Magical Music

James Newton Howard's score for PETER PAN (Varese Sarabande 302 066 534 2), the lavish and effects-full, live-action treatment of the J. M. Barrie fantasy, is a magical blend of large orchestra, large choir, and powerful electronics that brings to life one of the most venerable of modern myths. Adding a strong electronic beat to his cues like "Flying" and others gives the music a very interesting dynamic that enhances the texture and contrasts nicely with the pure orchestrally swashbuckling moments and elevates the score beyond the predictability of its adventure fantasy idiom. A fragile, lyrical theme for Tinkerbell contrasts nicely with the score's brasher rhythms, while a pretty love theme ("Is That A Kiss?") invests a quiet innocence and awakening romanticism into the interactions of Peter Pan and Wendy. Howard builds up a beautiful mysterioso from choir and orchestra in "Peter's Shadow," and "A Note from the Teacher" is a nice, jaunty scherzo for woodwinds and strings that quickly turns urgent, with manic brass cries and cymbal crashes stressing the anxiety of the cue. In its entirety, the PETER PAN score is a vibrant and exciting heroic fantasy adventure score plentiful in musical magic and exciting energy. Along with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, this is the year's brightest swashbuckling music, with both a nod to the genre's Golden Age heritage (Korngold and Errol Flynn defined the genre Barrie gave it its fairy tale, fabled innocence) as well as the more modern stylisms of popular music. Howard gives the score a tremendous musical dynamic that works as well on CD as on screen.

Danny Elfman reunites with director Tim Burton on BIG FISH, a gentle [IMG2L]fable about a son rediscovering his father by recreating the dying man's elusive life from a series of verbal myths and legends. The soundtrack, released this week by Sony Music (SK 93094), is a compelling mix of tranquil introspection and rhythmic Americana. Elfman's music (a scant 8:22 minutes) comes after seven tracks of diverse and dysfunctionally compiled pop tunes by Pearl Jam (an original end title song written for the movie), Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, The Allman Brothers, Canned Heat, Buddy Holly, and The Vogues certainly an oddball compilation. Elfman's music is beautifully intimate, with moments recalling the cool winter magic of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS ("Underwater" is a brilliantly emotive cue), scoring the inner spirit of the relationship between father and son and the enchantment of visualizing the past through the imagination of fantasy. A terrific tone poem for discovery and reunion, and one of Elfman's most compelling efforts to date. An attractive Broadwaylike show tune, "Twice the Love (Siamese Twins' Song)" closes the CD, written by Elfman with John August, and performed by Bobby Page and Candice Rumph. www.sonyclassical.com

Brian Tyler's TIMELINE, released on Varese Sarabande (302 066 531 2) is a potent, thoroughly energetic orchestral surge for battle and turmoil. A powerfully militaristic score, Tyler makes the most of his 90-piece orchestra, emerging with a thrilling concert work that is awash with musical battlements and thickly textured harmonic engagements. A stalwart melody line runs throughout the dissonant orchestral clashes, waving like an army's crimson banners, airily whipping above the more dissonant fields of conflict (the theme is heard in more intimate fashion in "Lady Claire and Marek" and "Eternal"). This is an earthy score, composed with the dust of ancient ramparts and retaining the marching grit of ancient militaries in its textures and rhythms, yet occasionally infused with a more modern sensibility (the underlying percussive riff and synth warbles heard in "Enter the Wormhole" and "Transcription Errors") that remind us what we are seeing is actually modernistic science fiction. Tyler replaced a rejected Jerry Goldsmith score but listen to "Descent" and you may hear a bold bit of characteristic Goldsmithisms patterned into the mix. TIMELINE is a powerful and suggestive composition, well structured and quite exhilarating when played loudly and further example that Brian Tyler will be a major force to be reckoned with in coming years. www.varesesarabande.com

Following up on their previous collection of Super-Marionation music from THUNDERBIRDS, England's Silva Screen has released a full disc of music from the Gerry Anderson 1967 series, CAPTAIN SCARLET & THE MYSTERONS (FILMCD 607). The style of each of Anderson's marionette series remains unique in the annals of science fiction TV, and all were scored with a mixture of pop and classicism by Barry Gray. This original soundtrack recording includes the opening narration ("the finger is on the trigger... about to unleash a force with terrible powers beyond the comprehension of man... this force we shall know as... The Mysterons!"), the colorful main and end title vocals, and Gray's unique compositions, which gave the puppet characters much of their hyper-reality through tuneful, hummable melodies while also underlining the story's dark undertones with brooding mysteriosos, exotic orchestrations, and rich, heroic musical measures. Gray was an innovator in the use of electronic music, and his combination of early electronic machines with his orchestra gave the futuristic series a comfortable and clever 1960-ish science fiction musical design. CAPTAIN SCARLET's music was previously available only in theme collections, so this first ever compilation of the actual underscore, all carefully restored and edited from archives provided by the Gray estate, is a major delight. www.silvascreen.co.uk

