Incanus

Any hope of seeing this book in print in the near future Doug?  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

I just came back from the 1st concert and it was as excellent as I expected it to be. The orchestra was in great form and performed with enthusiasm and energy. And indeed as with any Williams concert, the whole orchestra (and especially the brass section) get a proper workout and it is always a delight to see the intricacies of Williams' orchestrations when watching the orchestra live. What a terrific night!  

Or such dose will give any brass player a Type 1 lip-paralysis.

Oh wow, such dose will give any fan a Type 1 Johnny-babytis.
 
Karol

New episode coming soon...
 
 

I'm not sure but last time it was the 90-piece choir of Vaskivuori high school. Probably them and they were good. 😎

This is fantastic news!  
 
I have never heard of any orchestra performing those. Such a shame I can't make it to the last concert.
 
I am certainly attending the first two concerts but alas I can't make it to the last one as I am away from Helsinki that weekend. If only I had heard about this festival sooner I might have changed my plans.
 
I was at the previous John Williams concert this orchestra gave in 2021 and it was fantastic. Seven Years in Tibet was one of the highlights then but the whole concert programme and performances were excellent (some of the pieces are repeated in these concerts as well).  
 
Looking forward to hearing you play Pasi!  

This is fantastic news!  
 
I have never heard of any orchestra performing those. Such a shame I can't make it to the last concert.
 
I am certainly attending the first two concerts but alas I can't make it to the last one as I am away from Helsinki that weekend. If only I had heard about this festival sooner I might have changed my plans.
 
I was at the previous John Williams concert this orchestra gave in 2021 and it was fantastic. Seven Years in Tibet was one of the highlights then but the whole concert programme and performances were excellent (some of the pieces are repeated in these concerts as well).  
 
Looking forward to hearing you play Pasi!  

I'm in no way affiliated with this event or the organizations responsible for arranging it, but still wanted to share this information! The Vantaa Orchestra is having a three concert festival starting this weekend at the Helsinki Music Centre (Musiikkitalo). As of now tickets are still available (got mine today)..!!

The orchestra and the concert hall are really good, even by international standards and hey have performed multiple John Williams themed concerts in the past years. This is the first multi concert festival consisting of three consecutive concerts for the next three weeks. Highly recommended!

Here is the schedule and concert program(s) for the upcoming concerts:

World of Adventures, March 18th, at 7PM
 
Superman March
Goodbye Mr. Chips
Fiddler On The Roof
Jaws: The Shark Theme
Hook: Flight to Neverland
The Terminal: The Tale of Viktor Navorski
The Adventures of Tintin – The Duel
ET – Adventures on Earth

Intermission

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Adventures of Mutt
The Crystal Spell
Sabrina
Cowboys Overture
Marion’s Theme
End Titles Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
 
Wondrous Worlds, March 25th, at 7PM
 
Olympic Fanfare and Theme
Jurassic Park
Witches of Eastwick – The Devil’s Dance
7 Years in Tibet
Hedwig’s Theme
 
Intermission
 
Sorcerer’s Stone – Nimbus 2000- Fluffy and his harp
Escapades – Closing In (Catch Me if You Can)
Sugarland Express
Memoirs of a Geisha – The Chairman’s Waltz and Sayuri’s theme
BFG – A Child’s Tale
Harry’s Wondrous World

The Force, April 1st, at 7PM
 
Dartmoor 1912 / War Horse
March from 1941
Swing Swing Swing from 1941
Schindler’s List: Main theme, Immolation, Stolen Memories
Hymn to the Fallen
Dry Your Tears, Afrika – Amistad
Home Alone: Somewhere in my memory
Suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Intermission

Music from Star Wars Force awakens:
I. March of Resistance
II. Rey’s Theme
III. Scherzo for X-Wing
IV. The Jedi Steps and Finale

Selection of Music from the Star Wars Saga:
I. Across the Stars
II. The Asteroid Field
III. Parade of the Ewoks
IV. Cantina Band
V. Here They Come
VI. Luke and Leia
VII. The Forest Battle
VIII. Princess Leia
IX. Battle of the Heroes
X. Duel of the Fates

Yes, the third concert is with the choir.
 
And I told the orchestra manager that there is a mistake, he is not that young!
 

I am performing in these concerts😎
 
Unfortunately there are few changes in the program, for some reason The Asteroid Field and The Forest Battle were left out of that third concert. Never played those, so sad!😭😍
 
Wonderful program in any case.
 

I haven't watched this, but this is supposed to be the whole movie with Yared's score! 

 

Oh, I still have the Blue Box sitting proudly on my shelf. But for the first score, I listen exclusively to this LLL release.
 
