentfilm scoring is decidedly bleak: “My busi-ness manager had her 60th birthday and

we were having a chat and she said, ‘Gosh, I’d like to be20 years younger.’ I said, ‘Not me—I’m out of here!’ Iwouldn’t want to be young and starting in this businesstoday; it’s too hard.”

According to the composer, the people demandinggeneric music in films aren’t to blame for their own poortaste. “They want to hear what they’re led to hear, basi-cally. What saved the day 20 years ago was Star Wars.Prior to Star Wars symphonic music was going out, andthen after Star Wars every film you did had to have a 100-piece orchestra.” Bernstein alludes to the cyclical natureof the business, and notes that things have reached a bot-toming-out. “The fact of the matter is, and this is anopinion, for the moment the age of the memorable filmscore is over. You don’t go and hear memorable filmscores. You hear skillful film scores, you hear slick filmscores, you hear bad film scores, but memorable is very

rare. Tom Newman’s score for ShawshankRedemption jumps to mind as a memorablefilm score, but that’s rare now. There’s lots ofmusic and it’s loud, but there’s nothing you canlatch onto and nothing that moves you. A lot ofthat has to do with the films themselves; a lotof the films don’t have room. There is a ten-dency that’s reflected in the love for specialeffects and the love for sensation over emotion.It’s the ‘hit me again, I’m still conscious’ men-tality.”

Nevertheless, Bernstein sees hope on thehorizon. “I think we’re coming to the end of thespecial effects period. It just wears itself out.From people who have seen The PhantomMenace I’ve heard two criticisms: that it’s basi-cally a special effects extravaganza, and thatit’s essentially humorless. Those kinds of

movies have an effect on film scoring, because if youthink of music as an art, music is pure emotion. The bestthing music does is arouse an emotion of some sort. ButI heard one comment about a special effects movie. I said,‘How was the acting?’ and they said, ‘Well, the actorswere superfluous.’ There’s not a lot of room for music tobe memorable under those circumstances.”

Those might seem like harsh words, but the 77-year-old composer has seen enough trends develop in his fivedecades in the business to know what he’s talking about.While special effects may dominate today’s movies,Bernstein was around during another significant techni-cal innovation: CinemaScope, which launched an age ofepic blockbusters like How the West Was Won, The TenCommandments and Spartacus. But Bernstein arguesthat the development of widescreen technology was bet-ter for film music than recent changes. “The value of thatfor music was that at the same time we went to magnet-

ic film and to stereo, which was very beneficial to music.The so-called extravaganzas, films like The TenCommandments and The Robe, were great for music,because those were films that liked music. They’re mak-ing a lot of movies now that don’t like music.”

While Bernstein is often known as a composer of suchepics or of colorful westerns and comedies, he has a fond-ness for the black and white films he’s done, including ToKill a Mockingbird, The Man with the Golden Arm andThe Birdman of Alcatraz. “The fact of the matter is thatcolor movies are never as artistic as black and whitemovies,” Bernstein maintains. “Black and white moviesare art; they’re amazing. I recently saw The Sweet Smellof Success, a film I did in 1957, and I was so struck byhow beautiful it was to look at in black and white. Colorby comparison just looks ordinary. It doesn’t look like anart work.”

the year 2000 may be a pretty big deal for the restof us, but it holds special significance forBernstein. “It will be the 50th year of my firstfilm here. It was a film called Saturday’s Hero,from a novel called The Hero. It starred John

Derek and Donna Reed and Sydney Blackmer.” Derek,who also played Joshua in The Ten Commandments,went on to somewhat greater notoriety as the husband of‘80s sex icon Bo Derek and a director of fluffy soft-coreporn movies starring the actress. One of them wasBolero, in which Elmer and his son Peter got involved. “Idid one sequence for that, a big lovemaking sequence. Itwas one of these things where originally they wanted meto do the film, and I didn’t want to but I got Peter to doit, and I said I would do some small bit of it.”

Bernstein has since maintained a working relationshipwith Peter and with his daughter Emilie, both of whomcollaborated on Wild Wild West. “My daughter hasworked with me as an orchestrator for the past eightyears or so. My son was an orchestrator for me years ago,and a couple of years ago Peter did a big show for TNTcalled The Rough Riders about Teddy Roosevelt; hewrote the music and I conducted it.” Due to schedulingdifficulties, the elder Bernstein ran out of time on WildWild West, so Peter helped out. “Peter, picking up thethemes, wrote quite a few cues, so the credit will read‘Additional Music by Peter Bernstein.’ The funny thing ismy daughter gets more questions about it than I do.People ask what it’s like working with her dad, becausethey think it might be scary.” Bernstein’s own parentshailed from Russia and Austria; the composer describesthem as “early culture vultures.” While Bernstein dab-bled in painting, dancing and acting as a child in NewYork City, he gravitated towards music. “My parentswanted me to be something in the arts but they didn’tcare what, as long as I wasn’t a businessman.”

The composer returns to his somewhat bleak view ashe considers his Wild Wild West work. “I’m up there andI really think to myself that this may be the last one.Things have just changed so much and it’s getting sohard to do anything good.” Fortunately for fans of thecomposer, in the film scoring business you can never quituntil you’ve finished your upcoming obligations, which inBernstein’s case includes scores for movies directed byMartin Scorsese and Al Pacino. By that time, he shouldhave his next few assignments lined up.... FSM


music ispure

emotion.the

bestthingmusic

does isarouse

an emotion of some

sort.

CHICA-VOOM:Salma Hayek addssome oomph asRita Escobar.


SHAFTedTHEWatergate EraBy Jeff Bond Additional Reviews by Douglass Fake

IN

After achieving a professional triumph in1970 with Patton, Jerry Goldsmith and therest of the Hollywood film scoring commu-nity suddenly found themselves up againsta black private dick who was a sex machinewith all the chicks: Shaft! You’re dammmnnright. Isaac Hayes’s pulsating, brassystreet-vibe score for the blaxploitation pri-vate-eye adventure was the biggest sound-

track to hit record stores since 1967’s The Graduateand was featured in a bodacious dance number at the1972 Academy Awards ceremony. Hayes’s score had aserious cultural impact and convinced a legion of veter-an film composers that their days were numbered.(Composer and orchestrator Alexander Courage hassaid that he and his compatriots often talked aboutretiring and opening a restaurant in Malibu—what afranchise that would have made!)

Though he still commanded big-screen assignments,Goldsmith increasingly found himself churning outscores for TV movies and episodic television (rotatingwith associates Courage and Arthur Morton on TheWaltons, for instance), often applying the samepainstaking craftsmanship and dramatic power to thesesmall-screen efforts that he employed on his theatricalfilms. Out of 28 scores written during this period, halfwere for TV movies, while others such as The MephistoWaltz and The Man were more like TV movies releasedtheatrically. High-profile projects were few and farbetween: the promising The Wild Rovers from BlakeEdwards was taken out of the director’s hands and re-edited by the studio, then dumped on an unappreciativepublic; Escape from the Planet of the Apes returnedGoldsmith to the popular Apes franchise, but he left fur-ther, lower-budgeted films to Leonard Rosenman andTom Scott; and the impressive Papillon was crushedunder the weight of its own Oscar ambitions.

Despite the low budgets and less-glamorous assign-ments, Goldsmith’s creative instincts were as sharplyhoned as ever and most of his TV-movie scores remainas exciting and fun to listen to as his big-screenefforts. The composer finally emerged at the middle ofthe decade with a film worthy of his talents, RomanPolanski’s beautiful gumshoe drama Chinatown.

The early ‘70s is the most under-represented peri-od in Goldsmith’s career as regards soundtrackreleases—of the 28 listed here, only seven have so farbeen released on CD (and three of those have onlybecome available in the last couple of years). Virtuallyall of the unreleased scores were written for obscuremovies and telefilms that are unavailable on video,although some do show up on late-night cable airings.We’re indebted to the collections of Jon Burlingameand Douglass Fake for allowing us to check out someof these long-lost treasures.

●●●● A must-have. One of Goldsmith’s finest worksthat belongs in every soundtrack listener’s collection.

●●● Highly recommended. Close to being a classic, and a worthy album out of which you’ll get a great deal of replay mileage.

●● Recommended with reservations. A score thatachieves its goals within the movie but makes forless-than-gripping listening in album form.

J E R R Y G O L D S M I T H B U Y E R ’ S G U I D E P A R T F O U R

TOUGH TIMES: With the exception of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown,Goldsmith had few worthy featurefilm prospects in the early ’70s.


● If you buy this, Jerry Goldsmith will hate you becauseyou’re collecting his albums like bottlecaps.

Chinatown (1974) ●●●●Varèse Sarabande VSD-5677 • 12 tracks - 31:20Original composer Philip Lambro took the title of thisclassic Roman Polanski film noir a little too seriously andproduced an Oriental-sounding score, so Goldsmithstepped in and wrote this shimmering, indelible work ineleven days. The smoky trumpet melody, eerie, brushedpiano-string chords and keening string atmosphere of thetitle theme is exquisite, a perfect marriage of modernismand movie nostalgia. The rest of Goldsmith’s underscoreprobes at the film’s underlying mystery with a lean, stac-cato precision before the wrenching drama of Polanski’sconclusion. The Best Score Oscar went to Nino Rota andCarmine Coppola for The Godfather, Part II, but this ahall-of-fame work; perhaps Goldsmith’s classiest moviecontribution ever.

Winter Kill (1974) ● ◗TV movieAndy Griffith stars as the sheriff of a small ski resort towninvestigating a series of killings in this deathly flatattempt to launch a series in the scenic environs of theSan Bernardino National Forest. The rhythmic string andguitar underpinnings of the title theme (played over heli-copter shots of Griffith’s jeep roving through the country-side) recall Breakheart Pass, and the execution of the pri-mary melody evokes Take A Hard Ride. However, thetheme overall is far less interesting than either of thosetwo examples, and it’s not helped by a shrill, bleating elec-tronic presentation that is incredibly dated and silly-sounding today. Somewhat better is the murder-orientedsuspense scoring for strings: a hollow-sounding effect forbrass, ground double bass, xylophone and abstract elec-tronic effects that sometimes recalls The Reincarnation ofPeter Proud. More standard approaches include the com-poser’s characteristic prepared piano writing.

QB VII (1974)●●●Intrada MAF 7061D • 12 tracks - 35:20 (TV miniseries)Goldsmith’s Emmy-winning score to this pre-Schindler’sList tale about the Holocaust (the world’s first TV mini-series) is terrific—unfortunately, it’s also about threehours long, and the 35-minute ABC LP (reissued on CDin 1995 by Intrada) doesn’t do it justice. In album form,Goldsmith’s work is too much a mishmash of styles, withat least two different love themes, regal courtroom fan-fares, Jewish folk traditions and desert Bedouin musicclashing with frothy Hollywood romance. The composer’schilling scoring of the concentration camp memoryscenes, however, is more evocative and imaginative thanJohn Williams’s Schindler’s List music.

Promised Land (1974) Unsold TV series pilotWe have no idea what this is.

S*P*Y*S (1974) ● ◗Goldsmith replaced John Scott’s score for the U.S. releaseof this Irvin Kershner misfire that took the stars ofM*A*S*H, placed them in the world of espionage (in a

plot about a Russian dancer defecting to the West), addedasterisks, and stirred. The music is overtly funny, moreso than any other Goldsmith score to date. Using a stan-dard orchestra, the composer came up with about 25minutes of music, generally energetic and used primarilyto keep the pace moving. There are themes for the CIAand the Russians, both enhanced with a variety of up-front electronic sounds. The most comical touch is a cho-rus intoning the word “spys” during the opening andclosing credits. Though Goldsmith singularly evokes theonly laughs, this is still a minor effort for all concerned.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1974) ●● ◗TV movieThis is a television remake of the sensitive ‘40s filmabout a young girl’s life in the Brooklyn slums during theDepression, with veteran child actor Pamelyn Ferdin andCliff Robertson looking like he just stepped out of theTwilight Zone episode “100 Yards Over the Rim.”Goldsmith’s sentimental score features an opening forwoodwind, flute and piano while other cues emphasizerolling rhythms for low strings against harp and a lot ofduets for strings and piano—somewhat like TheIllustrated Man without the angst.

Papillon (1973) ●●● ◗Silva Screen FilmCD 029 • 10 tracks - 36:15Goldsmith and Franklin Schaffner’s follow-up to Pattonwas an elaborately staged but somewhat flat mounting ofHenri Charriere’s autobiographical novel about hisimprisonment in the colony of French Guyana... fromwhich there is no escape! Goldsmith’s score is brilliant,richly painting the emotions the prisoners cannot expressand lending explosive fire to otherwise pedestrian (nopun intended) chase sequences. The main theme, in aFrench waltz style, has long found its way intoGoldsmith’s “Motion Pictures” concert medley. It’s agreat album (still available from Silva Screen), althoughthere’s enough unreleased music to hope for an expand-ed CD someday. The film was perhaps over-hyped withOscar buzz; Goldsmith’s nominated score lost out toMarvin Hamlisch’s The Way We Were.

Shamus (1973) ●●Burt Reynolds stars as an ex-pool player turned privateeye investigating gun-running in this low-key tale fromdirector Buzz Kulik. Goldsmith’s theme sounds like theslower moments of Escape from the Planet of the Apes,with a moody jazz melody played mostly by synthesizerover high-pitched strings.

Hawkins on Murder (1973) ●● ◗TV movie pilotGoldsmith provided the score for this pilot movie featur-ing James Stewart as a down-home country lawyer andStrother Martin as his squirrelly brother. The musicblends timpani with a percolating electronic figure thatplays against an appropriately folksy, chipper brasstheme for Stewart’s amiable attorney.

Barnaby Jones (1973) ●●●TV series themeDuring the heyday of “physically challenged” detectives


(including the fat Cannon, blind Longstreet, and wheel-chair-bound Ironside), producer Quinn Martin cooked upthis series that starred ex-Clampett Buddy Ebsen as areally old detective. Goldsmith wrote a great, jazzy lowflute melody for the show that’s best experienced in itsoriginal form (see Television’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3)rather than the composer’s repetitive concert version.

Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1973) ●● ◗Upon the death of his wife, maverick barnstormer AceEli (Cliff Robertson) takes his adolescent son Rodger(Eric Shea) on an odyssey of adventures through smalltowns, carnivals, revival meetings and houses of illrepute. Goldsmith wrote about 40 minutes of music forthe movie ranging from somewhat slapstick aerial scenesto more dramatic music on the ground, including a mov-ing theme for Ace Eli. The highlight is easily the final fly-ing scene: Goldsmith’s orchestra swells with the main Elitheme, a solo trumpet brilliantly soars upward, and thescore melts into a closing song written and performed byJim Grady. Not scored as a Blue Max aviation drama,Goldsmith’s music captures the variety of small-townhappenings more in the style of his earlier Flim-FlamMan, anchoring it with a strong, Americana-flavoredsound. Though no album of Goldsmith’s music wasissued, “Who’s for Complainin’?” by Jim Grady saw briefrelease as a single.

The Don Is Dead (1973) ●● ◗Richard Fleischer directed this no-nonsense tale of war-ring gangsters, later retitled Lovely but Deadly, starringAnthony Quinn, Frederick Forrest and Robert Forster.Goldsmith’s tough orchestral score establishes a grimand terse mood; the opening music for a deal going souris particularly striking with percussive figures and stac-cato bursts of brass. The score overall is lengthy andincludes both strong suspenseful material and hauntingpassages. Goldsmith also wrote music for the love song“Our Last Night,” featuring lyrics and a vocal by his wife,Carol Goldsmith. Though probably without Goldsmith’sparticipation, the love theme from Alfred Newman’smegahit Airport (1970) also makes an appearance, nodoubt because Universal owns both pictures.

Indict and Convict (1973) ●●TV movieGoldsmith meets William Shatner! Shatner stars in thisglossy courtroom drama as a murder suspect with an air-tight alibi. Goldsmith’s title music is in a mellow, upbeatmode befitting what plays like a pilot for a TV series inthe mold of The Defenders, although as the backgroundof Shatner’s character is gradually revealed the scorebegins to introduce some darker edges. (The western-likerhythm Goldsmith employs in the Barnaby Jones seg-ment of his TV concert suite was first used here.) In addi-tion to Shatner, Indict and Convict also features StarTrek’s James Doohan and a large number of guest starsfrom the series, including Susan Howard, Alfred Ryder,Michael Pataki, Arlene Martell and others.

One Little Indian (1973) ●● ◗This is a peculiar but engaging, action-oriented Disneyouting (possibly produced as filler for NBC’s The

Wonderful World of Disney, but released theatrically)that benefits from James Garner’s decent, easygoingcharm as a Union army deserter pursued by villainsMorgan Woodward and Bruce Glover. Garner somehowwinds up with a couple of camels (how is never satisfac-torily explained) and befriends an orphaned boy (wholooks frighteningly like a young Mickey Rourke) raisedby the Cheyenne. Also appearing is spunky young JodieFoster. Goldsmith’s score is in his usual percussive, fla-vorful western idiom and compares favorably to workslike Bandolero! and Stagecoach, with rich dramaticstring writing that adds a sophisticated emotional edge.The music turns wacky once the camels are introduced,with rambunctious cues for bass harmonica, calliope andsitar (which jokingly quotes Maurice Jarre’s deserttheme from Lawrence of Arabia whenever the lead camelstarts moving). There are also echoes of Goldsmith’sIndian theme from Rio Conchos and lively cues for thefilm’s climactic fight and chase scenes.

