Author: JimQ
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Rolfe Kent on The Last Shot
With his bittersweet music for Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed ABOUT SCHMIDT, Rolfe Kent established himself as a drama comedy specialist, a composer who knows how to bring out both smiles and tears without going over the top. Filmmakers and composers all know how comic music can destroy comedy, and how emotional music can overpower drama. Rolfe Kent found the balance in this film, and…
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Jan A.P. Kaczmarek on Finding Neverland
With one of this year’s most hailed scores, FINDING NEVERLAND, Polish composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek is finally being recognised as one of the major film music voices in Hollywood. The award season has only started, and the score has already won one award (from the National Board of Review) and been nominated to an even more prestigious one, the Golden Globe. Kaczmarek has been…
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Women in Film Music
Have a look at your film music collection. Count the number of scores written by female composers. Then count the number of men. Surely you’ve spotted the difference: for some reason, very few women seem to be composing film scores. And although the gender balance has changed over the past twenty years, the facts and figures we are about to present are inescapable.
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Brynmor Jones: A Welshman in Berlin
The German film industry frequently gives the impression of lying in a sort of permanent but not fatal agony. There is not often much happening. Still, the industry is not dead and after the reunification – with the DEFA Studios in Babelsberg near Berlin – there are hopes for a new start. Hopes, also, for German film composers. One of them is Welsh composer…
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Georges Delerue
Georges Delerue’s score for A LITTLE SEX is his third recorded in the U.S. All were done at Evergreen Studios in Burbank, a rather new and increasingly popular recording studio that has been stressing its film scoring facilities in the motion picture trade papers. (In fact, Charles Fox is co-owner of the complex and had film scoring capabilities in mind when having it built).…
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Basil Poledouris on Scoring Wind
Mainly for the racing sequences. The overriding issue is that it’s a film about sailing, the pace and excitement of the American Cup, so I highlighted those sequences more than any of the others. Actually, in the recording sessions we recorded the percussion, electronics and orchestra all separately to attain the greatest latitude for the music to be mixed within. I’m very excited with…
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Elmer Bernstein in Concert at the HMI
It’s August 4th, Saturday afternoon, and time for rehearsal for this evening’s concert that features Robert Brookmeyer, John Dankworth, Peter Boyer, and Elmer Bernstein conducting music that ranges from big band and orchestral jazz to symphonic film scores. Mr. Bernstein stepped up to the podium greeting the orchestra as he immediately demanded the trumpet players’ attention, “Trumpets, unlike the music you were playing before…
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Jerry Goldsmith in Concert at the HMI
It’s been almost two years to this date since I covered Jerry Goldsmith’s fantastic two concert nights at The Hollywood Bowl. I will never forget those moments and the premiere of one of Goldsmith’s greatest concert works ever, Fireworks. In fact these two nights led to my next concert with the maestro performing on the U.C.L.A. campus at Royce Hall. This was my first…
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John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl
The soundtrack industry remains in a state of flux. Far, far more nowadays than movie tie-in souvenirs, soundtrack recordings have become and remain big business. While mainstream soundtracks are more and more consisting of song collections, in keeping with the trend in Hollywood of filling movies with compiled or specially commissioned songs, the availability of score CDs from major and independent labels has never…
Soundtrack! 