Basil Kirchin's music from Vincent Price's venerable mad scientist thriller from 1971, THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, has been resurrected and restored in a fine disc from Perseverance Records (PRD 004). The release follows by several months the label's release of John Gale's music from the sequel film, DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN (PRD 002 reviewed in this column for March 27, 2003), and both recordings make a notable addition to the sparse gathering of music from 1970s horror cinema, most of which still remains unrecorded on CD. Kirchin, whose other genre offerings include 1966's THE SHUTTERED ROOM (which was originally to have been included with this recording until legal reasons shut the option down) and 1974's THE MUTATIONS, has provided a moody and mysterious score that emphasizes the madness of Phibes through a variety of compelling orchestral arrangements and motifs. Kirchin maintains a subtle rhythm that underlies much of the film's action, emphasizing Phibes' drive through elements of motion and forward-movement, rather than mirroring specific actions in the film. The result is a nicely evocative rhythmic composition that is quite compelling. With the original music tapes lost, the music on this disc reportedly contains the complete score as written, compiled from suites provided by the composer (including an interesting suite of atonal and avant-garde unused tracks), three tracks remastered from the 1971 American International soundtrack LP (the rest of which comprised only classical and period pop tunes), and several tracks of source cues. The sound quality varies but is acceptable in most places (the source cues contain some slight sound effects, apparently recorded from the final soundtrack mix). All has been digitally mastered for the most optimum presentation. The CD booklet contains notes from Kirchin and director Robert Froust, and a valuable track-by-track analysis of the music by Paul Tonks and Chris Tunnah. www.perseverancerecords.com

Music from the Movies [IMG3R]has gotten the exclusive story behind the rejection of Jerry Goldsmith's score for TIMELINE. Rudy Koppl has spoken to director Richard Donner for the next issue of Music from the Movies magazine but several excerpts posted now on their web site, including this quote from Donner: "I wanted to stay away from action scoring and just wanted it to be a very strong orchestral piece that would carry the film. Jerry understood it totally. Little by little he played it to us, I loved it, it was just great. Then I laid it up to the picture for the first time and I realized that I had really screwed up, that I was really hurting the picture. What I really needed was a lot of drive, a lot of action, and a lot of music that keeps you on the edge of your seat" (which probably explains the ferocity of Brian Tyler's action-packed approach, noted above). See www.musicfromthemovies.com

Speaking of Brian Tyler, audio clips from his new score, BUBBA HO-TEP, are now online to preview on his web site www.briantyler.com. Tyler's next score, recorded in October, is for Nick Hamm's horror-fantasy thriller GODSEND, starring Robert DeNiro and Greg Kinnear in a story about a couple who hope to clone their deceased son with the help of an expert in cell regeneration

Varèse Sarabande's new recording of Bernard Herrmann's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (conducted by Joel McNeely) has received a Grammy nomination for the "Best Classical Crossover Album." (I neglected to list this on our list of soundtrack related Grammy nominations in my Dec 11^th column). This classic science fiction score was brilliantly performed and recorded in 24-bit digital sound. The Grammy's will be announced on February 8^th.

Composer John Scott's personal French label, JOSFrance, has released L'EXPEDITION DE JULES VERNE, a two-CD set of music Scott composed for the Paris-based Jules Verne Organization. Their voyage aboard the Belem (a historic three mast sailing ship) resulted in 4 films covering the Atlantic crossing, the Amazon rain forest, Martinique and the Azores. Scott traveled on part of the voyage, which stood him in good stead for the task of composing the music for "Odyssey of the Belem," a Symphony in Four Movements, which is contained on the CD plus film cues (which have been extracted from the symphony) for all the films. Scott, who scored many of the Cousteau documentaries, had composed the music for a number of documentaries in recent years, gave this one an intriguing Jules Vernesian quality of adventure. Available through www.screenarchives.com.

Jerry Goldsmith has had to pull out of a planned Monaco concert scheduled for the 28th of December on health grounds. Hopefully he will be well enough to travel to London and celebrate his 75th Birthday scheduled for February 17^th, 2004. For details on that LSO concert, check the link at www.jerrygoldsmithonline.com.

Last week, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced this year's nominations for the Golden Globes. The music nominees are:

ORIGINAL SCORE

ORIGINAL SONG

The Golden Globe awards will be presented on January 25^th.

Soundtrack sources:

www.buysoundtrax.com

www.intrada.com

www.screenarchives.com

Next Week: The Best Soundtracks of '03