Police Story (1973) ●●●TV movie and series themeIn addition to a strangely mellow (but catchy) jazz-fla-vored title theme, Goldsmith wrote a fantastic suspensescore for this formula police procedural (the pilot for thelong-running series) that superbly illustrates how hegave every bit as much thought to his television work ashe did to his big-screen projects. The 90-minute telefilminvolves Vic Morrow as the leader of a special police divi-sion in pursuit of an armed robber named Slow Boy(Chuck Connors), and Morrow’s personal involvementwith a woman (Diane Baker) the criminal had takenhostage. Goldsmith’s somewhat baroque love theme forthe Morrow/Baker relationship is based around a pianomotif developed from the familiar Police Story titlemusic; the score features many suspenseful, percussivecues for scenes involving Connors’s character. Highlightsare the opening cue that plays as Connors is tailed by thepolice unit after stealing a car, and the climactic chase asthe criminal flees up an escalator and confronts Morrowwith his final hostage, treated spectacularly byGoldsmith with horns and trumpets offset by shrillaccents from piccolos and brass.

The Red Pony (1973) ●●●TV movieGoldsmith stepped into Aaron Copland’s shoes on thisTV-movie retelling of the classic John Steinbeck novellaabout a young boy’s introductions to the realities of lifeon the farm, this time with Henry Fonda in the role orig-inally played by Gregory Peck and Clint Howard giving aterrific performance as the boy. Like Copland, Goldsmithbrought a warm, gentle feeling to the score with a lot offolk-based material, but when the kid runs away from thefarm with his sick pony and awakens one morning to findvultures feeding on the dead animal, the composerlaunches into an incredible, Stravinskyesque attackthat’s one of the most stunning evocations of emotionalviolence ever seen (and heard) on television.

Pursuit (1972) ●●●TV movieAfter the success of The Andromeda Strain, writer

Michael Crichton got his first chance to direct on thiswell-mounted nail-biter with E.G. Marshall as a madmanwith a plan to unleash nerve gas on a city in the midst ofa political convention, and Ben Gazzara and JimMcMullan as government agents out to stop him.Produced during a period when TV films like Duel andIsn’t It Shocking? could be as dark and suspenseful astheir theatrical counterparts, this one features greatbomb-disarming sequences. Goldsmith gets a workoutout of a cool electric guitar theme for the heroes, which isalso played out by brass and bells. Very much an artifactof its period, the score also features long riffs fromHammond electric organ, trumpet solos and licks fromsitars along with a lot of constantly shifting rhythmicpatterns. It’s kind of Escape from the Planet of the Apesby way of Police Story and The Satan Bug.

The Other (1972) ●●●Varèse Sarabande VSD-5851 • 1 track - 22:02This is an exquisite little horror score that’s less achiller than a melancholy reflection on lost youth, witha gently beautiful title melody and a lot of the moody,hauntingly tuneful underscoring that the composerexcelled at during this period. This was finally releasedin suite form along with The Mephisto Waltz; trackinformation refers only to the Other portion of the CD.

Anna and the King (1972) ●●●TV series.Yul Brynner actually reprised his role from The Kingand I for this short-lived TV series, with SamanthaEggar as the schoolteacher; Goldsmith wrote a charm-ing Oriental theme for traditional flute and woodwind,somewhat reminiscent of his approach to The Troublewith Angels. The original pilot was tracked with musicfrom The Sand Pebbles, The Chairman and Tora! Tora!Tora!; Goldsmith also scored three episodes of theseries. A 45 rpm single of the theme was put out by“The Silver Star Orchestra.”

The Waltons (1972) ●●●TV seriesGoldsmith’s bucolic theme for this long-running familyTV show is probably his most popular television com-position (other than Star Trek); he also wrote a numberof scores for the series during the lean years followingthe unleashing of Shaft on unsuspecting Hollywoodcomposers. Goldsmith’s standard concert anecdoteabout this theme is that the executive who requested ittold him he wanted a theme so great that when peoplehad their heads in refrigerators looking for snacks dur-ing commercials, they’d hear this theme and immedi-ately rush out to the living room to look at the televi-sion. Consequently, while attempting to devise amelody that would recall life in the Appalachian moun-tains, all Goldsmith could think of was people withtheir heads in refrigerators....

The Culpepper Cattle Company (1972)Some of Goldsmith’s music from 1967’s The Flim FlamMan was tracked into this tale of a 16-year old comingof age on a cattle drive. Goldsmith did not write anyoriginal music for it.

Lights Out (1972) ●●TV pilotAiring as an unsold pilot, this hour-long TV show sport-ed a chilling ghost story and a moody and effective,though sparse, Goldsmith score.

The Man (1972) ●● ◗Or “What if James Earl Jones Became President byDefault?” Goldsmith provided a brassy, Coplandesquescore for this what-if tale that has an African Americansenator (Jones) ascending to the presidency after a freakaccident kills everyone else in line in front of him. RodSerling wrote the screenplay.

The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971) ●●●TV movieGoldsmith’s first music for the Waltons clan was writtenfor this TV movie with Andrew Duggan and Patricia Nealas Pa and Ma Walton reuniting with their children for aChristmas on Waltons’ Mountain. There’s no “WaltonsTheme” as such at this point—Goldsmith wrote thatlater for the series, at the producers’ request—just a del-icate score for guitar, harmonica and a small orchestralgrouping. Goldsmith himself prefers the sans-trumpettheme he wrote here for the Appalachian gift-giving,which did not appear in the later series.

The Cable Car Murder (1971) ●● ◗TV movie (aka Crosscurrent).If you’re like me, you saw this title and thought: “Aha!—a murder mystery set at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps!”Not quite. This is actually a gritty police procedural set inSan Francisco, opening with the murder of a cable carpassenger by a gang of four black youths. Goldsmith’stitle music is an almost blow-by-blow replay of the open-ing to Escape from the Planet of the Apes, only withoutthe horn parts. Interestingly, there are only two othercues in the movie: a stylishly directed slo-mo foot chasethat has the composer applying his typical staccato, low-end prepared piano riffs in a ragged, slowed-down idiom;and a rooftop chase and shootout with a harsher,Chinatown-like piano attack that brings back some of thetitle cue’s riffs.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) ●●●Varèse Sarabande VSD-5848 • 1 track - 16:27After the pulpy subterranean goings-on of Beneath thePlanet of the Apes, the Apes series took a left turn withthis popular contemporary sequel that had intelligentchimps Zira and Cornelius (Kim Hunter and RoddyMcDowell) “escape” to 1970s Earth, only to unwitting-ly lay the foundations for future ape rule of the planet.Goldsmith responded to the change of locale (after skip-ping Beneath in favor of Franklin Schaffner’s Patton)with a wild, rock-influenced title piece; light guitar-based cues for the two chimps’ dealings with contem-porary culture; subtle references to his original Planetof the Apes score; a lengthy and exciting climactic chasecue; and a bitter, hollow denouement. This was finallyreleased with an expanded version of Goldsmith’s orig-inal Apes score by Varèse Sarabande; the track infor-mation refers only to the Escape from the Planet of theApes portion of the CD.



The Brotherhood of the Bell (1971) ●● ◗TV movie (aka Fraternity).Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) directed this thrillerabout a secret society, with Glenn Ford discovering thesteep price of pledging the wrong fraternity. The impres-sive cast includes Dean Jagger, Maurice Evans, DabneyColeman, Will Geer and William Conrad (playing a pre-sciently designed precursor to Rush Limbaugh). Thescore is a low-key affair with a baroque melody for stringsplayed over jazz percussion; the eerie, echoing horroreffects of The Mephisto Waltz linger around the edges. Inone scene an important character suffers an on-screenstroke, which Goldsmith accompanies with the skitter-ing, high-end aleatoric string effects he later employed inAlien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Crawlspace (1971) ●● ◗TV movieA creepy psychodrama directed by John Newland (OneStep Beyond, Star Trek’s “Errand of Mercy”), this tele-film starred Arthur Kennedy and Teresa Wright as achildless couple who find a stranger taking up residencein their basement. He soon becomes their “son,” ulti-mately growing possessive of his new family and spinningviolently out of control. Goldsmith provided a fairamount of music for chamber orchestra, emphasizingstrings. His gentle music skillfully characterizes theadults as sensitive and caring, but increases in density astheir “son” grows unpredictable. With the two veteranleads the film is both a strong character study and offbeatthriller. Goldsmith’s music smoothly rides the linebetween both.

Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (1971) ● ◗TV movieThis “comedy-mystery” was directed by Ted Post andwritten by John D.F. Black (Star Trek’s “The NakedTime” and the blaxploitation epic Trouble Man) andstarred Helen Hayes, Mildred Natwick, Sylvia Sydneyand Myrna Loy. Hayes and Natwick appeared on theNBC Mystery Movie a couple of years later as The SnoopSisters, and in a weird way this is a warm-up for thatseries concept. The plot involves four “mature” ladieswho get involved in computer dating, which causes themto cross paths with a creepy, misogynist rapist played byVince Edwards. Let the laughs begin! The film shuttlesback and forth between comic interplay between the four(admittedly charming) female leads and long sequencesof Edwards snarling hilariously dated, slang-laden mono-logues as he searches for his next victim. Goldsmith’sgoofy, bump-and-grind title music blends a BurtBacharach-type brass theme with an annoying, siren-likesynthesizer motif; most of the rest of the score involvesagitated jazz-based cues for the rapist.

The Going Up of David Lev (1971) ●● ◗TV movieThe dream cast of Claire Bloom, Brandon Cruz (Eddiefrom The Courtship of Eddie’s Father), Melvyn Douglasand Topol tackle the story of a young Israeli boy and thelegacy of the Six Days War in Jerusalem. Topol plays akindly but increasingly exasperated cab driver whoaccompanies Cruz on his journey of discovery.

Goldsmith’s score is in the vein of QBVII and the quieterparts of Masada, tuneful and moving... but about fifteenminutes in, the movie inexplicably turns into a musical,with Topol singing songs that Goldsmith reportedly hadnothing to do with. Fiddler on the Roof it’s not.

The Last Run (1971) ●●MGM Records 1SE-30 (LP only)George C. Scott, fresh from Patton, plays an aging mob-ster nearing the end of his road. Though handled by JohnHuston the picture fails to connect much of a story to themain character. Goldsmith, working in his sparse mode,contributes a relatively brief half-hour score; much of themusic is fragmented, an obstacle Goldsmith workedaround by expanding his material in a re-recording MGMRecords issued at the time of the movie. Goldsmith fash-ions a terrific mood for the film: European in flavor, open-ing up beautifully in the Spanish sequences. Mistakenlyregarded as a pop score, Goldsmith’s music is rhythmic inthe action sequences in the style prevalent at the time(essayed by Lalo Schifrin and Quincy Jones, among oth-ers) but with an unusually strong melodic sense. The LPfeatures most of the score and highlights the “SpanishCoast” music among the strong action cues.

The Mephisto Waltz (1971) ●●● ◗Varèse Sarabande VSD-5851 • 12 tracks - 34:21This film (with Alan Alda as a writer possessed by thesoul of a devil-worshipping pianist) has all the earmarksof an early ‘70s Quinn Martin production (a distinctlyTV-oriented look, abuse of the fish-eye lens and the pres-ence of tube every-villain Bradford Dillman). ButGoldsmith’s assaultive, modernistic score is one of hismost extraordinary, with a hurtling title cue that sets theDies Irae against the opening piano notes of Liszt’sMephisto Waltz, and a labyrinth of murky, nightmarishlyatonal string writing. Many of the score’s terrifying, ani-malistic sound effects were produced by the Braziliancuika—the same instrument that re-created the soundsof hooting apes in Planet of the Apes. This finally saw thelight of day as part of the 20th Century Fox Classicsseries on Varèse Sarabande, coupled with The Other.

The Wild Rovers (1971) ●●● ◗Memoir CD MOIR 601 • 10 tracks - 34:30The Wild Rovers is an unusual, character-oriented west-ern starring William Holden and Ryan O’Neal and direct-ed by Blake Edwards, a man known primarily for hisPink Panther comedies with Peter Sellers and for work-ing with Henry Mancini. Edwards eschewed Mancini andfashioned a realistic and sometimes disturbing film forwhich Goldsmith provided one of his most unusual andeffective scores, incorporating traditional folk melodiesand ranging from full-on, kick-ass orchestral cowboymaterial (“Wild Horses” and “Bronco Busting”) tomoody, spare and lyrical cues performed by banjo andzither. Originally released on LP, an early ‘80s LP reissueadded one additional piece of underscore, but this cuewasn’t included on the Memoir CD that coupled TheWild Rovers with The Great Train Robbery... two scoresthat couldn’t be more dissimilar (track info above is forthe Wild Rovers portion). Goldsmith’s daughter Ellenbelts out the songs that open and close the score. FSM

The Sword and the Sorcerer★★★DAVID WHITAKER (1981)Super Tracks STCD 884 23 tracks - 69:33

The Sword and the Sorcererhails from a brief periodduring the early ‘80s when

sword and sorcery epics were allthe rage. The results ran thegamut from cinematic torturechambers (Krull, TheBeastmaster) to near misses (sueme, but Conan the Barbarian has

always seemed pretty rank apartfrom Basil Poledouris’s fantasticscore) to one controversial mas-terpiece (Excalibur—a dream tosome, a nightmare to others!). Itonly takes a look at the directori-al credit on The Sword and theSorcerer (Albert Pyun) to deter-mine where it fits into this hier-archy. This was a cheaply madequickie, rushed to beat the highlytouted Conan to the punch. Itaccomplished that mission, butwith overworked genre vetRichard Lynch as the film’s vil-lain and Lee Horseley (a manwho looks like Tom Selleck andsounds like James Garner) as aheroic barbarian lead of slightlyless-than-Schwarzeneggerianproportions, the film was unin-spired. As if in a bid to broadenthe film’s appeal to fans of thepopular teenaged sex comediesof the period, Kathleen Bellerplayed a lusty princess whoseprimary character trait was her

tendency to kick impolite menin the groin.

One of the few distinguishingelements of the film was its scoreby David Whitaker, a veteran ofseveral Hammer horror produc-tions. While Poledouris seemed toreinvent the genre with his daz-zlingly romantic, emotionallycharged Conan, Whitaker lookedto the past for The Sword and theSorcerer and created a grin-induc-ing salute to both Korngold’sRobin Hood and the brawny

sound of Hugo Friedhofer’sadventure scores from the ‘40sand ‘50s. The opening overture isa romp and a half, contrasting abold adventure theme against asweeping, romantic bit of her-aldry for strings. The rest of thescore is an equal balance ofswordplay and sorcery, with thelatter element underscored bylots of grumbling mysteriosoplaying in the manner of JohnWilliams’s Raiders of the LostArk. The warm, romantic stringwriting, designed to recall thenobility of a vanished kingdom,graces cues like “The Kingdomof Eh-Dan,” “Talon and theMercenaries” and a love themefor groin-kicking princess Alana.

The highlight of the swash-buckling aspect of the score is“The Rebellion Begins,” withWhitaker creating a wonderful,romping bit of battle music in themanner of Holst’s “Jupiter” fromThe Planets, capped off by his

soaring, noble material from theoverture (which plays over anoverheated moment of slow-motion swordplay in the film).It’s exciting stuff, although thetime and budgetary constraintsunder which the score wasrecorded are a constant factor inthe orchestral performance,which is jarringly poor. It helpsthat the music itself is such acornball romp: it’s so cheesy thatthe performance missteps almostbecome part of its loony appeal.

But the smooth, romanticaspects (and dissonant “sorcery”cues) tend to come off far betterthan the expansive swashbuck-ling moments.

Technically, the sound qualityis not quite up to the originalVarèse Sarabande LP release(although this does boast a num-ber of previously unreleasedcues); in particular, there’s astunning drop-off of one of thechannels 58 seconds into track17, “Round Room Fight.” This ispeculiar given that this cue waspart of the original LP release, sothe album master should havebeen available to the CD’s pro-ducers.

Regardless of the quibbles, thisis an enjoyable release that fillsanother hole in the early ‘80srenaissance of orchestral scores.Whitaker’s score won’t win anyawards, but it’s tuneful and oneof the most goofily enjoyableworks released during this period.

It’s just a shame that neither thecomposer nor the film are everlikely to achieve the stature nec-essary to prompt a re-recording ofthis score, because it could cer-tainly use one. —Jeff Bond

Nineteen Eighty-Four ★★★DOMINIC MULDOWNEY (1984)Airstrip One AOD 198424 tracks - 54:28

I’m sad to say that I canremember when 1984 sound-ed like a pretty futuristic date.

