Incanus

This is fantastic news! I have never heard of any orchestra performing those. Such a shame I can't make it to the last concert. I am certainly attending the first two concerts but alas I can't make it to the last one as I am away from Helsinki that weekend. If only I had heard about this festival sooner I might have changed my plans. I was at the previous John Williams concert this orchestra gave in 2021 and it was fantastic. Seven Years in Tibet was one of the highlights then but the whole concert programme and performances were excellent (some of the pieces are repeated in these concerts as well). Looking forward to hearing you play Pasi!

Happy Birthday Maestro Williams!

I have been listening to this set almost daily since I got my copy. Such a great score and release. While reading the booklet I noticed that both the women's and children's choirs are listed in the performers list but the male singers are not listed. I wonder if this is an oversight or is there a specific reason why they are not similarly listed?

Well I finally received my copy and have given it a couple of spins. This new magnificent release sort of opens up the score in a completely different way compared to the OST or even to how the music is heard in the film. Every aspect of the score receives a more extensive and satisfying arc on this release. You can now hear clearly the different thematic threads from start to finish the way Williams conceived them, which is usually the highlight of many of Williams' expanded scores, the strong arc of the musical storytelling. Cinque's theme is now clearly shown to be the central theme of the work through numerous new variations from the beginning of the score to the final notes but various other musical ideas are now much clearer in the overall musical story. The unreleased and unused music is a revelation and further increases my already considerable appreciation of this music and especially Williams' skills at adapting like a chameleon to these different musical worlds in various films he has scored with such seeming ease. There are too many highlights to mention here, from the African vocal and percussion work to the intimate moments for solo instruments and vocalists. Just fantastic and the album flows wonderfully from start to finish. And then there are those nearly 50 minutes of alternates and extra music on disc 2. I never expected that this score would have so many alternates but they do in addition to being more great music give those wonderful behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the film scoring process works and the different compositions evolve (a special thank you to Mike and Jay for providing nice, concise and clear write-up on what these pieces are and how they differ from the finished film versions). The excellent liner notes by Jeff Bond (and Mike and Jay) and the great art direction by Jim Titus round out the whole package, which is fantastic! As a Williams fan one could not wish for a better Christmas gift.

RIP

Oooh sounds promising and oh so very Howard Shore.

I ordered this release last Friday (along with the new Godfather release) from the Music Box Records so it will probably be quite a wait before I get my copy. But I am so excited that we got an expanded release of Amistad, which has for a long time been on my personal grail list.

Wow the samples sounded great! I can't wait to hear the whole thing! There will be such a wealth of new music to explore here and for the fan of this score it is an absolute joy.

Excellent news! As some of have expressed above, it is about time we got a complete film score release of this classic score.

Spielberg is quite right in his original note for the OST album when he says John Williams great gift has always been to be able to produce the "unprecedented sounds" which applies especially to this score's African sections. I remember being amazed and impressed back when this film and score came out, how different much of this music was to all that I had heard from Williams up to that point. A musical "character actor" indeed.

That is undeniably a pretty egregious moment in the film.

Jim Titus' design is as fantastic as usual. The cover is gorgeous. LLL releases have hands down the best visual designs.

The amount of alternate material was a surprise. I am so glad we got this release. This is easily one of the most overlooked Spielberg/Williams collaborations.

Well this is a magnificent batch of releases!

Wohoo! Excellent!

Great news! One of the last few Goldsmith grails I had on my wishlist.

Any hope of seeing this book in print in the near future Doug?

Well in this show Galadriel is an awful, awful amoral, manipulative, entitled, whiny, self-centered, self-important, empty poxy pseudo-wisdom spouting character who does not care for anything or anyone but her revenge and can't answer a single question with a straight answer (problem with so many other characters in this show as well), so I guess they turned that on its head. Looks fair but feels foul. Which I guess could be said about the whole show. What a disaster.

Well that was underwhelming.

It already isn't? But the sea is always right!

I expect there to be a full explanation of how these "Mithrilchlorians" bind the whole universe and all beings together and how the elves can best hear their will and enact it. "Did you ever hear the tragedy of Myth-Elf The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Elves would tell you. It’s a Dark Lord legend. Myth-Elf was a Dark Lord, so powerful and so wise he could use Middle-Earth's Power to influence the Mithrilchlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the Power that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Mithrilchlorians is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself."

The mere descriptions found on the internet of this shows various travesties to Tolkien's writings is enough to deter me even further away from it. It just seems to sink to whole new levels of awfulness in terms of how unfaithful is it to the source material. And how horribly written it is in general.

Purchased these today. I have never owned either of these scores before so it was about time to get them. I am glad Rudy finally got a complete release as I have been putting off buying the score in hopes of a Varese deluxe edition.