Omen II

Finally, proof that there is a god and that his name is His Most Serene Highness Sir John T. Williams III:
http://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-live/default.aspx
12th March 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall, two performances from which to choose. Now please excuse me while I

Here is a brief tribute to James Horner from the London Symphony Orchestra website:
http://lso.co.uk/more/news/452-a-tribute-to-james-horner
He recorded sixteen of his scores with them, as well as a couple of soundtrack albums.

In no particular order, and probably not exhaustive...
Jerry Goldsmith (with the LSO in concert, 2001 and 2003)
John Williams (at various concerts from 2005 onwards, met him twice in 2007 in LA and Chicago)
James Horner (at the preview performances of Titanic Live in Luzern, had a good chat with him afterwards and saw him again in London at the premiere of Charades)
Howard Shore (too many to count)
Trevor Jones (at an LSO concert, didn't want to talk about film music but was very keen to discuss the tie he was wearing)
Patrick Doyle (various concerts, London, Belfast)
David Arnold (various concerts, had a conversation about breadsticks)
Michael Giacchino (at various Hollywood Bowl concerts, also in Luzern several times. Went out for drinks with the orchestra after the premiere of Star Trek Live. It was a very late night)
George Fenton (at an LSO concert, have also bumped into him wandering around London)
Alan Silvestri (bumped into him in Oxford Street with his wife while he was recording The Avengers, also at Back to the Future Live in Luzern)
David Julyan (in Ghent. He was drunk, as was everyone else. I fell asleep in the bar)
James Newton Howard (in Ghent. Possibly not drunk)
John Powell (at the Concert for Care in London. His family were in the box next to me and were rather...raucous)
John Ottman (at the Concert for Care in London. Had a conversation about jetlag remedies)
Christopher Gunning (confused him with Nigel Hess)
Nigel Hess (confused him with Christopher Gunning)
Alex Heffes (at a Tommy Pearson discussion thing in Golders Green in 2008)
Ludovic Bource (The Artist Live at the Royal Albert Hall)
Hans Zimmer (Interstellar Live at the Royal Albert Hall)
Michael Price (honestly can't remember - the David Arnold gig at the Royal Festival Hall last year perhaps?)
David Newman (Back to the Future Live in Luzern. Had a brief conversation after the concert - enthusiastic guy!)
Danny Elfman (Elfman/Burton concert at the Royal Albert Hall)
Chris Tilton (at a Hollywood Bowl rehearsal. Seemed somewhat surprised that someone recognised him)
Philip Glass (all over the place)
Debbie Wiseman (at the Royal Albert Hall. Lives just around the corner from me)
Lalo Schifrin (at a Barbican concert of his work)
Alberto Iglesias (Ghent. You know the rest)
Jon & Al Kaplan (an interesting experience)
Alexandre Desplat (LSO concert last year and the post-concert bash. He's tall!)
Clint Mansell (concert at the Barbican)

Polished off my next tribute video today. Wanted to get it done and posted by 9:30 PDT, but it wasn't to be. Oh, well.
Of all the ones I've done so far, I'm most pleased with this one. I only used three pieces this time, but didn't have to edit the longest at all: "Preparations for Battle" sums up the story and mood for the entire picture so well it didn't need me to interfere. (It's also the piece I listened to at 9:30 this morning.) Hope it works for you as well.

Thanks for the link, karelm. I was in the audience for that and got the chance to meet him afterwards. I wondered beforehand whether it would be worth it but was so glad that I took the opportunity.

Another very nice tribute from film music historian, Jon Burlingame:
http://www.filmmusicsociety.org/news_events/features/2015/062415.html

The harp concerto, that's the one called Widows and Bitches, isn't it?
Sent from my iPad

Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/planet-of-the-apes-live-92567?dt=2015-08-28
28th August 2015, Royal Festival Hall, London. Robert Ziegler conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra. Bring your own mixing bowls and ram's horns.

This shocking news was literally the first thing I heard when I woke this morning, as my radio alarm clock wakes up for the 6.30 news programme. At first I thought I was still half asleep and that it was some weird nightmare I was having, until it was repeated in the next news bulletin and I realised that I must have been awake.
James Horner is one of the few film composers that I have had the pleasure of meeting, only a few short weeks ago in London. I spoke to him for no more than a couple of minutes but I will always look back fondly on that brief meeting. I got the chance to tell him how I had liked his music since hearing the likes of Cocoon and Star Trek II on the Erich Kunzel tape Star Tracks II, as well as asking him if he had ever considered doing a concert of his greatest scores with the LSO, for example. He replied that he had never felt the need to do that, almost as if he could not understand how a concert devoted to his music would be of interest to people!
After he had signed a couple of my CD covers, I asked if he would mind a quick photo with me. Not only was he happy to do so but he put his arm round me as if I was his best buddy rather than some random fanboy he had just met. It was a real boost to me in what has been a pretty dreadful few months and to hear that he too has been taken before his time is quite a kick in the guts.