Author George Orwell picked theyear by transposing the last twodigits of the year in which hewrote his dystopian saga of thepitfalls of socialism, 1948, and itwas good for at least 36 years ofchills any time the date wasbrought up. But by the timeMichael Radford produced hiscinematic vision of the novel (anearlier version had been filmed byLogan’s Run director MichaelAnderson in 1956), the year wasupon us and the director had totake pains to point out to thepublic that 1984 was as much astate of mind as it was an histori-cal date.

Radford’s film was produced atthe height of the second “Britishinvasion” of Brit rock groups, andafter the difficult film tested poor-ly with an introspective orches-tral score by Dominic Muldowney,its distributors elected to bring inAnnie Lennox and Dave Stewartof the Eurythmics to rescore themovie with a mix of instrumentalgrooves and melancholy songs.The result was a nice album, butan ineffective accompaniment toa brutally grim movie. Whatremained of Muldowney’s scorewas a pridefully bittersweetanthem for Orwell’s fictionalcountry of Oceania heard at thefilm’s opening and a few otherodds and ends.

This album allows listeners toexperience Muldowney’s fullscore for the first time. The moodranges from the propagandistic

Settling Old ScoresA HOST OF REISSUES GET THE ONCE-OVER


pomp and circumstance of theOceania state and court music(including a fanfare based on amotif from Holst’s “Jupiter”) tofar more introspective orchestralgroupings for the victimized JohnHurt character, many of whichfeature the eerie, depressingsound of the ondes martenot, afavorite instrument of ElmerBernstein’s. Also featured aresome creepily nationalistic songssung by female and children’schoirs, underscoring the servilerole women and children play inthis defeated society.

All in all it’s a sound that is farmore convincing for the film thanwhat the Eurhythmics produced,but its merits as an album aresomewhat more questionablesince the diversity of styles andthe ambient quality of many ofthe more subdued cues makes forless-than-gripping listening. Still,it’s interesting to hear what thefilmmakers originally had inmind. —J.B.

Johnny Cool ★★★★BILLY MAY (1963)Rykodisc RCD 1074412 tracks - 31:47

They don’t make jazz scoreslike they used to. Sure,many composers today reg-

ularly use jazz ensembles and cre-ate some great music. John Barryis a living legend of the jazz score.But back in the day, jazz scoreswere composed by artists whowrote and arranged jazz musicfor a living, not film composerswho felt that jazz would be anappropriate style for the film. I’mtalking sustained hi-hat punctu-ated by trumpet hits and brokenby a bass then picked up by thewhole ensemble big band music.

Billy May is just such a com-poser. His filmography includesTony Rome and episodes of the‘60s Batman and The GreenHornet series, but the bulk of hislife’s work was writing andarranging for the likes of BingCrosby and Frank Sinatra. (Healso did the big band arrange-ments for James Horner inCocoon and *batteries not includ-ed.) May’s romping, witty score toJohnny Cool, a 1963 Vegas/gang-ster flick, exemplifies not only histechnical proficiency but also thelighthearted flare that his bene-

factors so enjoyed working with.The score opens with a brassy

number, “The Lizard,” that alter-nates between a solo sax and achorus of horns, while the percus-sion and bass keep the tempokickin’ in the background. Thesound is sophisticated but loose,not bound by the rules of formalmusic; it’s the “nobody tells mewhat to do” attitude of a LasVegas mobster.

May rolls right into the nextcue with a repeated low chord onpiano paired with a bouncing hi-hat, which is slowly taken over bya mounting chorus of brass. Asolo trumpet spirals upward to acrescendo, then everything dropsexcept the percussion and piano,which twitters over high notesuntil the brass builds again andthe music takes off. The wholesequence repeats and thenascends into a big brass flare anddrum-roll finale.

Most of the rest of the score islower key than the flashy open-ing, but May keeps about the atti-tude of easy sophistication. In the“Johnny Cool” theme, May openswith a wry, slow beat cocktailparty theme, but halfway throughkicks the tempo into high gear,letting Johnny’s dangerous, hit-man side shine through. Thealbum wraps up with two songsperformed by Sammy Davis, Jr.,who plays a supporting role in thefilm as a one-eyed gangster.

May’s flash and blaring trum-pets are a style that is little heardthese days in film. For all thewonderful jazz musicians outthere, there are few scores thatreally groove. Johnny Coolgrooves. —Tim Kurkoski

I Want to Live! ★★★ 1/2JOHNNY MANDEL (1958)Rykodisc RCD 1074322 tracks - 59:22

Johnny Mandel’s I Want toLive! is far more subtlethan the brassy big band

sound of Johnny Cool. The gris-ly true-life story of BarbaraGraham, a murderess sent tothe gas chamber, warrants acomplex and somber score.

The album actually starts outrather chirpily, as the story fol-lows our playgirl heroine fromparty to party on the coast ofCalifornia. In some of the night-

club scenes, jazz great GerryMulligan and an ensemble arefeatured playing source cues writ-ten by Mandel. The real BarbaraGraham was a big fan ofMulligan, and these cues (as wellas some heard on a radio) areincluded as the last six tracks ofthe Ryko CD—actually a compan-ion album to the soundtrack LP,meaning you get two records onone disc with this release.

As the circle begins to close onBarbara, the jazz gets more mel-low. “Stakeout” begins with asomber melody, then abruptlytransforms into a percussivechase sequence, not unlike whatJerry Goldsmith would create tenyears later with Planet of theApes. As “Barbara Surrenders,”the melody is subdued but retainsthe cocky edge of Barbara’s per-sonality.

The tone of the score turnsfrom somber to melancholy afterBarbara is given the death sen-tence. Long, slow trumpet pas-sages backed by throbbing, pacedpercussion count the time untilBarbara’s fate. The “DeathScene” replaces the horns with aneerie piccolo played at the bottomof its register.

For those of us who prefermore melodic or exuberant jazz,the weighty subject matter of IWant to Live! makes the score alittle dry. However, for jazz enthu-siasts and fans of the classic eraof jazz scores, Ryko’s new releaseshould be a treasure. —T.K.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad★★★MIKLÓS RÓZSA (1974)Prometheus PCD 14818 tracks - 54:27

Special effects ace RayHarryhausen and his pro-ducer Charles H. Schneer

almost single-handedly preservedBernard Herrmann’s respectabili-ty in the early ‘60s as fewer andfewer “A” picture assignmentscame his way. Weaned on thelush, seminal orchestral rum-blings of Max Steiner’s KingKong and Miklós Rózsa’s Thief ofBaghdad, Harryhausen recog-nized the value of music in hisfantasy films and plucked his tal-ent from the Golden Age, notonly with Herrmann but withJerome Moross (The Valley of

Gwangi) and Rózsa himself,returning to the Arabian Nightsfeel of Thief of Bagdad for TheGolden Voyage of Sinbad,Harryhausen’s second Sinbadadventure. The film is colorful,with Tom Baker as a vile, stento-rian villain and with a host ofawe-inspiring effects creations,not the least of which was bur-nished actress Caroline Munro,who does for harem costumeswhat Raquel Welch did for furbikinis in One Million Years B.C.

Rózsa’s score features a gor-geously exotic, sea-swept titletheme for Sinbad, a delicate andsympathetic romantic melody forMunro’s slave girl, and tons ofEasternized, eerie atmospherefor the film’s magical sequences.There are also some stupendous,kinetic action cues, notably

“The Siren,” “The Chart” and“Sinbad Fights Kali,” a rousingoriental piece for the adventur-er’s swordfight with a six-armedstatue brought to life by blackmagic. “Fountain of Destiny”also features wonderfully brightrepeating textures for brass,chimes and harp.

Unfortunately, the originalfilm’s budget was limited andRózsa’s score was recorded by asmall orchestra under less-than-optimal conditions. It wasreleased on LP at the time, butthe original masters have longsince been lost. No information isprovided about the sources forthis CD version, but judging bythe Rice Krispies-like crunchingthat abounds in every track, agood guess is that it was mas-tered off an LP (which, at 55 min-utes, featured a lot of materialjammed into those grooves).

Despite the miracles of modernsound editing, there’s only somuch that can be done with this


sort of source material, so TheGolden Voyage of Sinbad mightjust be the worst-sounding sound-track CD of the year. It’s certainlyworth a listen for the music, andRózsa fans will have to have it,but without access to the originaltapes this score looks like a primecandidate for a re-recording.Given the small size of Rózsa’soriginal orchestra and the factthat it sounds like it was recorded

in a wine cellar, this might be oneof the rare cases in which theoriginal performance could beimproved upon. For an exampleof what that might sound like,check out the Silva Screen compi-lation, The Epic Film Scores ofMiklós Rózsa. —J.B.

The Uninvited: The Classic FilmMusic of Victor Young ★★★★VICTOR YOUNGMarco Polo 8.225063 22 tracks - 69:28

I’ve never been a big fan ofVictor Young. I tend to associ-ate him mostly with bad Cecil

B. DeMille pictures (of which TheGreatest Show on Earth, whosetitle music opens this disc, is agood example), and to lump himin with those Golden Age crafts-men like Max Steiner who alwaysseemed to be quoting nationalanthems. The Golden Age com-posers who have passed the testof time for me are Herrmann,Korngold and Rósza, men whohad such incredibly distinctivepersonal styles that their musictranscends the conventions oftheir era.

That having been said, thisalbum from Marco Polo’s BillStromberg and John Morgan(once again helming the MoscowSymphony Orchestra) puts Young

in a somewhat better light thanhis more bombastic efforts. Of

Young’s Greatest Show on Earthtitle theme, I would agree withBill Whitaker’s left-handed com-pliment in the liner notes that it’sat least more interesting thanmost genuine circus marches. TheUninvited, a well-mounted ghoststory from 1944, sports a popularmelody (“Stella by Starlight”)and a score full of slitheringimpressionism for the spookygoings-on. It benefits greatly from

an understated approach thatemphasizes delicate creepinessrather than brash horror effects(which were already being donequite effectively across town atUniversal at the time).

Recording a Max Fleischer car-toon score is something of a coup,and while Fleischer’s Gulliver’sTravels animated movie is largelyforgotten today, it did give Youngthe opportunity to play aroundwith a mix of contemporary songsin the manner of Warner’s CarlStalling, although with consider-ably less manic results. Oddly, 30seconds into the main title Youngtakes off on a tune that creates asimilar vibe to Herbert Stothart’sopening to The Wizard of Oz,written the same year. For me,the biggest thrill on this albumwas hearing Young quote “It’s aHap-Hap-Happy Day,” a song inmany of Fleischer’s shorts.There’s an adequately stormyintroductory cue and Young’s useof choir throughout is a gorgeousexample of the scoring conceits ofthe period.

Bright Leaf is a melodiousscore for what appears to be a1950 precursor to Falcon’s Crest,about the ambitions of a tobaccofarmer played by Gary Cooper.Young took over the project froman overbooked Max Steiner, and

his silky romantic score is some-thing you can imagine Steinerhaving composed. Apart from thetuneful opening, highlightsinclude two boisterous montages(“Machine Montage” and“Tobacco Montage”) that shouldgive listeners serious nicotinecravings, and a lengthy, effective-ly melodramatic climactic cue(“Southern Vengeance—TheFire—Finale”). So, Messrs.Morgan and Stromberg, thisalbum didn’t make me completely

turn the corner on Young, but itdid make me appreciate his workmore. —J.B.

Lawrence of Arabia ★★★MAURICE JARRE (1962)Cinephile CIN CD 008 12 tracks - 33:27

Lawrence of Arabia is one ofthose cinematic master-pieces tarred by the “it’s

good for you” curse. That’s thesame curse that will make anyonein their right mind flee in terrorfrom a screening of Citizen Kane,despite the fact that Kane andLawrence are two of the mostdeliriously enjoyable big-screenexperiences that can be had onthis earth. Suffice it to say thatjust because a movie is called amasterpiece doesn’t mean that itcan’t be entertaining, as thelucky few who were able to view a70mm print of Lawrence ofArabia during the recentColumbia 75th Anniversary FilmFestival discovered.

David Lean’s film is epic in away that most modern moviescan never hope to be, with stun-ning non-digital vistas of humanbeings dwarfed by the gargantu-an landscape of the desert andwith characters so magnificentthat they still hold their ownagainst the staggering scenery.

Maurice Jarre’s eerie, deeplyromantic score is a perfectmatch for Lean’s moltenimagery. Although Lawrence isprimarily remembered forJarre’s sweeping desert theme,the romping British schoolboytheme that launches the maintitle perfectly captures the char-acter of Peter O’Toole’s T.E.Lawrence, who was at heart akind of innocent little boy atplay in the boundless sandbox ofthe Sahara Desert. BetweenJarre’s incorporation of authen-tic Bedouin instrumentationand his use of the ondesmartenot to bring a mystical,organic aura to the desert, therehave been few more perfectmarriages between music andfilm.

The original mono soundtrackalbum master is, sadly, all thatremains of Jarre’s originalorchestral performance, conduct-ing the London PhilharmonicOrchestra, and it’s not gettingany younger. The album has beenavailable in numerous renditionsover the years and was releasedon CD by Varèse Sarabande inthe late ‘80s. A re-recording ofmost of the score conducted byTony Bremner was released inconjunction with the restored1988 re-release of the film: unfor-tunately, like Leonard Rosenman,Jarre is somewhat of a law untohimself and seems to be the onlyone who really understands hismusic well enough to conduct itcoherently.

That leaves us with this scanthalf hour of original music fromthe movie, and despite the protes-tations of this being a “high-fidelity, remastered” recording,the sound quality here is proba-bly the worst yet obtained fromthe original masters. In additionto channel drop-outs in “Miracle”and wow and wobble all over theplace, cues like “Lawrence andthe Body Guard” are so decayedthat they barely even sound likethe same music anymore, and inan effort to eliminate what mustbe outrageous tape hiss, the quietsections of the score have beendialed down almost to inaudibili-ty. Honestly, they’d have beenbetter off burning this from aVarèse CD. It’s truly a tragedy,because this is certainly one of

Settling Old Scores


the most important, legendaryfilm scores ever written and itdeserves to be preserved in itsoriginal form. So while Jarre’sscore is one of those rare★★★★★ classics, this latestalbum reissue rates considerablylower. At least we still have themovie.... —J.B.

The Eagle Has Landed ★★★LALO SCHIFRIN (1977)Aleph 009 • 19 tracks - 50:58

The Eagle Has Landed is oneof a few WWII conspiracythrillers made in the ‘70s

(another was the LaurenceRosenthal-scored Brass Target);this one involved a plot by agroup of German officers to kid-nap Winston Churchill during thepivotal moments of the war. Thescore has been issued before in abrief selection of about 20 min-utes, coupled with The FourMusketeers and Voyage of theDamned; this release fromSchifrin’s own label appears toresurrect most of the score.

Coming from Lalo Schifrin,this is a well-crafted but ultimate-ly pedestrian effort. Schifrinseems more at home in the urbanenvirons of grittier thrillers likeDirty Harry, where he can bring atruly scary sensibility to the con-ventional crime-thriller idioms ofjazz and rock (his Scorpio themefrom Dirty Harry is a hair-raisingreworking of a riff from someclassic hard rock hit from the late‘60s), or in the alien worlds ofbizarre genres like kung fu (Enterthe Dragon). Like Voyage of theDamned, The Eagle Has Landedskillfully employs all the correcteffects for this type of movie with-out carving out any new territory.The one exception is a weird,cheerful whistling theme (“EagleFalls in Love”) which has tremen-dous potential to add a creepyaura of paranoia to the plot, butwhich seems to be used in astraight-faced, lyrical manner.

Schifrin’s score is writtenmostly for strings, woodwindsand brass, but the cymbalom isused as a marker for the obses-sion behind the operation, as wellas for more lyrical effects in cueslike “The Swan.” “Flight of theEagles” has the quality ofSchifrin’s “The Plot” music fromMission: Impossible. Oddly, in

cues like “Flight of the Eagles”and “Eagle Versus Fox” the scoreseems to be channeling effectsfrom Ron Goodwin’s WhereEagles Dare, another star-stud-ded WWII adventure. —J.B.

Paper Tiger ★★★ROY BUDD (1975)Cinephile CIN CD 012 16 tracks - 50:49

Roy Budd (1946-1993) wassomething of a JamesHorner-type film scoring

phenom a decade earlier. LikeHorner, he was gifted with anamazing talent for orchestralmusic and for matching it todrama; he wrote in bold strokeswhich were similar from film tofilm, and he forged his film scor-ing style, at least at first, out ofhis contemporaries’ best nuggets(for Budd, this meant Barry,Schifrin, Fielding, Mancini andGoldsmith). Unlike Horner, heactually was British, and he camefrom the jazz world.

