Miguel Andrade

It was done by John Williams as part of TESB 5-movement suite.

I don't like digital downloads. I don't listen to music on the computer.

The score to the original concert version was removed from the catalog of rental scores a year or so ago.

Pittsburgh Symphony Trombonist Releases Star Wars Album
 
James Nova, trombonist in the Pittsburgh Symphony orchestra, has released a new album for trombone choir, A Fall from Light to Dark. Through the chosen moments of John Williams’ masterful scores, this album musically chronicles the rise and descent of Anakin Skywalker as he transforms into Darth Vader.
 
Jim has had a lifelong love of John Williams’ film scores since his Dad took him and his brother to see The Empire Strikes Back in the theater. Throughout his career he has performed and recorded with John Williams on several occasions, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops as well as the Utah Symphony.
 
In 2012, Jim was preparing for another season with the Pittsburgh Symphony and thought a fun way to get into shape would be to overdub (or “Novadub”) one of his John Williams trombone choir transcriptions. He chose his transcription of the Superman March as his first effort. He posted it on SoundCloud. Fast forward to now and his SoundCloud page has passed 600,000 listens! He decided it was time to make an actual commercial album and set out learning the art of mixing and mastering, which brings him to this project: A Fall from Light to Dark.
 
Some of you may think, “trombone choir?” Trombone choir is a rich and varied color ensemble capable of powerful, crushing, devastating and also tender, introspective, delicate moments. This album demonstrates the power of John Williams’ scores and how they translate so well to this medium.
 
All transcriptions, playing, recording, editing, mixing and mastering by James Nova.
 
To hear some clips and learn more about Jim, visit jimnova.com
 
 

Thanks for the kind words!

For your perusal...
 
 

I believe Jack Mason was a regular arranger for the Boston Pops during the Fiedler era.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned.

While Bernstein might have not been too happy with the "Hollywoodization" of his work, he had high praise for the orchestral adaptation of his Mass commissioned by Arthur Fiedler. Fiedler did a whole record with that one (also includes the Overture to Candide), and the Simple Song section was recorded again by Williams on Bernstein by Boston. On the later release, no credit went to the arranger, who was Irwin Kostal.

After On the Waterfront, Lenny didn't want to have anything to do with Hollywood producers. Plus, back then he was in full force as Music Director of the NYPhil, so it's likely he wasn't available to do it.

Absolutely. It's curious to note that for the Film Concert Live presentation of the 1961 film version, the score was actually reconstructed and rearranged (under the supervision of Leonard Bernstein's Estate) to be closer to the original Broadway score. Lenny never liked the beefed up orchestrations of the film version, so I guess JW or whoever will work on the new film will stay as close as possibile to Bernstein's original score.

Daddy-O seems to be influenced more by the jazzy sound of "the other Bernstein" (Elmer). I'm sure JW always had Lenny in high esteem. I mean, he was a towering figure since the early 1950s for any musician.
 
I always found some Lenny-inspired moments in JW's early concert piece "Prelude and Fugue", btw.

Yes.
 
Lenny's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs always seemed to me as a starting point for Williams' Prelude and Fugue.

I'm quite sure JW will be involved as music supervisor/arranger. I cannot think of anyone else more qualified than JW for such a job and he would also have all the support and aid from Bernstein's estate given his track record.
 
Kushner said in an interview that the libretto and the score will not be modified, so it's likely gonna be a work of adapting it to the new requirements, most likely staying as close as possible to Bernstein's original score. What JW could add would likely be short connective tissue material (written in the spirit of Bernstein's score) to be used as underscore and perhaps beef up just a notch the original orchestrations, but nothing too invasive. West Side Story is one of the great masterpiece of 20th century American music and there's no need to modify or tamper with it too much.

Again, and please, don't take this personal, because it certainly isn't, let me express what, in my mind, needs to be adressed.
 
The fact that Williams was aware of Bernstein in the early 60's does not make Bernstein aware of Williams at that time. As you very well know, at that point, Williams was starting his composer career in Hollywood. Bernstein wasn't a Hollywood man, even if he was considered and invited to become an actor -- fortunately, he remained a dedicated musician and educator.
Addressing that point on your original post was because, the way I understood it, you were saying Williams worked under Bernstein in the 1961 sessions for West Side Story, which wasn't the case. But Williams was surely much aware of Bernstein ahead of that -- I would be surprised to discover if he hadn't heard before this time Bernstein's two very successful Symphonies and some of his other concert works, as well as his two previous musicals (On the Town and Wonderful Town), and naturally, Bernstein's only film score, On the Waterfront.
 
I wouldn't be surprised that in 70's, Bernstein was somewhat aware of Williams, and surely from the late 70's on, with Williams appointment to the Pops, they were well acquainted. They even did, just the two of them, a whole Tanglewood on Parade concert, during the mid 80's (Williams conducted Barber pieces, Bernstein some Tchaikovsky, if memory serves).
Williams and mostly everyone else seems to hold Bernstein in high esteem (and rightly so, in my opinion), and Williams as expressed that on several occasions. He performed extensively Bernstein's works during his Pops tenure and For New York was one of the pieces commissioned for the Bernstein's 70th anniversary celebrations at Tanglewood - hence the quotations. Nevertheless, I can't agree with you in the way you look at this things. It's a quote in a Williams piece by a tune by another composer -- in the case of Air and Simple Gifts he's only quoting a traditional piece! He didn't go out to try to imitate Bersntein's style. It surely doesn't sound like that to my ears, I'm sorry. Quoting and adapting are different things, I wouldn't call it semantics.
 