This shocking news was literally the first thing I heard when I woke this morning, as my radio alarm clock wakes up for the 6.30 news programme. At first I thought I was still half asleep and that it was some weird nightmare I was having, until it was repeated in the next news bulletin and I realised that I must have been awake.
James Horner is one of the few film composers that I have had the pleasure of meeting, only a few short weeks ago in London. I spoke to him for no more than a couple of minutes but I will always look back fondly on that brief meeting. I got the chance to tell him how I had liked his music since hearing the likes of Cocoon and Star Trek II on the Erich Kunzel tape Star Tracks II, as well as asking him if he had ever considered doing a concert of his greatest scores with the LSO, for example. He replied that he had never felt the need to do that, almost as if he could not understand how a concert devoted to his music would be of interest to people!
After he had signed a couple of my CD covers, I asked if he would mind a quick photo with me. Not only was he happy to do so but he put his arm round me as if I was his best buddy rather than some random fanboy he had just met. It was a real boost to me in what has been a pretty dreadful few months and to hear that he too has been taken before his time is quite a kick in the guts.

It goes without saying that James Horner is one of the pillars of my film music identity -- one of the main reasons why I became interested in this weird artform in the first place. His music felt like part of my soul. So you can imagine how devastated I was when I woke up to a text message with the surreal news.
I was fortunate enough to meet him in Vienna in 2013. A humble and shy man, but not afraid to speak his mind about things he disliked with the "Hollywood machinery". A rarity.
Here's the episode/interview I did back then, for anyone interested (in English):
http://celluloidtunes.no/celluloid-tunes-08-james-horner-in-vienna-2nd-international-edition/
...and here's a personal obituary I wrote today (in Norwegian):
http://montages.no/2015/06/james-horner-1953-2015/
I miss you so much, James, and the sadness will continue to fill me for some time yet!

Man, La-La Land ain't kidding around with that packaging.

Nice catch, Mike! I'd totally forgotten about that John Williams.

Oh god no. Noooooooooo

71e anniversaire du Débarquement en Normandie.
En mémoire des soldats qui ont débarqué sur les plages de Normandie, à l’aube du 6 juin 1944.

I think they should have included the doorbell sound too as a hidden snippet in the end of a track..

I was in the audience for this and it was truly spellbinding - a highlight of one of the best concerts I have ever attended. The suite from Psycho that preceded it in the concert was superb too.
I love this Ivesian piece from The Devil and Daniel Webster. The scene it scored was dropped from the final film, if I recall correctly.

I guess BB8's theme has leaked online then. I was hoping for a Jazz number.

I'd get this if it was released on CD. It's music to make you want to storm the Iranian Embassy, Alan Partridge style.

Okay, Quint actually came close to what I envisioned. Here's what I threw together. I probably spent as much time on it as Disney did. All the elements used are property of Disney, so they wouldn't have to use anything from Fox to put this together. If I'm being entirely truthful, I'm putting this up tongue in cheek, but I think something along these lines could be really fun. Enjoy!

Have you ever seen the short film, The Dim Little Island, TGP? Not only did RVW score the film using this very tune, but you can also hear his voice as one of the narrators. This is worth ten minutes of anyone's time.

England hasn't changed a bit!

This old tune is one of my favorite melodies, top 5 material. VW loved it too, setting it here, and also adapting it as the gorgeous hymn tune Kingsfold, which has been paired with a few different texts.
 

He lost a bet with Stu Philips at a stag party the night before he wrote that cue.
John either had to pay for everyone's drinks or put Stu's theme into the score. He wisely chose the later as the bar bill was just under $600.
I know this because I was there. John was wasted by the way. I'm frankly surprised he remembered. And surprised he made it to work the next day. No one else did.

Okay . . . who here has had the experience of thinking they've got every score they wanted to own from all their favorite films, only to suddenly discover they overlooked one? At this point in the collecting game, it's a thrilling sort of event—one that just happily happened to me.
I recently stumbled upon a copy of FSM's The Thing from Another World. I first encountered this movie when I was maybe 8 years old. My dad was a big sci-fi fan, and one night they showed this one as a late-night feature on TV. We watched it with the lights off, while (appropriately) there was a small blizzard falling outside, making us feel Arctically isolated ourselves. I was enthralled by the movie, an impression that's never left me. It's absolutely the best science fiction thriller of the 50s, decades ahead of its time and still superior to its dubious 80s remake, which only bothered to reproduce the setting. (It was good, campy fun as a horror film, of course, but the original easily had every bit as much tension and twice the sophistication.) And I never forgot the music. Along with the likes of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, The Thing was probably one of the first movies that made me realize that music is a critically important element in making a movie work. I had no idea (until I found this CD) that the great Dimitri Tiomkin had done the score—naturally, I had no idea who he was back in those days—and once I saw they'd given the score a contemporary release I had to have it.
The one scene I best recalled musically was the moment when the reconnaisance party spreads out to gauge the shape of the craft buried in the ice. As they slowly back up to form a perfect circle, the music rises to a jagged pinnacle of high brass—the earliest precursor of David Arnold's similar effect in "The Other Side" from his Stargate score more than forty years later. What I'd nearly forgotten was the main theme: an eerie, ascending phrase on the wailing theremin, made to sound at times like an alien child crying in pain. Hearing it again sent me all the way back to that snowy night in the late seventies again, and gave me the same creeps it did back then. Thirteen pieces was too short a time to spend on that kind of nostalgia (though it may well represent the entire score), but man, was it a glorious experience.