Paper Tiger is a 1975 film star-ring David Niven as a tutor to a

young, wealthy Asian boy whomust come to face his own cow-ardice when the two are kid-napped. As such it didn’t offer achance for the urban Schifringrooves that mark the best ofBudd, as in Fear Is the Key andThe Black Windmill (see Vol. 4,No. 5). Instead, there are twosongs with lyrics by the legendarySammy Cahn—which are unfor-tunately performed by dated-sounding choral groups over popbackings, and sound cheesy today,like imitation Mancini. The scor-ing, however, includes delicateAsian material reminiscent ofGoldsmith’s The Sand Pebbles,and colorful action scoring of thekind Budd brought out in bucketswhen stuff started happening on-

screen.Budd is one of those secondary

figures of film music I probablywould never have encounteredhad I not been the editor of asoundtrack magazine. But havingbeen exposed to his albums muchmore than his films, I’ve becomea fan of his adept and usuallylarge-scaled underscoring. Whoknows how some people canmake an orchestra really sing at ayoung age, but Budd had the gift,and even if his style painted himinto a corner as to the films hewas best at, he left some greatwork behind. —Lukas Kendall

Irving Berlin in Hollywood★★★★IRVING BERLINRhino R2 75614 • 25 tracks - 77:46

So what’s Irving Berlindoing in a magazine devot-ed to dramatic film music?

FSMers know that Berlin did notcontribute any fiery musicalscores to the film-score canon.However, he did pen some 1,500songs (and received seven

Academy Award nominations) inhis 101-year lifetime—many ofwhich became almost instant-standards. Whether stirring uswith patriotic fervor (“God BlessAmerica”) or holiday sentiment(the Oscar-winning “WhiteChristmas”), Berlin had a lyricalsynergy that went beyond tenu-ous, pleasing tunes—it createdthe moniker of what we call the“standard.”

Irving Berlin in Hollywood cel-ebrates his songs as used in suchHollywood musicals as EasterParade, Top Hat, Annie Get YourGun and The Great Ziegfeld,tunes that he either composed forthe picture or adapted from previ-ous works. The 25 songs are fromfilms released between 1927-54,

and considering his prodigiousoutput, it just skims the top. Thiscould easily have been a 2CD set,but Rhino has chosen the single-disc course.

This Berlin compilation is partof Rhino’s current foray into“personality soundtracks.” It’sbeen an uneven series to be sure.Granted, stuff like Fred Astaire &Ginger Rogers at RKO, MarioLanza at M-G-M and JudyGarland in Hollywood have allfeatured jiffy liner notes andsnazzy remastering. On the debitside, these releases fall short ofmaking the same impact thatRhino’s score-only soundtrackshave made: North by Northwest,Erich Wolfgang Korngold: TheWarner Bros. Years, Gone withthe Wind, How the West Was Won,Ben-Hur and especially the,ahem, haunting score toPoltergeist. These have beenRhino’s shining beacons.

Still, it is cool to listen to FredAstaire croon “Steppin’ Out withMy Baby” and even Clark Gablewarble “Puttin’ on the Ritz,”

rather than some ill-advisedrehash by a pop singer wanna-be.It’s like getting Mom’s apple piemade by Mom herself—instead ofa pasty imitation. Even with thisalbum, some of the selectionshave been gleaned from earlierand even other labels, but who’scounting? The wonderful insou-ciance, charm and elegance ofBerlin’s songs create a wistfuland lilting ambiance, earningthem a valid place in Hollywood’smusical milieu.

Irving Berlin in Hollywood is awinner, complete with compre-hensive liner notes by IanWhitcomb. Berlin’s songs are,indeed, classics that are as endur-ing as they are endearing. JeromeKern said it best: “Irving Berlin


has no place in American music.He is American music.”

—Chris Robinson

Watch the Skies ★★★VARIOUSSonic Images SID-890116 tracks - 73:29

Watch the Skies is vir-tually indistinguish-able from the parade

of compilations that havemarched out of Silva Screen’svault in the past few years, but atleast this disc is marked by a cou-ple of previously unavailable addi-tions. The thematic connectionbetween all the disparate cueshere is alien invaders, so Watchthe Skies launches (not withDimitri Tiomkin’s The Thing, asyou might expect from the title)with the Cincinnati Pops doing anice take on Herrmann’s The Daythe Earth Stood Still, followed bythe anti-Day the Earth StoodStill, Danny Elfman’s MarsAttacks! in a performance by theCity of Prague Orchestra thatlacks the frenetic, psychotic quali-ty of Elfman’s original.

The Prague does a somewhatmore successful reading of ChrisYoung’s atmospheric end title toSpecies, followed by MichaelChertock’s piano performance ofselections from Williams’s E.T.(from a Telarc CD of piano-per-formed film music) and the Cityof Prague doing Alan Silvestri’send title to Contact. Thenthere’s the bluesy synth andharmonica opening to TheyLive! by John Carpenter andAlan Howarth, and John Bealdoing some convincing and cost-effective synth versions ofElfman’s Men in Black andPredator main titles. It’s stillimpossible to escape the quaver-ing, bleeping sound that synthe-sizers produce, but these aredetailed reproductions of thelicks from the original works.

Richard Band’s music forAliens—The Ride basically adaptsJames Horner’s Aliens score forsynth and (much smaller) orches-tra, and while Horner’s work isacknowledged in the credits, it’s acontinuing source of annoyancethat Jerry Goldsmith’s obviouscontribution to the opening sec-

tion of music isn’t recognized(indeed, Horner’s score is impos-sible to imagine without the two-note flute motif and echoed col-legno effects Goldsmith broughtto the original). Goldsmith’s origi-nal end title music is furtherdiminished by a lifeless readingfrom the Orchestra of theAmericas under the baton of BillBroughton.

One welcome addition to thedisc is Denny Zeitlin’s effectivemain title to the excellent 1978remake of Invasion of the BodySnatchers—great, old-fashionedhorror music which captures asense of hideous awe and anguishat what is about to unfold as thefilm opens with an outer spacemontage of alien pod creaturesemigrating to Earth. This seguessmoothly into Elliot Goldenthal’srustling opening music to thecable telefilm Roswell andChristopher Franke’s new age-ishsonic ambiance for the StephenKing adaptation, TheTommyknockers (clearly the workof the composer of Babylon 5).Michael Hoenig’s epilogue musicto Dark Skies is in the same elec-tronic vein with a slow, regretfulpulse and would-be brass chorusto illustrate the goings-on on thedefunct NBC sci-fi show thatbegot Voyager’s Jeri Ryan.

There’s an amusing renditionof Mark Snow’s X-Files theme inthe style of Alan Hovhaness fromwhat sounds like a much moreinteresting album than this one,Delos’s Mozart TV (DE 3222).Then the City of PragueOrchestra inevitably returns inthe final track as they take onDavid Arnold’s IndependenceDay, but this time they have theconductor of the original perfor-mance, Nicholas Dodd, on tap,and this interpretation is actuallya bit more vibrant and enthusedthan the original.

The fact that Sonic Imagesapparently has no corporate con-nection to Silva Screen at leastmeans that there’s refreshingcandor about the origins of anumber of these pieces, half ofwhich have been culled from ear-lier compilations done by Silvaand other companies (while Silvaitself has a tendency to reshuffle

and reissue their library of City ofPrague recordings so often thatit’s impossible to tell what’s newand what isn’t). —J.B.

The Bergman Suites: The Classic Film Music of Erik Nordgren★★ 1/2ERIK NORDGRENMarco Polo 8.22368224 tracks - 53:38

In his copious liner notes forthis release, one-name-won-der-conductor Adriano

declares that “very little of [ErikNordgren’s] film music indulgesin the contemporary clichés ofHollywood films.” It’s curiousthen that much of this musiccomes off as middle-of-the-roadGolden Age film scoring with atouch of non-specific folksinessthrown in for good measure.Much of the music seems to becomposed along the dramaticlines of Herrmannesque intro-spection, solitude, and self-exami-nation. However, Nordgren’smusic lacks Herrmann’s sense ofcolor, vibrancy, and most impor-tantly, economy. Nordgren’smusic is never overblown, but it’sso lushly over-orchestrated thatscarcely a passage avoids the gripof a five-voice string section. Andwhenever the composer utilizes ascaled-down sound, it’s often flatand uninvolving. (“Swindle andDeceit” from The Face comes tomind.) Only the WildStrawberries suite manages togenerate some coloristic interest.

However, it’s possible that I’mplacing too much of the blame onNordgren’s shoulders. The entiredisc is hampered by a dynamical-ly neutered performance by theSlovak Radio SymphonyOrchestra under Adriano. Thefew moments that do dare tomove beyond a mezzo forte oftencome completely unglued. It’sunclear if this is supposed to besome sort of sardonic editorializ-ing on the conductor’s part, orsimply a lack of ensemble control.If you’re looking for a good intro-duction to a composer you maynot be familiar with, keep wait-ing. This one doesn’t make muchof a first impression.

—Doug Adams FSM

Welcome to the FSM Marketplace.

We’re pleased to offer hard-to-find, unusual

soundtrack-relatedproducts.

To order, use thehandy mailer

bound into the maga-zine between pages 40

& 41.

FSMma

rketpla

ceTHE CLASSICSCHARTER CLUB

Want to step to thefront of the line? Simplysend us your name, addressand credit card information(VISA, MasterCard or AmericanExpress), and we will send youautomatically each CD as it isreleased. You can return anydisc for a full refund or creditwithin 30 days. Each CD willcost $19.95 plus shipping ($3U.S./Canada, or $5 rest ofworld); charges will beprocessed at the time of ship-ping. Pre-order A Sendme Everything!Pre-order B Send meeach subsequent Silver Age

Settling Old Scores


m u s i c. . . e x c l u s i v e t o F S M !

Monte WalshJohn Barry’s First WesternScore! Two decades before Danceswith Wolves, John Barry scored this1970 character study of aging cow-boys (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance)with his impeccable melodic touch.The score (never before released)features a title song performed byMama Cass, beautiful lyricalmoments, a thunderous mustang-

herding cue, and even a dash of 007.Also included are outtakes, sourcemusic, and the 45-rpm single record-ing of “The Good Times Are Coming.”$19.95Prince ValiantThe Classic Adventure Scoreby Franz Waxman! PrinceValiant (1954) is a stirring knights-and-adventure work in the classictradition of The Adventures of RobinHood and Star Wars. It features adynamic set of themes and varia-tions for the hero, princess, villain,mentor (sound familiar?) in a stirringsymphonic setting. The CD includesthe complete score as it survivestoday, newly remixed from the 20thCentury-Fox archives in good stereo-phonic sound with bonus tracks. It’sour first Golden Age Classic!$19.95

Patton/The Flight of thePhoenixClassic Jerry Goldsmith warsoundtrack plus rare Frank

DeVol adventure score onone CD! Jerry Goldsmith’s Patton(1970) is a brilliant definition ofGeneral Patton, from the jauntyPatton march to the echoplexedtrumpet triplets that conjure up theghosts of an ancient, martial past.Previous albums have been re-recordings; this is the original filmsoundtrack.The Flight of the Phoenix

(1965) is a superb adventure filmabout a cargo plane that crashes inthe Sahara desert. Frank DeVol’srousing, kinetic score melodicallydelineates the film’s sharply drawnconflicts and the characters’ strug-gle against the encroaching threat ofthe desert.

$19.95100 RiflesOriginal soundtrack by JerryGoldsmithNever before released! 100Rifles (1969) is Jerry Goldsmith’s

most outrageous western score, fea-turing bellicose brass, wild percussionand melodic Mexican nuggets. The CDfeatures the score twice: in newlyremixed stereo and in the mono mixoriginally made for the film. It’s anaudacious, rip-roaring hunk of Mexicanadventure, never before available.You’re gonna love it!$19.95The Return of

DraculaGerald Fried 2CD set alsoincluding I Bury the Living,The Cabinet of Caligari andMark of the Vampire. From thecomposer of Star Trek’s “Amok Time”and “Catspaw” comes this historic2CD set of four of his early horrorscores: The Return of Dracula (1958)is based on the Dies Irae, I Bury theLiving (1958) features creepy harpsi-chord, The Cabinet of Caligari (1962)

has a beautiful, romantic theme, andMark of the Vampire (1957) recallsFried’s score for Stanley Kubrick’sThe Killing. 24 pg. booklet.$29.95(Shipping charges are same as for asingle CD)Fantastic VoyageThe Complete UnreleasedScore by Leonard Rosenman!Fantastic Voyage is the classic 1966science fiction movie which follows a

miniaturized surgical team inside thehuman body. The score by LeonardRosenman (composer of Lord of theRings, East of Eden and Star Trek IV)is one of his most famous and hasnever been available in any form. It isa powerful, modern orchestral workwith breathtaking musical colors, pre-sented here in complete form, instereo.$19.95The Poseidon Adventure/The Paper ChaseOriginal unreleasedsoundtracks by John Williams!The Poseidon Adventure is the classic1972 Irwin Allen disaster movie, withWilliams’s stunning title theme andsuspenseful interior passages. ThePaper Chase is the acclaimed 1973comedy drama about Harvard lawstudents, with music ranging from alight pop love theme to Baroqueadaptations to the haunting “Passingof Wisdom.” Also includes Americana6-min. main title to Conrack (1974).$19.95

Stagecoach/The Loner Original soundtracks by JerryGoldsmith! Stagecoach is the 1966

remake of the John Ford western. TheMainstream CD is a re-recording; thisCD is the first release of the originalsoundtrack, as conducted by thecomposer. The Loner is Goldsmith’scomplete contribution to the 1965western TV series by Rod Serling(sounds like Rio Conchos): main andend titles and two episode scores.$19.95

The Wild Bunch restorededition. Limited availability

f e a t u r e s e l e c t i o nPrince of FoxesThe Unreleased Alfred Newman Adventure Score! This1949 Tyrone Power/Orson Welles costume epic boastsAlfred Newman’s arguably greatest achievement at 20thCentury-Fox: a colorful, rollicking score capturing thespiritual renewal of the Renaissance, yet conjuring up theevil inherent in all tyrants. It’s by turns adventurous,

b o o k s. . . f o r m u s i c l o v e r s

The Music ofStar Trek:Profiles in Styleby Jeff BondThis is the first-ever historyof Star Trek soundtracks,from the original series tothe movies to the new incar-nations, by FSM’s own JeffBond, with a foreword byStar Trek II and VI directorNicholas Meyer. Featured areinterviews with composersJerry Goldsmith, AlexanderCourage, Fred Steiner, GeraldFried, Leonard Rosenman,Cliff Eidelman, DennisMcCarthy, Ron Jones, JayChattaway, David Bell, PaulBaillargeon; producer RobertJustman; and music editorGerry Sackman.

The book also contains anup-to-date, complete list ofevery score written for allfour TV series; a guide tounderstanding how certain

shows were tracked andcredited; Classic Trek manu-script excerpts from FredSteiner, Gerald Fried, SolKaplan and George Duning(in their own hand); andcomplete cue sheets fromselected episodes and films.Published by Lone EaglePublishing. 224 pages, soft-cover, illustrated.$17.95A Heart at Fire’sCenter: The Life andMusic of BernardHerrmann

by Steven C. SmithBernard Herrmann (1911-1975) stands as a toweringfigure in film music: not onlywas he the most influentialfilm composer of all time,who scored such classicfilms as Citizen Kane,Vertigo, Psycho and TaxiDriver, but he was an irasci-

ble, passionate personalityfamous for his temper andoutbursts. This 1991 book isthe definitive biography ofthe legendary composer,covering his film, television,radio and concert work aswell as his personal life: fromhis beginnings in New YorkCity through his three mar-riages and many professionalassociations.

This book is actually stillin-print, but it can be hardto find. It is a brilliant illumi-nation of the musician andthe man and probably thebest film composer biogra-phy ever written.Published by University ofCalifornia Press. 416 pp.,hardcover. $39.95U.S. Exclusive—Onlyfrom FSMJohn Barry: ALife in Musicby Geoff Leonard,Pete Walker andGareth BramleyThis 8.5” by 10.75” tome isa definitive history of JohnBarry’s music and career,from his earliest days as aBritish rock and roller to hismost recent films andLondon concert. It is not apersonal biography butrather a comprehensivechronicle of every singlething John Barry has everdone: from records to filmsto television to concerts,with plenty of primarysource material from Barryand his many collaborators.

James Bond fans will bethrilled by the many behind-the-scenes photographs(from scoring sessions forYou Only Live Twice,Diamonds Are Forever andThe Living Daylights) andinformation relating to 007.

