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This program makes me a little sad that we (probably) won't be getting a new score to celebrate their 50th anniversary. It's a pretty significant milestone. Especially because Williams has a gap in his schedule for the latter half of the year.

I find it a little strange every time he's flown overseas lately, he's immediately flown home after the concert. Surely these flights are taxing at his age. I'm surprised he doesn't spend a week or so relaxing/sightseeing in the countries he visits, Italy especially (I liked Milan but there was so much to do in other cities by comparison). I know he's at the mercy of orchestra schedules but surely pairing concerts in multiple European cities makes more sense than multiple round trips from the US for a single city.

Translated: Thu 5/6/25 8.00pm Fri 6/6/25 8.00pm Sat 7/6/25 7.00pm Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra | John Williams conductor Excerpts from film scores What would films like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones or Harry Potter be without him? John Williams, superstar of American film music, gave them all their unmistakable sound. His magical, sparkling soundtracks are not only catchy tunes, but also congenially deepen stories and characters. In 2021, John Williams made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and led the audience through the cosmos of his work. This season we can see him conducting his works again: a great moment not only for film fans. Live on June 7th, 2025 in the Digital Concert Hall Tickets Concert Category 5 Advance sale from February 23rd, 2025

The planet emoji doesn't really fit AVP1 though? The whole film takes place on earth. We see the Predator homeworld in AVPR, where he selects his mask (ie. the 4th and 5th emojis).

I can't imagine much is missing at all, no. Unless Tyler was just happy to get it done and had a few alternates to include. Besides, there's only 4 Alien scores left to expand. Maybe this was just the easiest (I'm guessing Prometheus and Covenant are trickier due to multiple composers). I have no idea what Kloser's stance is with expansions, maybe he wasn't interested in doing AVP1.

The film opens with a sequence onboard the Predator spaceship, which crashes on earth. No idea why the twitter version is different but this still fits the narrative of AVPR. Curiously, no. It's an LA recording from 2007. But Varese were able to get the post-2005 Star Trek scores expanded too, and it's still unclear how they managed that.

Aliens vs Predator Requiem fits those emojis to a tee, though I'd rather an updated version of Aliens. Alien. Predator. Blood (the film is quite gory). Predator planet. Predator mask. Final scene is the Predator gun being delivered to Ms. Yutani. Plus Alien Day is 4/26 but I just assumed these were all off-limits now that Disney owns Fox. Interesting if Varese managed to get a into their archives... doubly interesting if it's AVPR because it's an LA recording from 2007.

I wish JW was this creative with his own concert selections! Some absolutely fantastic pieces in this concert.

This would be his, what, 5th score for a movie with aliens? He's got a great track record so far on the subject! Really just depends what angle Spielberg's going for. Could this be his previously abandoned Night Skies, which was based on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter?

The CD* box set does include the OST for Crystal Skull.

It's basically a lose lose situation for us. If we support this garbage, it just encourages them to keep churning out garbage. If we boycott it, they assume nobody buys this stuff and don't invest more money in better releases.

And here I was hoping they'd be incompetent enough to dump the complete recording sessions on CD by mistake.

Has anyone else noticed the track times don't add up? The concerto + suite combined is 51:22, yet the CD runtime is listed as 51:11. Also, there's a typo on the back cover. Millennium Media is spelled wrong in the copyright text. But it's correct in the film credits:

The films have a very specific tone; a swirling mix of absurdism, camp and straight. They nail the contrast between characters playing it totally straight while ridiculous antics occur in the background. One of my favourite examples: I'm cautiously optimistic based on the casting so far. Anderson is perfect for a Jane-esque love interest, a great foil to Neeson. Curious to see who they cast as the villain. It's hard to top Ricardo Montalbán (he nailed the tone for that first movie) but I hope they continue the trend of casting established dramatic actors. If you believe this article, Mads Mikkelsen was in talks for the role last year. Is it beyond the realms of possibility Newborn would come back to score the film? His scores are intrinsically linked to the tone of these films. I'm struggling to think of many composers who could emulate it.

Here's an obscure correction: The versions on the LLL and BTT are different recordings. BTT has a string accompaniment (reflective of the film version) while the LLL doesn't (for whatever reason). I'm not sure why the film version wasn't included on the LLL, seems like a weird oversight. But at least it's on the BTT.