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I've had this beautiful gem for a few days and I can say that the album is, as expected, phenomenal. I’ll write more in a large article that I’m going to publish before the premiere. Several pieces, like Hedwig’s Theme, Donnybrook Fair and The Duel are very vibrant and virtuoso. Hedwig’s Theme in the extended version is a revelation. Dracula sounds phenomenal and dark. Luke and Leia is beautiful, just like Across The Stars. Sabrina is quite similar to the version that appeared on Cinema Serenade, Schindler's List doesn't differ much from the original either. I am looking forward to the deluxe version, but even this one is definitely one of the record events of the year. I'm telling you, this ends with at least one Grammy Award Below are some photos.The booklet has 24 pages. Liner notes are in English and German. There is also short essay by Jon Burlingame, but I don't want to spoil everything here What can I say more... Well, it's 'Nice to be around' this CD

Long-time lurker (since 2006!), first-time poster here. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops orchestra performed the live score to the original Star Wars on August 16, 2019 at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. John Williams was in attendance and made an appearance on stage at the end of the performance. The Pops did a great job with the musical accompaniment. I’m a long-time fan of the score and the movie (as a kid, I saw the film more than 40 times in theaters!), and I was very impressed. Lockhart was visibly tired at the end of the first half and at the film’s conclusion. Here are some videos, shot off one of the large screens facing the lawn crowd. The picture is sometimes off-kilter (I wasn’t looking through my phone as I shot it), but it will give you an idea of how it sounded. It’s also interesting to see where the split up the film for the intermission. (As an interesting note, the Pops did not perform the music in the cantina sequence.) As a Berkshire County resident, I’ve been lucky enough to meet Williams a few times, most recently at Tanglewood. He was there walking the grounds one evening, before a concert with which he was not associated, and I got a picture with him. Clearly he enjoys just being there. He was in good spirits and seems in good health. SW1.MOV SW2.MOV SW3.MOV SW4.MOV SW5.MOV SW6.MOV

He probably just wanted to check that he doesn't leave out any themes when he puts all of them in the new score.

The album version of the end credits suite features: 1:05 - 1:50: Luke's Theme fanfare 1:51 - 2:40: Rose's Theme (a new recording specific to the end credits) 2:41 - 2:56: Leia's Theme tribute (on piano) 2:57 - 3:43: Luke's Exile Theme (seems to be an excerpt of TRIR) 3:44 - 4:41 (a highlights montage from The Battle of Crait recorded for the end credits, not tracked music -- with fragments of the Resistance March, Rose's Theme, the Rebel Fanfare, Rey's A Theme, interspersed with athematic fanfares) 4:42 - 5:32: Yoda's Theme (a re-recorded excerpt of the existing concert suite from ESB) 5:31 - 6:25: Holdo's Resolve (the film cue with its original ending; the film version seems to have an insert ending) 6:26 - 6:43: Resistance in Peril motif A, closing with Rey's A Theme 6:43 - 6:53: Resistance in Peril motif B 6:54 - 7:25: Here They Come, Again (end credits version, not tracked music) 7:26 - 8:28: Rey's Theme coda (end credits recording of Rey's melody on flute/strings followed by the 'celeste' motif in minor on chimes) So altogether: from TLJ we have 3 new themes and 2 action motifs, fragments of 2 TFA themes (Resistance & Rey) and 3 OT themes (Yoda, Leia & Luke). Everything in the end credits except the excerpt of Luke's Exile Theme from TRIR and Holdo's Resolve (which is just the film cue) was arranged and recorded for the end credits. It's not exactly a Mischief Managed situation where just the opening is new and the rest is an edit of film cues.

We're not just doing this for money! We're doin' it for a shitload o' money!!

Thank you, Mr. Sabrina.

What makes Williams great to me is his ability to elevate what would be a boring scene into something exciting and badass.

They're just action motifs that he used in both the opening and Crait battles. Gotta call them something.