In fact, Barryphiles overallwill be astounded at what isprobably the biggest collec-tion of Barry photographs inthe world, from all stages ofhis career—at work, athome, and at events. Alsoincluded is a completefilm/discography and albumand film artwork, some in fullcolor.Published by Samsom & Co.,U.K. 244 pp., hardcover,illustrated.$44.95

Overtones andUndertones:Reading FilmMusicby Royal S. BrownRoyal Brown is best-knownas the longtime film musiccolumnist for Fanfare maga-zine, whose illuminatingreviews have placed filmmusic in a serious academic

context as well as enter-tained with their sharpobservations. Overtones andUndertones is his 1994book, the first-ever serioustheoretical study of music infilm. It explores the relation-ships between film, musicand narrative and chroniclesthe aesthetics of the artform through several eras.Key works analyzed are TheSea Hawk (Korngold),Double Indemnity (Rózsa),Laura (Raksin), Prokofiev’smusic for Eisenstein,Herrmann’s music forHitchcock, and severalscores for the films of Jean-

Luc Godard.A supplemental section fea-

tures Brown’s probing inter-views with Rózsa, Raksin,Herrmann, Mancini, Jarre,Schifrin, Barry and Shore.

If you are a film studentinterested in writing aboutfilm music, you have to readthis book.Published by University ofCalifornia Press. 396 pp.,softcover. $24.95

Dimitri Tiomkin: APortraitby Christopher PalmerThis 1984 book (T.E. Books,out of print!) by the lateChristopher Palmer is theauthoritative study of leg-endary composer DimitriTiomkin (1894-1979). Longout of print, a few copieshave surfaced from the U.K.publisher and are now forsale—when they’re gone,they’re gone! The book ishardback, 144 pp., anddivided into three sections: abiography, overview ofTiomkin in an historical per-spective, and specific cover-age of his major landmarks(Lost Horizon, High Noon,the Hitchcock films, Giant,55 Days at Peking and manymore). Also includes a com-plete filmography, 41 b&wphotos, and 9 color plates.Rare!$24.95VideoHound’sSoundtracks:

Music from theMovies, Broadwayand TelevisionEdited by Didier C.Deutsch, Foreword by LukasKendallThis massive 1024-page

book contains reviews ofover 2,000 soundtrack CDs,rated from one to five“bones,” with complete cred-its and track lists for eachdisc. Many of the reviews areby FSM’s hardy veteran writ-ers: Jeff Bond, Andy Dursin,Lukas Kendall and PaulMacLean. The ultimate guidefor those indecisive momentswhile looking at catalogs ordiscs in a used bin. Includescross-indexes by composer,title, rating, orchestrator,conductor, performer andsong title, as well as a com-pilation CD of tracks fromHollywood Records.$24.95

Film ComposersGuide 1997-1998 FourthEdition Compiled and Editedby Vincent J. Francillon This is the ultimate resourcefor finding out what com-posers have scored whatfilms—over 2,600 com-posers cross-referenced with25,000 films! Never be puz-zled again. Also containsagency contacts, AcademyAward winners and nomi-nees, record companyaddresses and more. 8.5” by11”, 416 pp. Lone EaglePublishing. Retail price $55;Special to FSM readers:$39.95

Out-of-Print—Cheap!McNally’s PriceGuide for CollectibleSoundtrack Records(1950-1990)by Keith and DorieMcNallyThis 1994 LP price guidewas an attempt by mail-order dealer West PointRecords to compete withthe existing soundtrackguide by Jerry Osborne. 240pages in all, it features 780black and white photos ofrare album covers along withexhaustive listings (over2300 in all) for 12”, 10” and7” LPs, plus sections ontelevision soundtracks, origi-nal casts and foreign edi-tions. It also has a lengthyintroductory section withessays on soundtrack LP col-lecting, including informationon foreign markets.

McNally’s Price Guide orig-inally sold for $29.95. Nowout-of-print (West PointRecords itself having gottenout of the business), remain-ing copies are available fromFSM for a mere:$9.95

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b o o k s. . . f o r c o m p o s e r sThe Click Book Comprehensive TimingTables for SynchronizingMusic to Film Created by USC student andcomposer Cameron Rose.Click-tempo tables for 6-0through 32-0 frame click-tempos (6-0, 6-1, 6-2,etc.)... Each timing tablecovers beat 1 to beat 999at the given click-tempo...Large, bold, easy-to-readclick-tempo values and equiv-alent metronomic values atthe top of each page...Timing, frame and footagebreakdowns for rhythmicsubdivisions within each click-tempo—including compoundmeters... Listing and tutorialof standard timing-conver-sion formulas for 24 fps filmspeed... Tutorial in SMPTE-to-Absolute time conversion...Frames-to-Seconds conver-sion tables for U.S. andEuropean film and videospeeds. 430 pp. Price is theindustry standard for clickbooks; this one gives morevalue for money!$149.95

New Edition!1999 Film/TVMusic Guide From the Music BusinessRegistry Is your career worth invest-ing $95? Contains exhaustivedirectories of record labels,music publishers, film/TVmusic depts., music supervi-sors, music editors, compos-er representatives, com-posers, clearance companies,recording studios, performingrights societies, and musiclibraries—names, addresses,contact numbers.

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Volume One, 1993-96Issues are 24 pp. unlessnoted. Most 1993 editions arexeroxes only* #30/31, February/March’93 64 pp. Maurice Jarre,Basil Poledouris, JayChattaway, John Scott, ChrisYoung, Mike Lang; the sec-ondary market, EnnioMorricone albums, ElmerBernstein Film MusicCollection LPs; 1992 inreview.#32, April ’93 16 pp.

Matinee temp-track, SPFM’93 Conference Report, StarTrek music editorial.* #33, May ’93 12 pp. Bookreviews, classical/film con-nection.* #34, June ’93 16 pp.Goldsmith SPFM award din-ner; orchestrators & whatthey do, Lost in Space, recy-cled Herrmann; spotlights onChris Young, Pinocchio, BruceLee film scores. * #35, July ’93 16 pp.Tribute to David Kraft; JohnBeal Pt. 1; scores vs. songs,Herrmann Christmas operas;Film Composers Dictionary. #36/37, August/September’93 40 pp. Bernstein, BobTownson (Varèse), RichardKraft & Nick Redman Pt. 1,John Beal Pt. 2; reviews ofCAM CDs; collector interestarticles, classic corner, fanta-sy film scores of ElmerBernstein. * #38, October ’93 16 pp.John Debney (seaQuestDSV), Kraft & Redman Pt. 2. * #39, Nov. ’93 16 pp. Kraft& Redman Pt. 3, Fox CDs,Nightmare Before Christmasand Bride of Frankensteinreviews. * #40, Dec. ’93 16 pp. Kraft& Redman Pt. 4; Re-recordingThe Magnificent Seven.* #41/42/43,January/Feb./March ’94 48pp. Elliot Goldenthal, JamesNewton Howard, Kitaro &Randy Miller (Heaven &Earth), Rachel Portman, KenDarby; Star Wars trivia/cuesheets; sexy album covers;music for westerns; ’93 inreview. * #44, April ’94 JoelMcNeely, Poledouris (OnDeadly Ground); SPFMMorricone tribute & photos;lots of reviews. * #45, May ’94 RandyNewman (Maverick), GraemeRevell (The Crow); Goldsmithin concert; in-depth reviews:The Magnificent Seven andSchindler’s List; Instant LinerNotes, book reviews.

* #46/47, June/July ’94Patrick Doyle, NewtonHoward (Wyatt Earp), JohnMorgan (restoring HansSalter scores); Tribute toHenry Mancini; MichaelNyman music for films, col-lectible CDs.* #48, August ’94 MarkMancina (Speed); ChuckCirino & Peter Rotter; RichardKraft: advice for aspiringcomposers; classical music infilms; new CAM CDs;Cinerama LPs; bestsellingCDs.#49, September ’94 HansZimmer (The Lion King),Shirley Walker; LaurenceRosenthal on the Vineyard;Salter in memoriam; classicalmusic in films; John Williamsin concert; Recordman at theflea market.#50, October ’94 AlanSilvestri (Forrest Gump),Mark Isham; sex & sound-track sales; Lalo Schifrin inconcert; Morricone Beat CDs;that wacky Internet;Recordman on liner notes.#51, November ’94 HowardShore (Ed Wood), ThomasNewman (ShawshankRedemption), J. Peter

Robinson (Craven’s NewNightmare), Lukas’s mominterviewed; music of Heimat,Star Trek; promos.* #52, December ’94 EricSerra, Marc Shaiman Pt. 1,Sandy De Crescent (musiccontractor), Valencia FilmMusic Conference, SPFM

Conference Pt. 1, StarGateliner notes, ShostakoholicsAnonymous.#53/54, January/February’95 Shaiman Pt. 2, DennisMcCarthy (Star Trek); SergioBassetti, Jean-Claude Petit &Armando Trovajoli inValencia; Music & theAcademy Awards Pt. 1;rumored LPs, quadraphonicLPs.#55/56, March/April ’95Poledouris (The JungleBook), Silvestri (The Quickand the Dead), Joe Lo Duca(Evil Dead), Oscar & MusicPt. 2, Recordman’s Diary,SPFM Conference Report Pt.2.#57, May ’95 Goldsmith inconcert, Bruce Broughton onYoung Sherlock Holmes, Miles

Goodman interviewed, ’94Readers Poll, Star Trekoverview.#58, June ’95 Michael Kamen(Die Hard), Royal S. Brown(film music critic),Recordman Loves Annette,History of SoundtrackCollecting Pt. 1.*#59/60, July/Aug. ’95 48pp. Sex Sells Too (sexy LPcovers, lots of photos),Maurice Jarre interviewed,Miklós Rózsa Remembered,History of SoundtrackCollecting Pt. 2, film music inconcert pro and con. #61, September ’95Goldenthal (Batman Forever),Kamen Pt. 2, Chris Lennertz(new composer), Star Trek:The Motion Picture (analysis),classical music for sound-track fans.#62, October ’95 DannyElfman Pt. 1, John Ottman(The Usual Suspects), RobertTownson (VarèseSarabande), Ten MostInfluential Scores, Goldsmithdocumentary reviewed.* #63, November ’95 JamesBond Special Issue! JohnBarry & James Bond (histo-ry/overview), Eric Serra onGoldenEye, essay, favorites,more. Also: History ofSoundtrack Collecting Pt. 3,

Davy Crockett LPs.* #64, December ’95 DannyElfman Pt. 2 (big!), SteveBartek (orchestrator),Recordman Meets Shaft: TheBlaxploitation Soundtracks,Kamen Pt. 3, re-recordingHouse of Frankenstein.* #65/66/67January/February/March ’96,48 pp. T. Newman, ToruTakemitsu, Robotech, StarTrek, TenInfluential com-posers; Philip Glass, HeitorVilla-Lobos, songs in film,best of ‘95, film music docu-mentary reviews (Herrmann,Delerue, Takemitsu, “TheHollywood Sound”).#68, April ’96 David Shire’sThe Taking of Pelham OneTwo Three; Carter Burwell(Fargo), gag obituaries,Apollo 13 promo/bootlegtips.#69, May ’96 Music in Plan 9from Outer Space; JohnWalsh’s funny movie musicglossary; Herrmann & Rózsaradio programs; Irwin Allenbox set review; Bender’s“Into the Dark Pool” column. #70, June ’96 Mancina(Twister), final desert islandmovie lists, Jeff Bond’s sum-mer movie column, TV’sBiggest Hits book review.#71, July ’96 David Arnold(Independence Day), MichelColombier, Recordman Goesto Congress, Bond’s summermovie column.#72, August ’96 Ten BestScores of ‘90s, T. Newman’sThe Player, Escape from L.A.,conductor John Mauceri, ref-erence books, Akira IfukubeCDs.#73, September ’96Recordman on War FilmSoundtracks Pt. 1; Interview:David Schecter: MonstrousMovie Music; Ifukube CDs Pt.2, Miles Goodman obituary.#74, October ’96 ActionScores in the ‘90s (intelligentanalysis); Cinemusic ‘96report (Barry, Zhou Jiping);Vic Mizzy interviewed.* #75, November ’96 Barry:Cinemusic Interview (verybig); Recordman on War FilmSoundtracks Pt. 2, Bond’sreview column.* #76, December ’96Interviews: Randy Edelman,Barry pt. 2, Ry Cooder (LastMan Standing); Andy Dursin’slaserdisc column, Lukas’sreviews.

Volume Two, 1997First color covers! Issues 32-48 pp.* Vol. 2, No. 1, Jan./Feb. ’97Star Wars issue: Williamsinterview, behind the SpecialEdition CDs, commentary,

v i d e oBasilPoledouris: His Life andMusic An intimate visitwith thecomposer ofConan theBarbarian, BigWednesday, Free Willy,Starship Troopers andLonesome Dove. Take atour of his work and

lifestyle—in his ownwords—from hismethods ofcomposing to hislove of sailing andthe sea. The videoruns 50 minutesand includesfootage of Basilconducting and atwork on synthesizermock-ups of

Starship Troopers, as wellas dozens of behind-the-scenes and family photos,and special appearances by

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The Mummy ★★★JERRY GOLDSMITHDecca 289 466 458-215 tracks - 57:46

This Jerry Goldsmith scorewas singled out by Variety as

“one of the worst in the compos-er’s distinguished career.” Iwouldn’t go that far, but it doesindicate that Goldsmith is a littletired of scoring movies that depictevil menaces which must bedestroyed. Stephen Sommers’srethink of the classic Universalmummy concept wants to beRaiders of the Lost Mummy, butit plays more like King Solomon’s

Mummy: it’s designed to generatemore cheap laughs than thrills.Goldsmith’s job seems to havebeen simply to provide an extralayer of crushing, epic noise tothe proceedings, and he accom-plishes the mission. There’s animpressive, heavy brass themeover clanging percussion for thefilm’s opening, which is kind of alive action version of The Princeof Egypt (which was itself an ani-mated version of De Mille’s TheTen Commandments), and a pow-erful motif for the threat of themummy itself. But I miss the erain which Goldsmith approachedevery lame antagonist in a moviewith a striking and utterly unex-pected new sound. There’s nosubstantive difference betweenGoldsmith’s treatment of themummy and his approach to theBorg in Star Trek: First Contact,or for that matter to the killerapes in Congo: a menacing low

brass theme seems to be the wayto go in each instance (and it maybe the only way to cut throughthe wall of sound effects thatthese movies generate).

Sometimes it seems likeGoldsmith has written so manynotes over the course of his careerthat the only ones left available tohim are the bad ones. Case inpoint: The Mummy’s heroicadventure theme, first hinted atin “Tauger Attack” and intro-duced full force in “NightBoarders”—Goldsmith correctlydivined that Brendan Fraser’sRick O’Connell is more comedianthan action hero, and his broad,heroic theme is in reality a comicmelody masquerading as anaction fanfare. Goldsmith’s treat-ment of the African desert isevocative of Jarre’s Lawrence ofArabia (in orchestration if not inactual melody), but it’s effective,particularly in “The Caravan,”with a sprightly tambourinerhythm and bouzouki melodyplayed over a big, exotic theme forbrass and choir (seemingly devel-oped from an Arab-style motifwritten for Lionheart), and“Camel Race,” which takes hisArab-style love theme and makesit soar over a rapid-fire string run.

The mummy theme comes intoits own in “My Favorite Plague”and “Crowd Control,” both ofwhich recall Goldsmith’s actionwriting for King Solomon’sMines—there’s a creepy stringtake on the mummy motif thatindicates that Goldsmith probablycould have made this film scaryhad director Stephen Sommersactually taken the material seri-ously. “Rebirth” features themost lively action material, againin the mode of King Solomon’sMines, wrapping up with a marchversion of the heroic themeagainst lively brass. Fans ofGoldsmith’s action writing willhave a field day as the last four,lengthy cues before the end titles(“My Favorite Plague,” “Crowd

Control,” “Rebirth” and “TheMummy”) comprise 22 minutesof nonstop action, and while “MyFavorite Plague” gets off to akind of monotonous start, oncethings get rolling there’s somespectacular, energetic materialwith Goldsmith balancing ethnicinstruments against the forces ofthe orchestra for the film’sHarryhausen-like climacticmummy battle. (There’s a great,oriental-like string ostinato oper-ating against the mummy motifin “The Mummy” that put me inmind of Goldsmith’s score to TheChairman, not to mentionRózsa’s The Golden Voyage ofSinbad.) It’s too bad the scorehas to wrap up with a march pre-sentation of the heroic theme forO’Connell, which puts the entireproject back in perspective(although the choral take on thelove theme is nice). I suspect aserious movie would haveinspired Goldsmith more.

—Jeff Bond

Playing by Heart ★★★★JOHN BARRY Decca 466275 (England)14 tracks - 57:19

Playing by Heart, JohnBarry’s latest score, was

partially removed from the movie,with Christopher Young engagedto write more upbeat cues for cer-tain scenes. When Chris Robertsof Decca heard Barry’s music asoriginally intended, however, heimmediately decided that itshould be released—but not as asoundtrack. As a result, this CD(so far only released in the U.K.)has been marketed as a jazzalbum. (The song compilationreleased in the U.S. does have twoBarry cuts; see FSM Vol. 4, No. 4.)

