Picking up where I left off, we begin with an interesting bit of eighties electronica: Alan Silvestri's score for the Stephen King anthology film Cat's Eye ... a release that seems like it ought to be of special interest to fans riding the nostalgia wave of Stranger Things and It. It's also intriguing from the standpoint of coming between Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future in Silvestri's filmography; you can hear him working out some ideas that would be developed in the latter score. After this project, I worked on a CD containing two classic LPs: The Heroes of Telemark by Malcolm Arnold and Stagecoach by Jerry Goldsmith. The former is a realistic wartime thriller about a vital WWII espionage mission, and is classic Arnold. Stagecoach is perhaps the loveliest of Goldsmith's many western scores, and this is a pristine presentation of the beautiful album re-recording (the film tracks have been released separately, most recently by La-La Land Records).
Next up was The Monkey King, a modern fantasy epic from China scored by American composer Christopher Young. This is a fairly massive orchestral effort, of a type not seen too often these days, and fans of the composers work ought to be very pleased. This was followed by Unidentified Flying Oddball, a live-action Disney comedy from 1979 that was released in some markets as The Spaceman and King Arthur. The film is very loosely adapted from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and features a dynamic and very fun score by Ron Goodwin. I also had the pleasure of seeing an old favorite revisited with Intrada's deluxe expanded version of Laurence Rosenthal's masterpiece Clash of the Titans making its way to vinyl. A portion of my notes for the CD release were extracted and repurposed, with a few minor tweaks and fixes. Incidentally, the classic poster art by the Brothers Hildebrandt looks simply fantastic at LP scale!
After that came a magnificent 3-CD set containing scores from the eighties revival of The Twilight Zone. While the series itself never gained the notoriety of its ancestor, music supervisor Robert Drasnin gathered together a team of distinguished veterans and up-and-coming talents to provide numerous original scores. On this collection you will hear amazing work by Christopher Young, Basil Poledouris, Kenneth Wannberg, Dennis McCarthy, J.A.C. Redford, Craig Safan, Fred Steiner, Elliot Kaplan, Arthur Kempel and William Goldstein, in addition to the revamped theme song by Merl Saunders and The Grateful Dead! Very highly recommended. Finally (at least as far as this post is concerned) we have Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, another brilliant family adventure score from one of my favorite film composers, Bruce Broughton. This score stands proudly alongside his score to the original film (also released by Intrada) and surpasses it in some ways, in my opinion. It's always a treat to write about maestro Broughton's music, and this was no exception.
This concludes Part 2! The third and final round of Intrada catch-up will feature more Young and Poledouris, a heaping helping of David Newman, monumental works by Horner and Jarre, and a pair of classic scores by the great Quincy Jones. Stay tuned!
There's quite a lot of ground to cover since my last music update, so I'll be going through the releases I've worked on by label. First up is Intrada, which has had such a prodigious output these last few years that I'll be breaking my recap into two parts! We begin with Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - Season Two, a deluxe 4-CD set of music from the classic television series. It contains scores by Stu Phillips, John Cacavas and Herbert Don Woods, but the majority of the music on this set was composed by Bruce Broughton, who joined the show during its second season and confirmed the outstanding dramatic chops that would help him become one of the most respected composers in Hollywood. The set is now sold out, but well worth hunting down!
For Intrada, I also had the opportunity to write about two scores by the late James Horner. Though I never had an opportunity to personally interview Mr. Horner, it is always a great honor and pleasure to write about his music. He described himself as a colorist first and foremost, and these two scores are masterful examples. The first, Gorky Park, is a wintry blend of eerie dissonance, powerful low brass, funky urban beats, interpolations of Tchaikovsky and a love theme for the ages. The second, A Far Off Place, is a dynamic, symphonic score that taps into the grandeur, romance and adventure of Africa. Horner was a titan in his field, and these works are just two examples of why he will be so badly missed.
Next up we have a pair of double-features. You'd be hard pressed to find a stranger double bill than Maurice Jarre's Mandingo / Plaza Suite! The former is an unconventional score for a notorious blaxploitation epic, featuring a collaboration between Jarre and blues artist Muddy Waters ("Born in this Time"). The latter is a brief, light-on-its-feet score for a Neil Simon adaptation. The combo makes for a wonderful demonstration of Jarre's amazing versatility. The other double-feature is The Return of a Man Called Horse / Inherit the Wind from maestro Laurence Rosenthal, pairing one of his most sweeping scores with one of his most intimate. Both films are character studies, albeit told on very different scales, and both allow Rosenthal to shine. He remains one of my favorite composers, and I've been blessed to work on so many of his releases over the years!
Finally, we have a trio of stand-alone releases from different composers. First is Craig Safan's The Last Starfighter, a thrilling score for one of the most-loved cult sci-fi films of the 1980s. Newly remastered and expanded, it's never sounded better than it does here. Second is Christopher Young's more recent Killing Season, a rich and meditative blend of American and Eastern European influences. Working on this release was especially interesting for the way Young reworked his material into suite form for album presentation. Third is the premiere release of Michael Kamen's whirlwind action-comedy score for Adventures in Babysitting. I've been a Kamen fan since I first saw Brazil, and it was a joy to dive into this very fun score—much of it unused in the actual film!
That's it for Part 1. Next up: Silvestri, Arnold, Goldsmith, Goodwin, more Young and Safan, and my notes hit vinyl for the first time!