Again, and please, don't take this personal, because it certainly isn't, let me express what, in my mind, needs to be adressed.
 
The fact that Williams was aware of Bernstein in the early 60's does not make Bernstein aware of Williams at that time. As you very well know, at that point, Williams was starting his composer career in Hollywood. Bernstein wasn't a Hollywood man, even if he was considered and invited to become an actor -- fortunately, he remained a dedicated musician and educator.
Addressing that point on your original post was because, the way I understood it, you were saying Williams worked under Bernstein in the 1961 sessions for West Side Story, which wasn't the case. But Williams was surely much aware of Bernstein ahead of that -- I would be surprised to discover if he hadn't heard before this time Bernstein's two very successful Symphonies and some of his other concert works, as well as his two previous musicals (On the Town and Wonderful Town), and naturally, Bernstein's only film score, On the Waterfront.
 
I wouldn't be surprised that in 70's, Bernstein was somewhat aware of Williams, and surely from the late 70's on, with Williams appointment to the Pops, they were well acquainted. They even did, just the two of them, a whole Tanglewood on Parade concert, during the mid 80's (Williams conducted Barber pieces, Bernstein some Tchaikovsky, if memory serves).
Williams and mostly everyone else seems to hold Bernstein in high esteem (and rightly so, in my opinion), and Williams as expressed that on several occasions. He performed extensively Bernstein's works during his Pops tenure and For New York was one of the pieces commissioned for the Bernstein's 70th anniversary celebrations at Tanglewood - hence the quotations. Nevertheless, I can't agree with you in the way you look at this things. It's a quote in a Williams piece by a tune by another composer -- in the case of Air and Simple Gifts he's only quoting a traditional piece! He didn't go out to try to imitate Bersntein's style. It surely doesn't sound like that to my ears, I'm sorry. Quoting and adapting are different things, I wouldn't call it semantics.
 

Hello all!
 
You may remember last month I released a new album of John Williams' music:
Well...the Pittsburgh Post Gazette just did an article on my project! Be sure to watch the short "Behind the scenes" video in the article!

Click here to see the article!

The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration Vol. 3
Produced by John Williams
Executive Producer: Steven Spielberg
 
Lights, Camera.... Music!
Producer and Engineer: Shawn Murphy
Executive Producers: Dennis Alves and Kim Noltemy
Associate Producer: Christopher Ruigomez
Coordinating Producer: Amanda Severin

Luckily for everyone, we've already entered into an era where John Williams' music is being considered among some of the most interesting, beautiful and engaging written in the second half of the 20th century. It doesn't matter very much anymore that it's music written originally for films, unless you're a snob or have a personal agenda against any kind of applied music. The intrinsic quality of Williams' music makes it stand very well by itself so that it can be performed, listened to and enjoyed as pure music. This aspect is being understood first from a generation of listeners who happened to discover the sound of the symphony orchestra thanks to Williams' music, but also from a generation of music professionals (musicians, performers, conductors, composers) who truly loves Williams' music and consider it on the same level of the great classical symphonic repertoire. You can now program a concert with a Richard Strauss piece, a Prokofiev suite and then, say, the Suite from Star Wars without feeling that Williams' piece is anything inferior because it's film music. Good music is good music, no matter its origin. So I strongly believe Williams is already on the same level of other great 20th century composers like Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber and a whole lot of others, and his music will be performed and enjoyed for many years to come by a lot of people. The same could be also said of other great composers who wrote mostly (if not exclusively) for film like Korngold, Herrmann, Rozsa, Newman, Waxman and Goldsmith among others.

Yep, it was one of the very first Williams interviews mentioned on the first incarnation of this site
 
It's still available online here:
http://amarillo.com/stories/051899/ent_talks.shtml#.WmKAlEtG2Rs

Thanks, Miguel, that's probably the most definitive answer I've ever had, at JWfan.
It's a shame there's no expansion; I remember the train station music, at the beginning of the film, as rather nice.

The MFM release is a straight re-issue from the LP.
Columbia/Legacy released the score again, adding one track, "Reflections". As I mentioned earlier, the MFM release is said to have a superior sound to that of the Columbia/Legacy.
The Sony Classical release of the Boston Pops recording, features the suite Williams prepared between late 1979 and early 1980 (along with the suite to Jane Eyre and The Cowboys Overture.) The Reivers suite was premiered in May 1980 on Williams' Opening Night with the Pops, his debut as music director (he had conducted earlier that same year, in January, at Carnegie Hall, as appointed Music Director, premiering at the time the Cowboys Overture.) Anyway, the premiere of The Reivers also featured Meredith doing the narration and was televised, but was recorded for commercial release just in 1991, though the actual CD only got out in 1994. The suite does included newly composed material, that one being the horse race sequence.

Same thing as the original LP, missing one track that was added for the Columbia release. 
Still haven't compared, but the MFM release is said to have a better sound than the Columbia release.

Now, that one looks nice... As Bespin said, I might try to find it later on, when it gets to a much lower price.

What about the booklet? Any interesting pictures or newly written notes?