For Playing by Heart, Barryhas written something of a depar-ture from his ‘90s Scarlet Letter-style love themes. The score isinstead a return to his Body Heatlayout of adding a jazz rhythmsection to an orchestra: it is most-

ly mellow, light jazz, performedby a small ensemble, but as theCD (and film) progresses, themusic gradually becomes moreromantic, and by the end of thedisc an enormous string sectionhas taken hold. Thrown into themix are three tracks by ChetBaker, who was a great inspira-tion to the young Barry (who washimself a trumpeter in the 50s)and director Willard Carroll.

The disc opens with“Remembering Chet,” originallyrecorded as a demo by Barry, andperformed in New York by asmall ensemble. The main themeof the film is heard on trumpet,performed by the excellent soloistChris Botti. The piece is decep-tively simple, yet utterly enticing;the atmosphere conjured up is ofa smoky jazz joint of the ‘50s.

It is not until the third track,“Game of Hide and Seek,” thatBarry’s trademark strings make asignificant appearance. TommyMorgan has a brief cameo on hisharmonica in “A Place InsideAlive and Well,” another beautifultrack. Following this is a repriseof “Remembering Chet,” butBarry cleverly inverts the roles ofthe principal instruments so thatLee Musiker’s piano is playingthe actual theme while Botti’strumpet winds mesmerizinglyaround it.

The closing track, “VowsRenewed,” is arguably the best,as Barry’s music entices you,drags you in, seduces you andthen goes to bed with you. Thispiece is similar to the jazzier ele-ments of Barry’s 1998 conceptalbum, The Beyondness ofThings. The combination of thehuge string section and Botti’strumpet solos makes for analmost impossibly bittersweet,romantic piece, and brings one ofBarry’s best scores in 15 years (ormore) to an excellent close.

The liner notes, by JonBurlingame, are excellent, thoughslightly puzzling. He interviews


R E V I E W S O F C U R R E N T

R E L E A S E SO N C DSCORE

Best ★★★★★

Really Good ★★★★

Average ★★★

Weak ★★

Worst ★RATI

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director Carroll, who gushes end-lessly about Barry’s music—but ifhe feels this way about it, whywas so much of it left out of thefilm? (Reportedly Miramax execu-tives had much to do with thatdecision.) It seems that Barry isfinally tiring of the Hollywoodsystem, and will increasingly con-centrate on concerts and conceptalbums, but Playing by Heart isan excellent reminder of his giftfor film scores. —James Southall

The Matrix ★★★★DON DAVISVarèse Sarabande VSD-602610 tracks - 30:11

I’ve always wondered what con-cert composer John Adams

would do with a film assignment,and after seeing The Matrix Ihave a pretty good idea.Composer Don Davis, who alsocollaborated with the WachowskiBrothers on their earlier Bound,tackled this tale of freedom fight-ers operating within a computer-created reality with the kind ofexperimental writing that’s alltoo rare in movie music thesedays. Davis (and the Wachowskis)hooked me from the openingmoments of The Matrix with asequence of latex-clad super-woman Trinity (Carrie-AnneMoss) bulleting across a rooftopin flight from the film’s SecretService-like “Agents”—Davistreated a slow-mo shot of Moss’sglistening black form sprintingtoward the camera with an explo-sion of arrhythmic brass thatmade my hair stand on end.

Often Davis seems to disobeythe film composer’s prime direc-tive of not just recreating musi-cally the on-screen action—theexpressive orchestrations, whilenot mickey-mousing, do add theirown layer of illustration to thefilm’s dense visuals. But in thiscase the approach is appropriate,since the characters in the filmoperate in a world in whicheverything around them exists foreffect; the music merely seems toreflect that reality. Davis’s scoredoes travel down other avenues,including a cool rhythmic introfor bongos in “Hotel Ambush”and some hypnotic soprano vocalsagainst minimalistic, PhilipGlass-like ostinatos to underscorea lecture from Laurence

Fishburne’s Morpheus in“Welcome to the Real World.” Butas the Matrix’s computer-con-tained world morphs into otherrealities or is slowed down into“Bullet Time” by the characters’own perceptions, Davis’s score isnotably fluid and amorphous,catching fire in a riot of concert-hall techniques usually reservedfor the Adamses and ElliotGoldenthals of the world.

The typically brief Varèsealbum is a good representation ofthe score’s highlights, although Iwould have liked to have Davis’sthumping, rhythmic brass scoringof the jujitsu training sequence.One of the film’s action sequencesis scored by a techno cue writtenby the Propellerheads—“Spybreak,” available on thefilm’s song compilation sound-track (Maverick 9 47390-2, 13tracks, 62:36) which has beentearing up the charts. —J.B.

eXistenZ ★★★ 1/2HOWARD SHORERCA Victor 09026-63478-220 tracks - 46:38

David Cronenberg inspiresHoward Shore to compose

some of his most memorablemovie music. Through suchnotable works as The Brood,Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly,Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M.Butterfly and Crash, Cronenberghad always allowed Shore plentyof room to stretch his musicalmuscles. eXistenZ is probably themost approachable and, from asoundtrack fan’s perspective,enjoyable work that has resultedfrom their collaboration.

An original science fiction tale,eXistenZ is a film which againmerges humanity and technologyand blurs the lines between reali-ty and fantasy. It stars JenniferJason Leigh as the designer of avirtual reality videogame playedthrough a genetically modifiedorganism known as a “GamePod,” which inserts an umbilicalcord into a special socket in theplayer’s spinal column and tapsinto the player’s mind. When thegame’s first demonstration goeswrong, Leigh and her bodyguardJude Law are forced to run fromvarious violent factions.

The score is strangely attrac-tive, but this is not to say that it

lacks depth or complexity—noneof Shore’s scores do. But whereasmany of Shore’s earlier scorestended to be abrasive and “diffi-cult” to listen to, eXistenZ issmooth, flowing and tonal, mark-ing a welcome change from hisfamiliar style.

One of the most fascinatingthings about eXistenZ is the wayin which Shore manipulated thedynamics of his orchestra to giveit a slightly unusual overallsound. By arranging the layout ofthe orchestra in a different buthighly specific way, and by record-ing it so that certain instrumentssound louder or softer than usual,Shore has managed to make hisscore sound uniquely fresh andcontemporary. Shore himself saysthat “the score is really all aboutperception and perspective ofsound” and that he “playedaround with the idea of what peo-ple’s perspective of music is, andthe reality of how instrumentsrelate to each other.” Thisintriguing premise, coupled withelectronic and occasional choralembellishments, makes eXistenZa constantly surprising listen.

Superficially, eXistenZ seems tobe rather monotonous, but in factthere is layer upon layer of stuffgoing on. The core of the score isan echoing four-note motif, firstheard in “MetaFlesh Game-Pods,” which is stretched aroundand manipulated to form thestructural basis of many of thecues. It is afforded two memo-rable renditions later in “TroutFarm,” a vibrant cue whichallows the orchestra to rise tolarge proportions, and in the sur-prisingly lyrical “HypoallergenicWeapons,” where the motif isaccentuated by a bed of darklyromantic strings.

Instrumental solos and perfor-mance techniques define many ofthe other cues, like the electricguitars and theremin in “RealityBleed Through Effect,” the omi-nously quiet horns and shrill,ascending strings in “Pop YourSpine with a Little Hydro Gun,”the unnerving humming chorusin “A Genuine Game Urge,” therumbling, low-end pianos in“Traumatized Nervous System,”and the loud and disturbing “AnElement of Psychosis.”

While eXistenZ does not break

new ground in purely composi-tional terms, the music is never-theless enticing and hypnotic.Although the payoff never trulycomes, you get the feeling thatsomething amazing is about tohappen just around the corner. Interms of design and creativity,eXistenZ is one of the most inter-esting scores you are likely tohear all year.—Jonathan Broxton

Entrapment ★★ 1/2CHRISTOPHER YOUNGRestless 01877-73518-220 tracks - 54:58

Christopher Young’s score forJohn Amiel’s Entrapment is

at best good and at worst service-able. It suffers from a lack of realdirection, an overuse of synthpercussion and more importantly,it faces the task of trying to makesense out of a lame movie and aneven lamer romance.

The main title opens promis-ingly with an orchestral pedal fol-lowed by the introduction of themain theme announced convinc-ingly by horns. Diatonic brasscluster chords follow and give thelistener the impression that thiswill be a score with something tosay. Young then introducesrhythms and motives that will beimportant throughout the work.The ascending hemiola pattern inthe strings is used (even if it’s asimple 1-2-3...) as fragments invarious guises throughout thefilm. Young also makes good useof more dissonant brass clusterswells in this section and later on.

“Saints and Sinners” is thefirst of many cues that sufferfrom an intrusive synth backbeat.However, this track does intro-duce other important elements inthe score. Young develops hisbrass cluster idea by using it hori-zontally in slowly forming smallpyramids built out of minor and


major seconds. “Fayeth in Fate” introduces (or

confirms) the love theme, whichhas already been sounded byhorns at the opening of the film.In this track, Young presents thetheme in its entirety with themelody on piano and synth withstring accompaniment. Presentedin 3/4, the theme has an appropri-ate elegance about it, based pri-marily on the descending melodicline and on harmony descendingin thirds. The first harmonicmove is delayed long enough by atonic pedal that it is refreshingdespite its predictability.

While the love theme (basicallyalso the main theme) is brokendown and used effectivelythroughout the score, Young’sother motives are also workedover efficiently. “BrightMoments” explores the 1-2-3string idea from the main titleand although it is mostly anotherboring track laden with synthpercussion, it closes with a variedstatement of the love theme infull orchestra. The 1-2-3 motive isfurther developed in “Who’sWho?” where it is in piano andstyled with an internal dominantpedal as in Young’s recent workon Rounders.

The overall problem withYoung’s suspense and even hisaction cues is the use of “mod-ern” synth percussion. In themovie, the backbeats are notquite as damaging (the imagesdistract from them) as on the CD,where they grow tiresome beforethe halfway point on the album.However, the pasted backbeatsare not the sole problems withthese cues. Minor third bass osti-nati or irregular meters are notenough to sustain interest whenthey are meant to be the focalpoint of a cue. Young’s subsidiarymotives just aren’t interesting.

The score also features severalmoments notable for their deriva-tive nature. Tracks 9 and 16 fea-ture a passage that recallsGoldsmith’s Alien. The low regis-ter flute writing and duet texturefollowed by high, random stringtremolos, runs and pizzicatoeffects bring back fond memories.However, these tracks are alsoplastered with synth percussion

that takes the ear away fromYoung’s subtle orchestration andmotivic construction. Also, track12 is a short and creeping visit toJames Horner land.

The score to Entrapment is notwithout its strengths. The lovetheme is well constructed andvaried on the album. While mostof the suspense and action isloaded with boring stock effects,“Try, Then Trust” features someimpressive manipulations of theorchestra. This music (mixed intothe film at above-average levels)is effective in helping out whatwould otherwise be an incrediblyho-hum climactic “action” scenein the film. This track boasts the“layering” characteristic inYoung’s recent works, using ahigh, chromatic string line on topof faster string runs and brokenbrass ostinati, this passagereturning as Connery and Jonesrun atop the roof. This time, themusic sounds oddly like LethalWeapon (the desert scene featur-ing helicopters) and even quotesthe simple Lethal Weapon maintheme. The fact that helicoptersare also featured in this scene inEntrapment is just part of thecoincidence.

Young’s score for Entrapmentserves the film well, but it makeslittle impression on its own. Italmost seems as though in makingan effort to avoid copying tempcues, Young has ended up rewrit-ing the same generic piece overand over again. It may not soundlike something else... but it alsodoesn’t sound like much of any-thing at all. —Jesus Weinstein

Pushing Tin ★★★ANNE DUDLEYRestless 01877-73519-212 tracks - 29:12

Pushing Tin, the strangesaga of competing air traffic

controllers (played by JohnCusack and Billy Bob Thornton)features a standout score by AnneDudley, “composer of The FullMonty’s Academy Award winningscore.” Dudley’s work on this filmshows the many ways she hasgrown as a composer since Monty.A substantial part of the PushingTin album actually sounds likeunderscore, and mostly compe-tent at that. Much of Dudley’sprior work seemed to focus more

on draping tunes over or playingthrough scenes.

The music of Pushing Tin isbased primarily on two ideas.The first is a synth chorale withvarious rhythmic elements lay-ered in. Harmonica and pianosolos are key in these sections.The second is a dense, stringorchestra passage based on sim-ple movement and arpeggiation.

The synth chorale is intro-duced in the first track, “HePushes Tin,” and is restated(with minimal change) severaltimes throughout the score. Withits planing major chords, rhyth-mic drive and tempo it can bebest described as a simplifiedsynth/pop version of JohnWilliams’s recent theme to TheLost World. It is actually quiteenjoyable when listened to fromthis perspective. The piano and“scrungy” harmonica solo thateventually join in add an invalu-able element to the listeningexperience.

While this synth chorale sec-tion is entertaining on severallevels, there is a great deal ofdated synth material used aseffects in the underscore. Many ofthese patches sound like 15-year-old videogame effects. Othermotives as well (like the repeat-ing, three-note, ascending low-register fake flute idea) are a lit-tle off-putting. In fact, many ofthe synth-based motives are morefrightening and distracting thaninteresting.

“Absent Lovers,” whichappears to be something of a lovetheme, features Dudley on thepiano and Brendan Power on theharmonica. The cue features abottom-heavy string section andthe melody itself offers little inthe way of a hook. It is also hardto tell whether this type of musicis intended to be clichéd, sarcastic,

romantic... or all three. It oftensounds like soap opera music withits overplaying and standard sus-pension patterns in the accompa-niment (especially in track 10,“Thinking Too Much”). The limit-ed liner notes suggest thatDudley’s take on the film wasthat “it’s really romantic,” butthat quote could be out of context.

The highlight of this album isnot the opening quasi-Lost Worldpassage but, instead, “A BitterChill.” This cue opens with synthmaterial that brings back warmmemories of the brilliantCreepshow music and proceeds tocombine electronic passages withcharacteristic string writing à laEnnio Morricone.

Overall, Pushing Tin is a stepin the right direction for AnneDudley. The main synth choraleidea is upbeat, adventurous andentertaining. While the stringorchestra sections still recallsome of the early ‘80s Rocky feel-ing, the derivation is not nearlyas offensive as in the main themefrom The Full Monty. —J.W.

Endurance ★★★JOHN POWELL RCA Victor 09026-63482-216 tracks - 50:27

Endurance is a moving film,part documentary and part

drama, that chronicles the storyof a struggling Ethiopian distancerunner. The Endurance sound-track album is a compilation oforiginal and source Ethiopiansong, original underscore by JohnPowell, and material based onexisting Ethiopian folk musicadapted by Powell. Thesource/ethnic material is appro-priate and Powell admirablyshapes it for dramatic effect. Hisoriginal underscore is predomi-nantly folk-styled, and whilemuch if it is well-constructed, itdoes tend to grow tiresome apartfrom the film.

The “Main Titles,” with leadvocals and Amharic lyrics provid-ed by world-renowned Ethiopianrock star Theodros Tadesse, iswell-paced with a gradual layer-ing of ideas. Ethiopian chorus,percussion, and ethnic flute carrythe main ideas as the upbeatsong kicks into full gear. Whilethe existing folk melody is pleas-ing it is also short and becomes


S C O R E

Alice in Wonderland ★★RICHARD HARTLEY Varèse Sarabande VSD-602140 tracks - 71:05

Prepare yourself for 40 tracks ofAlice in Wonderland because

they have arrived in force. RichardHartley’s score for Hallmark’s lat-est extravaganza is competentlyproduced in all regards. It is clean-ly written, well orchestrated andwell versed in styles ranging fromclassical to impressionistic toElfman-esque. However, it suffersfrom a lack of strong thematicmaterial. Many tracks on thealbum sound like the samerehashed transitional music overand over again. In fact, some of theonly structured thematic materialis in the songs, which are basicallyshort, forced and boring.

The album (and “Prologue” ofthe film) attempts to grab the lis-tener with a hissing goblin-likesynth effect as part of a pad overwhich Alice sings “Cherry Ripe.”The actual main title is scoredwith melody, harmony andorchestration directly out ofDanny Elfman’s mid-’80s style.This segues into a more tradition-al classical piece with oboemelody over string and harpsi-chord accompaniment.The open-ing moments of this score are notparticularly arresting and are asign of things to come.

The majority of the score iscleanly written, harmonicallyclear and classically based.This isa valid and appropriate approachand one taken by most prior Alicein Wonderland productions.Thestately pomp and order of classicalmusic works well when playingagainst the ridiculous and awk-ward world of Wonderland (muchlike it works against the brilliantWarner Bros. cartoons of the ‘40sand ‘50s). Hartley furthers this ideawith overblown (and sometimesmildly impressionistic) texturesand mickey mousing of on-screenactivity. Unfortunately, cartoonsare short and Alice in Wonderlandis long... very long. Hartley’s

approach seems to be to use tex-tures (and not particularly interest-ing ones at that) to evoke a land-scape and a general sense of aweand magic. He begins countlesscues with high, consonant stringclusters, bell trees, celestamotives, impressionistic wood-wind gestures, lydian scalar runs,or a combination thereof.