It's identical to the choral part at the end of the track "The Three Broomsticks" (AKA "Brief Snow Scene"). It's heard that way in the film...my assumption has always been that the choir was recorded separately, and that's what we're hearing.

@crumbs Hey! So sorry for the continued delay. We actually have it recorded already (not surprisingly) but we have found it impossible to get it mixed/completed due to work commitments. Dan and Nick, for instance, have been travelling for work almost constantly since Part 1 of Empire came out. Myself, I've been neck deep in shows for work that I haven't got around to it as well. But! We have some others in the can now: - A live recording of a talk we gave for the Melbourne International Film Festival on the film music of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - A *different* type of episode where we asked one of the composers we analysed to listen to "their" episode and then they talk us through piles of music that never made it into the score. Less an interview and more a dive into the creative process. - And, after Part 2 of Empire, we have another film lined up. This time an animated feature that has been requested a bunch. Plenty to come before the end of the year! Re: TLJ live to picture - Yes! (and i'm impressed you know the places that they are sourced from) I'm currently trying to find a spot in our season to put it on. This title was announced to the orchestras really late, and my planning is so far ahead, that i'm finding it difficult to get it in. To tie you over however, can I suggest that you head along to our Return of the Jedi live shows in November? Should be a blast! I'm even trying to get a Jabba funk band to play in the foyer as the "cantina" band. Fingers crossed!

There's a word describing this whole exercice: gerontophilia!

Quickly -- *The statements of Rose's theme come from "Rebellion is Reborn"; *The brief Leia arrangement is new; *The Luke in Exile section comes from "Rebellion is Reborn" (which in turn came from early Ahch To Island cues); *The Battle of Crait stuff comes directly from that cue (parts of which in turn came from the opening Escape cue, or perhaps vice versa -- hard to say) *The Yoda arrangement splices the very beginning and very ending of the original 1980 concert arrangement *The Holdo's resolve stuff comes directly from that cue *The Battle of Crait stuff that follows comes directly from that cue, along with spruced up iteration of TIE Fighter Attack *The Rey's theme Coda is new to the End Credits So, besides little transitions here and there, the only music specifically unique to the TLJ credits are the Leia's Theme snippet for piano and the end statement of Rey's Theme (and possibly the brief iteration of Rose's motif at 2:34) I map out the End Credits for this and the rest of the films in a little more detail in my leitmotif catalogue, if you're curious. Enjoy!: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xJ0Jj-mLfOPUCtcAm_HDGIkFwvHL5gbX/view?usp=drive_open

I like melody and I like pretty piano, and I'll take pretty piano over the nondescript ruminative piano wallpaper that is industrially plastered ad nauseam over seemingly every new movie that comes out these days. Composers and directors who think plink plonk *pause* plink plonk is to gaze into the very heart of the human condition.

Nice, @Tanglehead, and welcome to JWfan. You've taken your first step into a larger world.

Well I wouldn't call it universally acclaimed and it seems less of a genuine crowdpleaser than Force Awakens (which also had a huge number of naysayers but I think they were more "meh" on the whole than with Last Jedi) I think the YouTube haterz have convinced themselves that the world agrees it's a Crystal Skull/Phantom Menace type punchline, but I think it has too many fans even within the nerddom for that to catch on. What's probably more fair to say is that it deflated the hype more than it kicked it into high gear. I like the movie but it didn't make me especially pumped for what's next and I don't really know what anybody's most anticipated thing would have been for Episode IX after seeing it. Rey vs Kylo, I guess? To what end, really? I think it was a little too easy for the return of Lando and the Emperor to take the top spots. Meanwhile this Obi-Wan thing shows they still gotta rely on bringing shit back. That was something that could be said for TFA was that for all the nostalgia, it did get fans meming about Rey and Snoke for a couple years.

Geez, that is quite a difference between the film version and the LLL! Wrong take? Did Williams not like the film version?

That guy seems to get the "film-only" cues from 5.1/7.1 channel isolation. By the way, another thing: in "Befriending the Hippogriff", there is a big difference between the film and the LLL version in the beginning of the cue when the harpsichord plays: Did Mike use a wrong take for his presentation?

