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Thought I would give the spotlight to some of the lesser known Star Wars composers
 
Enter Lennie Moore, who delivered this piece for the game Star Wars the Old Republic as the planet theme for Coruscant
 
Often when composers try to write in the Star Wars style it’s predominantly influenced by Prequel era music, but what I find so special about this track is how much it evokes the Original trilogy with its simultaneously soaring romantic quality as well as its uneasy dissonance. The main Coruscant theme is just majestic as well:
 

Been a while since I posted here, but I composed a new version of Michael McCuistion's old (and very underrated) theme from the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man game a while ago for a now defunct remaster of that game. I included a few more elements from Danny Elfman's music since the game was an adaptation of that film, but otherwise I tried to stay as faithful as possible to McCuistion's original. 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TR3w2ild1Pkz_PGJmuQv0ms692WHF21n/view?usp=sharing
 
On the topic of superhero music, I also remastered an original Batman theme I composed a while back. I tried to create a mix between the Elfman/Shirley Walker style, and the darker, more brooding music of the Batman: Arkham scores. 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZcPzz-YrI8ZqApAcPkBT-B1ulQhHzMxi/view?usp=sharing

Ireland's National Symphony Orchestra included it at the JW 90th birthday concert: (1:59:07)
They also included it as part of a May the Fourth concert which I believe was broadcast on the radio (RTÉ Lyric FM), but can't seem to find a record of it in an archive. 
 
 

I remember there being a little fun quote of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture in A Whirl Through Academe from KotCS (Indy 4)

I remember there being a little fun quote of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture in A Whirl Through Academe from KotCS (Indy 4)

I remember there being a little fun quote of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture in A Whirl Through Academe from KotCS (Indy 4)

**Edit for even more context: Hi, this is Ben Pawlak - we usually post over on the New Project: John Williams Potter Scoring thread. This account is shared between me and Molly Sanford as a composing/music editing team. We are also both professional pianists in graduate programs, hence the pictures!**

Yesterday after the Carnegie concert, the Maestro himself came to Juilliard for a conducting session where we played the Superman March, theme from Jurassic Park, and Adventures on Earth. Here's our post from the Potter thread about it:

I was lucky enough to play piano/celesta, and Molly (who was in town to see his Carnegie concert the night before) was turning pages for me. So the short version is: both of us were in the room with JW and it was thrilling! And yes we did give him a flash drive with GOF, OOTP, and HBP on it. 
 
- BP
 

 

 
More context - Several months ago I saw that our April 22nd orchestra read was going to be a John Williams day, so I went to ask my orchestra director if he’d invite JW to the school since he’ll be in town for the Carnegie concert the night before. He said he’d talk to the dean and reach out to see if it were possible. We finally got confirmation about ten days ago that he’d be able and willing to visit the session. 
 
It all spun into something much bigger as camera crews set up microphones and the Juilliard president, provost, dean of the music division, and president emeritus arrived. We had only about an hour to rehearse everything and were all super excited. John showed up in the late morning, and brought Anne-Sophie Mutter with him, so all of the violins were suddenly panicked which was fun. 
 
He was not planning to conduct us while he was here, only to guide the rehearsal which was led by our grad student conductors. He gave them feedback and spoke to the group about certain aspects of the pieces that he finds particularly difficult to work on with an orchestra. At the end, he was talking about bar 8 of the Jurassic Park theme (where it goes into the main tempo) and how it’s always difficult to get together. The conductor who was on the podium at the time asked if he wanted to fix it. He then stood up and took over to much applause. His efficiency in fixing it was incredible. It was an amazing couple minutes that we’ll never forget. 
 
Afterwards he got a photo op at the aforementioned John Williams Orchestra Library. With the amount of cameras that were in the room, I’m sure it will be thrown on Juilliard’s YouTube page at some point in the coming months once they edit it. 
 
Side Note: After we played E.T., Juilliard’s President Damian Woetzel interrupted to say that he had filmed part of it on his phone and sent it to Steven Spielberg who had responded with kind words and a warm hello to John. 
 