Hartley manufactures littlemoments of wonder by manipulat-ing the audience’s natural associa-tion with these types of gesturesand orchestrations. On an album,however, they are naked andquickly get boring.There is littlepersonality in this score. Nearly allof the music seems like a transi-tion.There are few moments ofgenuine repose and nothing thatreally makes an impression on thelistener.

Noah’s Ark ★ 1/2PAUL GRABOWSKYVarèse Sarabande VSD-602726 Tracks - 58:58

Paul Grabowsky’s Noah’s Ark isindeed an epic score of bibli-

cal proportions. Only once everygeneration is a work of this magni-tude forged and given unto theworld. Blessed are we who buy thisCD and hear this music. I amlying.This score is terrible.

If you were able to watch theduration of Noah’s Ark, I congratu-late you for being one of the five. Imyself watched for about 20 min-utes and had to stop because itwasn’t nearly as funny as it lookedto be from the misleading pre-views.

Grabowsky’s score is clumsy,

melodramatic, badly performed,poorly mixed and inadequatelyrecorded. In other words, themusic is in every way a perfectmatch for the production.Whetherthis was all Grabowsky’s fault isuncertain.The actual compositionof the music is marginally betterthan the other aspects involved inits production, but it is stillnonetheless inadequate as a stand-alone work. In fact, the 20 minutesI saw of the movie were actuallymade worse by the embarrassing-ly out-of-place, poorly spotted, andpoorly conceived music.

Grabowsky’s main melodic ideais based on movement up anddown a single octave, predomi-nantly by fourths and fifths. Itsclichéd, heroic nature is less aproblem than its general“American” sound which has littleto do with Noah and his Ark.Theopening title of Noah’s Ark can belikened to anything fromIndependence Day to Born on theFourth of July to Deep Space Nine,all of which decidedly call for amore American sound. As a themein and of itself (forgetting that ithas anything to do with the Bible)the melody is standard, pre-dictable and boring. If it has onething going for it, it’s that it is notawful. Grabowsky varies thetheme minimally as the epic sagaof Noah progresses.

The exciting “March of theAnimals” track (second on thealbum for good reason) featurestwo-bar sequencing of a folk-likemelody that is traded between var-ious instruments in the orchestra.This brilliant concept certainlyparallels the different species ofanimals being shepherded ontothe Ark.The melody is also passedbetween styles as the cue plodsforward (from classical, to ethnic,to folk, to quasi-baroque).Unfortunately, as in the rest of thescore, the performance here (by anAustralian orchestra) is not terrif-ic, and without any dramatic shapethe repetitive nature of the cuegrows tiresome after almost fourminutes.

“Naamah’s Theme” is a compe-tently written piece of music, butserves as a fine example of badbalancing and recording.Themicrophoning is too close in gen-

eral, most notably in the low stringsections where we can hear thebows scratching and diggingpainfully away. After listening tothe first three tracks, for those indoubt about the performance onthis album, please turn your atten-tion to the closing stinger in track14, as it is possibly the leasttogether string section ever cap-tured on a professional recording.There is yet another track on thisalbum that merits special men-tion:“Pirate Attack” takes what isprobably a decent-sized string sec-tion and makes it sound like sixplayers. Note how much louder theuninteresting string accompani-ment is than the melodic lines inthe brass. At precisely 2:34 intothis track (number 15), you willhear a special cluster chord. If youwere to ask me to summarize thisscore in one word, this chordwould be the sound coming out ofmy mouth.

Track 4, “The Voice of God/TheVolcano,” features high strings,wretchedly exposed over ploddingtriplets.The problem in balance inthis track (and quite a few others)is likely due to both orchestrationand mixing. Fortunately, I was ableto see the scene where this musicwas used. It was the funniest vol-canic eruption scene ever put tofilm and the music works quitewell. However, the majority of theother sequences I saw was scoredwith “Storm clouds gather” (nodoubt tracked in repeatedly bylove-struck producers), originallyfrom Stravinsky’s little known “Tothe Left of Winter”: its octatoni-cism and woodwind-dominatedtextures “somehow” seem appro-priately earthy and even biblical,but its derivations are distracting(though highly amusing).

In Grabowsky’s defense, thescore to Noah’s Ark is relativelycohesive. It uses ideas repeatedly,as bad as they may be, and helpsestablish a sense of unity andtimelessness (or chronologicalridiculousness).The productionproblems with the score are surelymagnified on CD, where they donot have the “benefit” of beingburied under sound effects anddialogue and coming out of thoselousy little speakers on your TV.


Not the “Hallmark” of a Great ScoreTwo Miniseries CD Reviews by Jesus Weinstein

repetitive as Powell grounds theharmony on one chord forextended periods of time. The

textures, though nice when eachis first introduced (especially thebrass on the melody), become a

bit cluttered when several aresounding simultaneously. At theconclusion of the song, the

Ethiopian voices drop out and ashort and refreshing orchestralchorale closes the track.

“The Dressing Room” is thefirst of several tracks that sufferfrom the brooding, generic quali-ty of much of today’s underscore.While it may serve the scene, it isnot effective on an album,although it does reference theharmonies and structures of themain title folk tune.Approximately 2:30 into thetrack, Powell also introduces aground bass (with pizzicato andarco strings layered on top) thathe uses effectively throughout thescore (as in “The Final Race”).Tracks 6-10 emphasize impro-visatory writing for ethnic fluteand percussion. Some listenersmay find this type of music tire-some after extended exposure, asit is by nature repetitive andmeandering. Powell does providerelief in certain specific instances:track 9, “The Great Tree,” has apleasantly orchestrated sectionwith flute doubling pizzicatostrings over arco accompaniment.

“Forbidden” has mournfuland elegiac qualities. It is slowto develop, with long string sus-tains under careful woodwindduets and solos passed gentlyacross the orchestra. While itbecomes boring on the disc, itshould be quite effective whenplaced against visuals.

“The Final Race” begins with arecap of prior material, mostimportantly the ground bass fig-ure introduced in “The DressingRoom.” Woodwinds highlight thesection in extended duet textures.The major third in the melodicmaterial contrasts with the recur-ring minor third in the bass line,adding to the brooding, earthyand marginally bitonal effect. Thepassage is also carefully paced.These qualities combined withthe rhythmic structure make thissection worthy of comparison toThomas Newman’s recent work.The pizzicato idea from earlier inthe score is layered in after aboutfive minutes of the somber pas-sacaglia have passed. Six minutesin, brass lines enter and theintensity of the cue picks up.Powell finally drives the orchestrainto an exciting reiteration of theEthiopian folk song (with voice).

“Gigi’s Lament,” the first cuton the album, is composed and

performed by Ejigayehu “Gigi”Shibabaw. It is an original com-position for solo Ethiopian voice.It is performed convincingly andproduced by John Powell.Shibabaw also performs on othertracks, including the strangelyconceived “My Son.” Alas, theEnglish vocals, performed in twosimultaneous octaves by JeffYoung (with each octave panneddisconcertingly in the oppositedirection) seem uncomfortableand out of place with the rest ofthe album. Overall, the sound-track is well done and is recom-mended by fans of both “HansZimmer visits Africa” scores andEthiopian folk music. —J.W.

The Love Letter ★★ 1/2LUIS BACALOV RCA Victor 09026-63521-213 tracks - 43:54

Kate Capshaw and TomSelleck star in Ho-Sun

Chan’s The Love Letter, a filmthat preaches “when it comes tofalling in love—no matter whoyou are, what you are, or whereyou’re from—it feels exactly thesame.” The liner notes to thiswell-produced album are quick topoint out (with brief comments byboth the composer and the direc-tor) that the tango is used as thebasis for the score. Ho-Sun Chanoffers up some idealistic nonsenseabout love without “culturalboundaries” in an effort to defendthe choice of using a tango to rep-resent love in a New Englandcoastal town. If you have a prob-lem with this, it’s understandable.

“You Graze my Heart” openswith a charming piano solo beforeslowly building into a passionatetango. The tango music does sug-gest love (in one form or another)and this first track captures (byassociation) a sense of nostalgiaand romance. While it doesn’tsound remotely American, Ho-Sun Chan has made his case onthis issue in the liner notes; as analbum alone, there is obviously noproblem with the tango/love asso-ciation.

Generic arpeggiations andtremolos alternating between vio-lins and mandolin open “Mysteryand Love Letters.” Bacalov notice-ably maintains the orchestrationaland rhythmic elements of thetango even as he writes what is

basically underscore. The pianosolo returns to close this cut inrelatively innocuous fashion.

After some source-like tangotracks, “The Love Letter (FirstTime)”` attempts atransformation of the tangodirectly into underscore. It hassome problems breaking out of itspredictable rhythm but is other-wise well done. The orchestration,however, begins to get tiresome atthis point on the album. The vio-lin and bandoneon solos are espe-cially plentiful and without themovie to break them up, they areincreasingly difficult to sitthrough.

Bacalov performs a piano soloversion of his “Love Letter”theme for the closing track on thealbum. It is not exactly refreshingsince we have heard it in pianoseveral times on the albumalready. Overall, however, thealbum is highly recommended totango fans. (Note to Alan Silvestrifans out there: this tango soundslike an Alan Silvestri tango. Forthose who dislike Silvestri, relax—it doesn’t sound like him at all.)—J.W.

The Thirteenth Floor ★ 1/2HARALD KLOSER Milan 73138 35882-217 tracks - 52:22

It should take the listener pre-cisely four seconds into the

first cut on The Thirteenth Floorto pronounce, “this score neednot exist.” Harald Kloser’s musicfor Josef Rusnak’s and RolandEmmerich’s latest film is asderivative and lifeless as can beimagined. It represents one ofthe darkest and most unfortu-nate sides of film music as themillennium approaches: Kloser’smusic covers wide-ranging stylesand apes all of them effectivelybut a closer look reveals that,track by track, it is totally bland

and offers little in the way of uni-fying factors.

Director Rusnak states in theliner notes, “Harald’s musicnever overwhelms or punishesthe audience with some genericcues aiming merely for effect.”This accurately describes themusic on the CD—provided thatthe word “never” is replaced withthe word “constantly.” Listeningto this music is truly overwhelm-ing and punishing. The cues areas generic as possibly imaginable.Kloser consistently lifts fromthird-generation temp-trackmaterial ranging from Aliens toWaterworld. The first track of thealbum sounds like Silvestri ingeneric mode doing Horner.Three minutes into track threewe are treated with a mixed-meter James Newton Howardaction sequence which wasalready based off of Goldsmith’swork. At least Howard’s takewent someplace marginally dif-ferent. Alas, even ChristopherYoung’s recent work (alreadylargely temp-influenced) showsup in this score.

The material in Kloser’s workthat one might argue is at alloriginal is basically laced withclichéd TV drama changes andarpeggiation patterns, pro-grammed rhythm sections andvarious source settings and tex-tures. The descending line in“Jane’s Theme” is about as unre-markable a main melody as onecould possibly have, even if it isused throughout the score as anattempt at unity amidst a messof different styles. Kloserattempts to bring an edge to hisscore with a techno track and apropulsive Aliens-plus-backbeattrack but fails to do more thanshock the listener into a differentvenue. He also tries to add anartificial importance by using theVienna Boys Choir. The strengthof this album may be the groupof three swing tracks in the heartof the CD.

If there is anything good to besaid about this score it is that theproduction is all right and theGerman orchestra isn’t as bad asone might expect. The smallprint inside the CD bookletreveals that Thomas Wanker isco-credited as composer.

—J.W. FSM


S C O R E

They were then, and still are, a viable con-cern for the fringe segment of the musicindustry. I was speaking with a record pro-ducer recently and our conversation exposedsome of the complexities concerning all thathas evolved from the heavily film music-influenced bachelor-pad/lounge/easy andexotica trends. (For the sake of convenience,permit me to label all of the above styles assimply “adult alternative,” or, better still,“retro-AA.” Thanks.)

A bit of a bog, really, and it almost doesn’tmatter where one starts to excavate. Take,for example, acid jazz, a branch of retro-AA.A prime exponent of this style would beCorduroy (their best CD: Dad Man Cat). Acidjazz is an occasionally hopped-up contempo-rary “exotica” bastardization of traditionaljazz. Corduroy are, in my opinion, playingaround with the raw substance of SergioMendes (‘66) and Lalo Schifrin. As for theband’s film music affiliations (aside fromSchifrin), in print it’s gonna be easiest just topresent the names they’ve given to some oftheir instrumentals: “The Girl Who WasDeath” (Italian giallos), “How to Steal theWorld” (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), “HarryPalmer” (The Ipcress File by John Barry),“Six Plus One” (The Prisoner). From thesefour titles it’s obvious that the young musi-cians of Corduroy are passionate about manyof the same things as a lot of 30-and-oldersoundtrack collectors. I think some other

more mainstream alternativebands, such as the Cardigans,are tenuously connected toCorduroy via shared influ-ences. The Cardigans aremost certainly bumping intoretro-AA with their subtle‘60s TV aesthetic.

The Beastie Boys, a morehard-core, mainstream (sortof) rap/R&B band, haveplunged their young whitehands into the ‘70s blax-ploitation pie and pulled outa plum of a career for them-selves. To prove I’m not justbarking up MonicaLewinsky’s pants leg may Ibe so bold as to suggest thatyou check out their cool instrumental CD,The In Sound from Way Out? The Boys’music videos shed further light on theirretro-media inclinations. On MTV one canfind overt and wacky “Beastie” takes onMannix and Starsky and Hutch, and onJapan’s favorite giant alien from NebulaM78, Ultraman!

Into the Pop BlenderAnother technique being employed by a styl-istically diverse number of instrumental andvocal groups, and one which affiliates themwith retro-AA, is “cinema-sampling.” Thegimmick, which when done properly can beextremely entertaining, involves buildingany form of pop riff around a flavorful snip-pet of score and/or dialogue from a ‘60s or‘70s exploitation masterpiece. Without adoubt the most intense and outlandishexample of this (and one of the first—1992)is a release called Sexplosion! byBuzz McCoy and Groovie Mann,aka My Life with the Thrill KillKult. The Kult’s powerful, danger-ous, and wonderfully eroticsounds would not exist if not forthe stimulus of exploitation cine-ma—its rousing images, rude,unapologetic rhetoric, and fre-quently exciting music. “Mood No.6” from Sexplosion! uses a mes-merizing loop of John Barry’sunderwater flute motif forThunderball as the primary colorto support some strangely sub-dued narration, a Jerry Springer-style confession of sexual infidelity

and depression. The following track on the

CD, called “Sexplosion,”begins with a news anchor-type doing a deadpan inter-pretation of an early ‘60s sexfilm voice-over. He intones:“Sex. Sex is perverted andsick.” The throbbing musicthen sweeps him aside. Themid-section of “Sexplosion”is firmly held aloft by Barry’sbrass stinger from theThunderball main title.Another track, “Sex onWheels,” employs a faithfulrendering of Barry’s otherlegendary brass bellow, thatfrom Goldfinger. Probably

the best piece on Sexplosion! is “MysteryBabylon.” Its seamless melding of lyrics, lift-ed passages of adult movie dialogue, andoriginal music is a dreamy rush to experi-ence—a joyfully naughty work of art. Thecomposition, voiced via trumpet and piano,is a droning, dripping, slithering mix of AlexNorth’s Streetcar and Barry’s Body Heat.I’m fairly certain Sexplosion! is still avail-able, and you can’t miss it; someone was hipenough to put Betty Page on the front.

Of late one of the more popular venues forpurveyors of retro-AA is library music. Veryquickly, and assuming most readers alreadyknow what this is, library music exists asvarious forms of incidental mood music,either original or recycled from previoussoundtracks, which is sold or rented in pack-ages to be used as score material for indus-trial films, low-budget movies, commercials,radio or your video of your brother-in-law’s

wedding—you name it. The origi-nal Night of the Living Dead wasskillfully tracked with librarymaterial; Monty Python and theHoly Grail is another classicexample. A lot of this stuff, andthere is a ton of it, used to hit thestreets as vinyl—odd-lookingrecords in nondescript jacketswith little or no artwork. Duringthe ‘60s the work of today’sbiggest names could be found onthese collections—Barry andMorricone to name just two.However, there were many tal-ented musicians who, remaininganonymous, labored long and

“Oh,what a

twisted webwe spin,whenever it is filmmusic withwhich webegin!”

Into the Dark Pool, AgainS O U N D T R A C K R E L A T E D

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I’VE VISIT-

ED THESE STRANGE, MURKY WATERS,

BUT, LIKE THE “NESSIE-HUNTERS”

ARE SO FOND OF SAYING ABOUT SCUBA DIV-

ING THEIR BELOVED LOCH, “IT’S SCARIEST

THE FIRST TIME.” CHECK OXYGEN TANKS

AND REGULATORS, WE’RE GOING IN! • IN

EARLIER INSTALLMENTS OF SOUNDTRACK

RELATED (FSM VOL. 1, NO. 69 AND VOL.