I'm praying for a true composed suite for the Rise of Skywalker, it's my one and only expectation going in, that we don't get another tracked suite. The odds are good, I think.

This is why he is the greatest

I was watching Jurassic Park and noticed that the film mix sounded better to my ears than any CD release of the score. More clarity, more oomph. A great example of this is the Imperial March during Darth's introduction in The Empire Strikes Back. It sounds better than any release of the music itself. Why can't the albums sound like this? What are they doing differently when they mix the music for the movies that makes it sound so much better?

Williams does not use the restroom. He has orchestrators for that.

Now, there's a deleted scene from CLUE, that I'd like to see!

The PR department work-shopped some disparaging photographs and excoriating dedications, but they did not go over very well.

Remember melody? It used to be all over movies. Now it's like fuckin' unobtanium.

Bon sang!

Jaws is good because it isn't about sharks, just like The Edge isn't about a bear.

Superman by Unknown.

I'm taking greek lessons in fact!

I don't think I've ever really noticed JP sounding any better in the film than on album - I think the OST mix sounds pretty fantastic - but ESB is a very different case. The SE releases were not handled with the technical finesse they would have received today. I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, but the ESB SE album actually jumps back and forth between material based on Eric Tomlinson's original film mixes and new (at the time) remixes by Brian Risner. The Imperial March is one of the remixes. If I were to make a sweeping generalization, the biggest difference film-vs-album difference in a recording's sound is going to be the reverb. Film mixes are often relatively dry...not much reverberation. Album mixes invariably feature more reverb, whether introduced artificially or by introducing more of the room sound from more distant mics into the mix. Empire is pretty dry on the SE album, but if anything the film sounds dryer to me. If less reverb tends to be appealing to you, I'd guess you're going to tend to prefer film mixes.

What?! What are these?

That's not Rombi. That's a piece from duo Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, who go by "A Winged Victory for the Sullen", from their album of the same name. Rombi has written some lovely stuff though:

Ewan McGregor playing Obi Wan again should be a movie in theaters, not a TV show

Read this instead.

In a recent interview legend Roger Linn lamented how seldom he hears full-on synth performances in the current day, as he always believed in the potential of electronics as an expressive, real-time instrument in the same vein as say a violin or an oboe.

So is this the guy who is finally going to give us the isolated score? I must say I prefer the original composition, though (end of Three Broomsticks), must be one of the most haunting cues I've ever heard.

We know the Azkaban editors did a great job making their edits unnoticable but this seems a bit too much to pitchshift and reedit from the following cue, and too similar to be some synth choir which I could maybe believe the film's Apparition ending could be.

Is that choir little cue at the beginning an edit from the editors or really an unreleased cue that isn't on the LLL set but plays in the movie? I can't see what cue we have on the LLL set this could come from

I could have watched an entire movie of Luke in his island hermit mode.

"I see a lot of people like this thing that I don't and is objectively bad according to the universal standard of my own opinion."

That's because I bought it! (I didn't)

I'd say the new Han Solo and the Princess arrangement is Williams' tribute to Carrie, unofficially. In much the same way I always interpreted his recent update to The Face of Pan as a tribute to Robin Williams' untimely passing.

Because they're all dead?

#StuBait Along the same lines, @KK, I recommend a great later Copland piece that evokes urban loneliness. The second movement from his Music for a Great City Suite, "Night Thoughts." (it's a bit confusing because he actually published two completely different pieces both called "Night Thoughts," the other is a solo piano tribute to Charles Ives)

Oozed it out, over the whore of an audience.

The unbelievably daft snail-paced resistance mothership pursuit. They basically hinged the whole plot around it, as if it was supposed to be some sort of gripping suspense device.

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I don’t have to listen to her! She’s not my Mutter!

Wow, this is phenomenal. I've just pre-ordered the deluxe edition. I can't wait!

What's wrong with the original?