View from the piano:



BP

I love the "Lighting of the Beacons" from RotK. The orchestration is just phenomenal. Super interesting how the melody is traded between instruments. Howard Shore said this is one of the pieces he is most proud of.   I made a cover for pipe organ and performed it live to the film. There are quite a few people here who know the soundtrack very well - so I am curious to get feedback.  I have transcribed the entire first hour of RotK, might upload more pieces later.

I'm sure a lot of people have seen this already. The first piece on the program is Sound the Bells, which I was given to understand that it premiered at this concert, since he eluded to that more or less in the score, with the slight revision and full orchestration coming later. However, just before in this videos he's giving in interview that he makes it seem like they actually premiered it at the royal wedding. Anybody know the full history of this piece?

And for those who really can't read the article, here are some pictures from it:
 

 

 

 

Very cool! And so great it was incorporated into a mod! The mod community is so excellent, just making and working and sharing and adding to what they love. A very cool thing.
 
Thank you for sharing (and listening)!

That was great stuff! Loved the incorporations of "Far Horizons" and "Awake"! Had more dissonance than I was expecting, but I think that makes the diatonic parts all the more satisfying. 
 
I actually got some minor notoriety off an Elder Scrolls track I made a year and a half ago, as it's since been turned into a mod for Skyrim: Special Edition. Mind you it only has a few thousand views but it's something! It's a bit amateurish in some aspects. I didn't really know how to mix and use expression/modulation and I often used chords for the bass line, but I still enjoy the sound of it overall. 
 

For Skyrim/Elder Scrolls fans here - Finally got around to actually playing through Skyrim (a decade late!) and loved it so much. Here is a sinfonietta and/or small set of tone poems with some familiar bits of Soule's material throughout. Hope you enjoy, it was very fun to write and record.
 
https://lukenemitz.bandcamp.com/album/the-province-of-skyrim

For Skyrim/Elder Scrolls fans here - Finally got around to actually playing through Skyrim (a decade late!) and loved it so much. Here is a sinfonietta and/or small set of tone poems with some familiar bits of Soule's material throughout. Hope you enjoy, it was very fun to write and record.
 
https://lukenemitz.bandcamp.com/album/the-province-of-skyrim

A concept/demo I wrote for a cartoon/animated short following the adventures of the Tico sisters, introduced in TLJ. Inspired by the wonderful art of Nicoletta Baldari and following the lead of Ryan Shore (nephew of Howard Shore) who has written some great music for several fun animated Star Wars shorts. Hope you enjoy! 
 
 

I always thought this version from Anakin is Free (TPM) was very beautiful, beginning at 4:44. (King Mark mentioned it as well, here is the snippet)
 
 

I like Haab's music--he deserves bigger projects.  
 
There seems to be some sort of negative subtext to all of this. Why does it matter if TROS used his or anyone else's music as temps?  Isn't that kind of the point of a temp track?  

I'm not sure it's evidence of a temp track... after all, both Falcon Flight and Rey Training are revisions of totally different cues (and we don't know why the original versions were abandoned... I'm curious if those early versions have the same passages though).
 
But JW does review everything Gordy writes, so... who knows. Maybe something stuck in his head.
 
Ultimately Gordy is intentionally evoking Williams' Star Wars style with his music. It's no surprise there'd eventually be some overlap.

A concept/demo I wrote for a cartoon/animated short following the adventures of the Tico sisters, introduced in TLJ. Inspired by the wonderful art of Nicoletta Baldari and following the lead of Ryan Shore (nephew of Howard Shore) who has written some great music for several fun animated Star Wars shorts. Hope you enjoy! 
 
 

A concept/demo I wrote for a cartoon/animated short following the adventures of the Tico sisters, introduced in TLJ. Inspired by the wonderful art of Nicoletta Baldari and following the lead of Ryan Shore (nephew of Howard Shore) who has written some great music for several fun animated Star Wars shorts. Hope you enjoy! 
 
 

Just got my PhD yesterday, with grade "Excellent"! 
The defense was done via the internet eventually..
 
I'll upload the full thesis in a few days.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but she scored a short film Prelude to Eden in 1995.
 
The director posted up audio clips about the rehearsal process, including the finished track. It's a fascinating process listening to how she works on the scoring stage.