2, NO. 2) WE NOSED AROUND THE TOPIC OF

THE HOT RETROGRADE MOVEMENTS IN

ALTERNATIVE MUSIC.


By John Bender

hard writing lots of good music for thefirms who sold these packages. In particu-lar, the Europeans are currently doing apedal-to-the-metal job of re-releasing heap-ing mounds of library output in the guise ofhot and sultry retro-AA.

Setting the Scene—From the Vaults ofKPM (Groove Attack GAP 029-CD, 22tracks, 67:51) is a German release featur-ing a mix of British and French composers(KPM was a large library music outfit).Rogerio Duprat, Francis Coppieters, JohnCameron, Alan Parker and others present agathering that’s a bit more advanced thansome of the other CDs of this type. Themelodies and arrangements, all fairly com-plex, stay in orbit around three major pulsepoints: blaxploitation, urban jazz, and tele-vision fare along the lines of Dave Grusin’sThe Name of the Game and It Takes aThief. My favorite associations from thisdisc: “Heat Haze,” conjures up images ofHarry Callahan on the job, and “Rio BackStreet” kicks off sounding like a Latin-fla-vored version of Goldsmith’s great jazzwork for The Twilight Zone. The producersoffer no real liner notes, but it appears asthough all of the selections were culledfrom the library music record collection ofKlaus Kassenpecher. Way to go, Klaus.

A quite recent release, Scoctopus(Schema SCEB 901 CD, 17 tracks, 50:26) is,as are many of the Italian collections, ashowcase for small jazz compositions basedon African American influences. Mostlycool stuff—lots of Hammond organ. Thebig surprise Scoctopus held for me was“Verso L’Infinito.” This is a rare and tan-talizing example of AlessandroAlessandroni working unfettered with hisfamous choral group, I Cantori Moderni.The Cantori were formed, trained and con-ducted by Alessandroni, and they are anintegral part of countless Italian filmscores. “Verso L’Infinito” is the first oppor-tunity I’ve had to hear Alessandroni con-ducting his beautifully voiced “children” asthey perform one of his own works, and it’smarvelous. Aside from some percussionand bass, the men and women realizeAlessandroni’s striking melody a cappella.His musical concept is a cross between2001 and Duke Ellington—futuristic ele-gance.

Hardly any European retro-AA collec-tions escape without at least one tip of thehat to the mighty Vampyros Lesbos sound,and Scoctopus has “Maze.” The cue goesgreat with this CD’s superb cover montage:beautiful maidens painted in the hottestcolors of the sun, dance in an icy blue infin-ity, and superimposed over this is thestrangely erotic and transparent silhouette

of an octopus. The spirit ofMaurice Binder obviouslylives on.

A two-volume anthologyfrom Germany, PopBoutique: A SophisticatedSelection of UnreleasedSoundtrack Tunes(Spinning Wheel SW-CD1001, 12 tracks, 58:54 andSW-CD 1003, 16 tracks,42:15) seems to have beenput together using findsdug out of a bulging recordcollection, just as withSetting the Scene. For theseCDs they used PeterJoppich’s big stash ofSonoton sound-library platters. Overallthis two-disc sampling delivers a consis-tently smooth mid-tempo funk-jazz back-drop. The two best tracks on the first vol-ume are “Revolver” by Alan Lewis and“Don’t Play That Game Pt. 2” by KlausWeiss. Both are nihilistic anthems for cine-matic dark knights. “Revolver,” in particu-lar, would have been better in Dr. No thansome of what Monty Norman came upwith. The two best tracks on the seconddisc are “Shere Khan” and “Bali Girl,”both by Nino Nardini. Now this is weird,but “Bali Girl” snaps us right back toMonty Norman and Dr. No. Nardini’s“Girl” is quite comparable to the good stuffNorman created for Bond’s first outing,like “The Island Speaks” and “Dr. No’sFantasy.” “Shere Khan” is in the same ball-park, but the addition of velvety LesBaxter-style strings keeps it from being aperfect match.

You Don’t Know Jack?More rock-oriented, and also more highlyevolved than all of the previously mentionedrecordings, is Dance and Mood Music byJack Arel (Gravure Universelle CDV 2831,21 tracks, 65:52). The liner notesproclaim: “This is Library music!This ongoing aural experiment isbeamed into your homes throughyour television sets every day.Only now are we beginning torealize the awesome power andinfluence of the Music Library.”Wow. Even though there’s sometruth in that hyperbole, it makeslibrary music seem scary, likeCronenberg’s Videodrome signal.

The tracks on this release hadtheir genesis in 1966. At that timeJack Arel struck a deal with theFrench Chappell Library label—they would pay him a handsome

sum to composeoriginal orchestralthemes looselybased on Americanjazz, rock andR&B. Over a five-year period Arelsuccessfully collab-orated with Jean-Claude Petit (thefilm composer)and Pierre Dutourto produce a widerange of cinematicunderp innings .The best tracksare: “AhmedababTheme,” “The

Man from Nowhere” (mystical orchestralrock—Carlos Castaneda), “Jungle Soul” and“Planification.” That last cue is only 1:13,but it’s a wicked, perfect groove, fashioned ofa simple but potent guitar line that brews upan exhilarating sensation of pulp drama, likehaving a gun held to your head by a nicelygroomed fellow who just happens to be wear-ing a truly superb cologne. This kind of musicforces you to make movies inside your head.

Like any good host at a Film Music-Related Party, I’ve saved the big fun for last.How’s this hit ya’: Nymphomania: ACollection of Sexy European Go Go Musicfrom the ‘60s (Sexy Hexy SH 301 CD, 15tracks, 44:19). Nostradamus himself could-n’t have predicted that something like thiswould ever be released. Once again, whatwe’re looking at is a gathering of lost goodieslifted from some huge and strange vinyl col-lection. The source LPs probably belong to aGerman or Austrian collector because mostof the tracks are from ‘60s German “art-house” or adult movies. I suppose this filmfare is just about the same strain of sexy andsilly that Gert Wilden was scoring over 30years ago (Schoolgirl Report; see Vol. 2, No.4). The music presents quite a quality

spread. There’s god-awful craplike “Geisterreiter,” a nauseatingorgan and synth rendition of the1950s Vaughn Monroe hit, “GhostRiders of the Sky.” The opposingpole is represented by desirableand bizarre esoterica such as“Pink Carpet” by JulietteLeBlanc. LeBlanc’s piece is domi-nated by a relaxed but staccatorhythm tapped out on aHammond. Beyond this the“Carpet” is righteously layeredwith harmonic flesh and bloodthrough the use of sub-Eddamale/female vocalese. The twovoices nicely define the melody: a

Capture the spicyexcitement

andadventure ofpre-hardcoreerotica—it’sguilt free and fun!

S O U N D T R A C K R E L A T E D


Lobbycard for German erotica: Danger in Go-Go Boots.

clean, unpretentious effort which perfectlycaptures the feel of spicy excitement andadventure that epitomized pre-hardcoreerotica—guilt free and fun!

In between the crud and the cream (80%good stuff) there are a few unbelievablywacky oddities. “Madchen Die Sich SelbstBedienen” is the actual audio track of aGerman erotic film trailer, and it’s a riot!You hear an announcer (imagine James EarlJones), speaking Deutsch of course, andundoubtedly purveying priceless but soiledembroidery along the lines of: “The humanorganism—who can know the fullness of itssexual energies? Be warned—our film willshock and surprise you with its bold prob-ings into the most forbidden recesses of rag-ing desire!” Betwixt such solemn rants thereare the sounds of a couple “doing it,” as theysay. But then again, it’s just a CD, and I don’tspeak the language, so I suppose it could beanything. Maybe it’s really just a recordingof a young couple struggling to put togethertheir new bookcase (in the nude). In anycase, the music that shares space with allthis flapdoodle nonchalantly swings along,sounding for all the world like, I swear, theold Carson Tonight Show theme.

Then there’s “Young Stud” by Klaus andUschi. The theme, per se, is a competent bitof light jazzy swagger, kinda like Coleman’s“Playboy’s Theme.” As it proceeds, Klausand Uschi exchange an ongoing stream ofsuggestive but cheesy banter. This is verymuch in the tradition of those old, uninten-tionally campy “adult party” records by thelikes of Dusty Warren or Bella Barth. Klaus:“He’s ridiculous!” Uschi: “He’s wonderful!”Klaus: “That’s unfair! He’s an idiot, an exhi-bitionist!” Uschi: “He’s a dream... Oh! Mysweet gangster!” Klaus: “Very funny. He’sdisgusting.”

You can purchase Nymphomania, andmany other CDs from the Bizarro world,through Tom at Other Music (212-477-8150). Oh, by the way, my copy ofNymphomania came with a lobby card forDanger in Go Go Boots that pictured (inglossy color) the always-stunning IngridSteeger, and it also had a ticket to aVampyros Lesbos party at the XVI Club inManhattan. I didn’t get to go. Well, that’snot true. I could’ve gone but I was afraid.

Upcoming in Soundtrack RelatedTwo contemporary classical symphonies, onebased on the Superman comic book, theother on the Italian spaghetti western sound.Also, what would you do if you bought atrunk at an estate sale, which you later dis-covered to be filled with hundreds of filmmusic LPs? Find out about one man’s answerto that question in... The Dark Pool! FSM

A Harmonic ConferenceDIRECTORS & COMPOSERS DISCUSS PEACEFUL COEXISTANCE

R E T R O G R A D E

President Mark Watters (Society ofComposers and Lyricists) discussed ”The

Director/Composer Relationship” withArmageddon composer Trevor Rabin and

director Michael Bay (above).

W.G. Snuffy Walden (composer of Providence, second from right), Jonathan Wolff (composer ofSeinfeld, far right) participated in a mock negotiation with top industry dealmakers in the panel entitled:“TV Composer Deals: The Real World of Negotiations.” (They don’t call it The Industry for nothing....)


4TH ANNUALFILM & TV MUSICCONFERENCE

The Society of Composers and Lyricists andThe Hollywood Reporter co-sponsored paneldiscussions on April 10, 1999, at the DGAbuiding in Los Angeles. Director and musi-cian Mark Rydell (a three-time collabora-tor with composer John Williams) deliv-ered the keynote address on the importanceof following your dreams (below).

Editor/composer John Ottman and directorBryan Singer discussed their longtime

collaboration (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil)and future projects including The X-Men (right).

clean, unpretentious effort which perfectlycaptures the feel of spicy excitement andadventure that epitomized pre-hardcoreerotica—guilt free and fun!

In between the crud and the cream (80%good stuff) there are a few unbelievablywacky oddities. “Madchen Die Sich SelbstBedienen” is the actual audio track of aGerman erotic film trailer, and it’s a riot!You hear an announcer (imagine James EarlJones), speaking Deutsch of course, andundoubtedly purveying priceless but soiledembroidery along the lines of: “The humanorganism—who can know the fullness of itssexual energies? Be warned—our film willshock and surprise you with its bold prob-ings into the most forbidden recesses of rag-ing desire!” Betwixt such solemn rants thereare the sounds of a couple “doing it,” as theysay. But then again, it’s just a CD, and I don’tspeak the language, so I suppose it could beanything. Maybe it’s really just a recordingof a young couple struggling to put togethertheir new bookcase (in the nude). In anycase, the music that shares space with allthis flapdoodle nonchalantly swings along,sounding for all the world like, I swear, theold Carson Tonight Show theme.

Then there’s “Young Stud” by Klaus andUschi. The theme, per se, is a competent bitof light jazzy swagger, kinda like Coleman’s“Playboy’s Theme.” As it proceeds, Klausand Uschi exchange an ongoing stream ofsuggestive but cheesy banter. This is verymuch in the tradition of those old, uninten-tionally campy “adult party” records by thelikes of Dusty Warren or Bella Barth. Klaus:“He’s ridiculous!” Uschi: “He’s wonderful!”Klaus: “That’s unfair! He’s an idiot, an exhi-bitionist!” Uschi: “He’s a dream... Oh! Mysweet gangster!” Klaus: “Very funny. He’sdisgusting.”

You can purchase Nymphomania, andmany other CDs from the Bizarro world,through Tom at Other Music (212-477-8150). Oh, by the way, my copy ofNymphomania came with a lobby card forDanger in Go Go Boots that pictured (inglossy color) the always-stunning IngridSteeger, and it also had a ticket to aVampyros Lesbos party at the XVI Club inManhattan. I didn’t get to go. Well, that’snot true. I could’ve gone but I was afraid.

Upcoming in Soundtrack RelatedTwo contemporary classical symphonies, onebased on the Superman comic book, theother on the Italian spaghetti western sound.Also, what would you do if you bought atrunk at an estate sale, which you later dis-covered to be filled with hundreds of filmmusic LPs? Find out about one man’s answerto that question in... The Dark Pool! FSM

A Harmonic ConferenceDIRECTORS & COMPOSERS DISCUSS PEACEFUL COEXISTANCE

R E T R O G R A D E

President Mark Watters (Society ofComposers and Lyricists) discussed ”The

Director/Composer Relationship” withArmageddon composer Trevor Rabin and

director Michael Bay (above).

W.G. Snuffy Walden (composer of Providence, second from right), Jonathan Wolff (composer ofSeinfeld, far right) participated in a mock negotiation with top industry dealmakers in the panel entitled:“TV Composer Deals: The Real World of Negotiations.” (They don’t call it The Industry for nothing....)


4TH ANNUALFILM & TV MUSICCONFERENCE

The Society of Composers and Lyricists andThe Hollywood Reporter co-sponsored paneldiscussions on April 10, 1999, at the DGAbuiding in Los Angeles. Director and musi-cian Mark Rydell (a three-time collabora-tor with composer John Williams) deliv-ered the keynote address on the importanceof following your dreams (below).

Editor/composer John Ottman and directorBryan Singer discussed their longtime

collaboration (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil)and future projects including The X-Men (right).

Film Score Monthly Presents Golden Age Classics • Limited Edition Original Soundtrack CDs • Now available: FSMCD Vol.2, No.5

Track Listing1. Prelude 1:332. Romance on the Gondola 0:393. Ferrara 0:294. Royal Court 1:265. Madonna 4:416. Onward March 0:537. The Chapel 1:228. The Fortress 1:139. Death Plot 1:05

10. The Painting 2:1811. Madonna’s Portrait 1:3012. Festival of Spring 1:5713. Attempted Assassination 1:06

14. Into Battle 4:2715. Death of His Excellence 0:4516. The Truce 3:3617. The Duke’s Offer 1:5918. The Duke’s Entrance 0:4819. The Banquet 1:0820. Of Peasant Birth 3:1321. Madonna Imprisoned 1:3522. The Rescue 4:3823. Finale 1:1124. Song of Venice 2:34

total time: 46:39

Album Produced by Nick Redman & Rick Victor

If Erich Wolfgang Korngold served as thesupreme musical accompanist to Errol Flynn’sswashbucklers at Warner Bros., Alfred Newmanperformed the same duties, and with equal zealand skill, for the dashing Tyrone Power costumeepics at 20th Century-Fox. Throughout the 1940s,Newman scored THE MARK OF ZORRO, SON OF FURY, THE BLACK SWAN, PRINCE OF FOXES and CAPTAIN FROM

CASTILE. And yet, except for CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE,these soaring, colorful scores from Fox’s chief com-poser have been largely neglected.

In this second Golden Age Classics releasefrom FSM, that half-century of neglect is at lastbeing addressed with the release of all survivingtracks from PRINCE OF FOXES, and in bracing stereo-phonic sound. Regarded by many as Newman’smasterpiece at Fox (acclaim for THE SONG OF

BERNADETTE and CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE notwithstand-ing) and long requested from the Fox archives,PRINCE OF FOXES harks back to his epic score THE

HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, capturing the dawn oflearning and spiritual renewal symbolized by theRenaissance, yet at the same time conjuring up theevil inherent in all tyrants.

Concerning a young soldier-of-fortune(Power) who joins up with black-hearted CesareBorgia (Orson Welles) to do his wicked misdeeds,only to succumb to love and honor along the way,PRINCE OF FOXES proved to be one of the studio’s lesssuccessful box-office efforts in post-war America.And yet, there is much to recommend, includingNewman’s unusually visceral score, boasting a spir-ited heroic theme for the artist-turned-adventurerwhich the composer cleverly dissects in order toshow the impulses and dilemmas churning withinhim. In addition, this often darkly atmosphericoriginal soundtrack include several minutes ofmusic trimmed from the film and heard here forthe first time.

In addition to rare stills from Fox archives,the liner notes by Bill Whitaker’s provide a historyof the film, a look at Newman’s role overseeingFox’s remarkable music department, an analysis ofthe score and a definitive explanation of how stereotracks for this and other Fox soundtracks came tobe in the 1940s. $19.95 plus shipping

The Unreleased Score

BY ALFRED NEWMAN

Next Month: A rollicking Elmer Bernstein western!

Composers for Upcoming Releases: Jerry Goldsmith... and Jerry Goldsmith!

One-time pressing of 3,000 copies

v4n6 Cov - FILM SCORE MONTHLY

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