If you're happy with the Blue Box's sound, I suppose you might as well stick with it. For me, I was simultaneously grateful for the big improvement and disappointed that it still sounded "off." Then the LLL release came along and made the first generation elements absolutely shine. I think it's the gold standard for how a late 70s JW/LSO score can sound. If Star Wars sounded like this, I'd weep with joy.

Happy Birthday Maestro Williams! 

6 of the OST's 14 tracks are here in identical form under the same names. The other 8 OST tracks were either edited down or contained music from two different parts of the movie crossfaded together. The contents of all those tracks are all here, but now in their unedited form in chronological placement. 
 
 
I noticed too late to do an thing about it

Detailed track by track (chronological) liner notes have been around for decades and decades, though it was the FSM label that made that the popular standard while they were in operation from 1996-2013. How do you arrive at “small period of time”, Jay?
 
Personally, I sympathize with filmmusic; I miss those days. FSM was really the gold standard for me in terms of liner notes, and I bought many of their albums for the notes alone. I only lack a couple dozen out of their 250 releases because of the level of film music scholarship and analysis they provided.
 
Yavar

Loved the score in the film - I thought it had great presence. The orchestral colours shine through magnificently. From the opening credits to the final despair, wonderful Shoreian bleakness.
 
As Doug Adams has suggested the film uses some of the rejected King Kong score, I wonder if this piece was the love theme for the Jackson epic. It would not sound out of place (and most of the other material is familiar - but still suitably dissimilar - from Silence of the Lambs, Smaug, The Score - however, I cannot place this theme elsewhere in Shore's catalogue):
 

Next in my series is another JW masterpiece, based on LLL's wonderful new expansion, which revealed lots of previously unknown unused tracks, alternates, and filled in major gaps in the soundtrack album as well as restoring the proper order of cues revealing a structure of a wide range of seemingly disconnected musical elements converging and coming together satisfyingly, mirroring the movie's theme of distant cultures growing to understand each other. As usual I will explain the cues' film usage where it's fitting.
 
The spotting is certainly not wall to wall, though since I didn't restore even the source music found on the LLL set, let alone all the "needledrop" recordings used in the film, it's a  tiny bit misleading if we'd want to look at purely music, not score:

The state court scenes are mostly left unscored, but nearly all of the final 40 minutes are scored all the way through.
 
Starting with this project, I'm doing something some previous ones like Presumed Innocent could've benefited from: burning subtitles into the video to help with cues for dialogue-heavy scenes where the sync points aren't necessarily for shot changes or physical actions but for a specific line that changes the tone or topic, of which there are several in this movie.
 
Syncing up cues helped me appreciate many cues in a new light or a deeper way - like Discovering the Bible, really seeing how the initially 2 disparate textures start melding and come together by the end; or Adams' Address to the Court, where I was initially confused by the usage of obvious synth voices in this fantastically varied choir-heavy score - the first one scores Isabella's complaint letters about American courts, probably illustrating her "unnatural" views of courts as mechanical toys to play with, to do as she says, instead of idealistic independent entities, the second, darker one scoring Adams reading aloud the article about how slavery is the natural order of things, hopefully no need here to describe why the usage of "unnatural" synth voices instead of a real choir could be appropriate.
 
Thanks to @Jay for helping with the selection and answering some background information questions!
 
 

Introduction is actually a wild vocal take the music people used here, but I included it because why not.
Retribution is fully unused, and to be honest I can see why, even if it's a great piece. If synced up to the final film footage (the opening may have been extended), the percussion and flute scores Cinque's struggle as it's starting to bear fruit, the male choir scores him lifting the nail, the choral Cinque's theme scores his newfound chance, and things start to escalate as he frees himself. The rhythm kicks up as the captain picks up his musket and Cinque approaches him, then it fades out when the new captain removes his Excalibur from the old captain's body like he removed the nail. I removed the second wild humming take that's included in the film and LLL since it would overlap with the next cue,
July 4, 1839, which is mostly unused. The dark soundscape scoring the uncertainty (unused) temporarily clears up as the helmsman states he'll head for Africa. JW's emotional shot-specific scoring for the night scene was replaced by a choral take of Cinque's theme, dropping the twinkles for the stars, its descending variant scoring the turn, and the Seven Years in Tibet/RotS strings with added choir scoring Cinque desperately taking over and correcting the course himself.
Steering East is again unused, and in my opinion should be here where the title doesn't describe it very well, for the scene of the new crew landing on what they think are African shores, gathering water and coming across a man on a proto-bicycle. (For an alternate sync idea that might actually work better, see this post.)
The Capture is mostly used, only a small portion was edited out when the ship lands (the film was edited down a bit at this point too), and the ending was replaced with one of the wild solo humming takes, removing the only musical representation of the Queen of Spain coming from JW, since the rest of her scenes contain source music at most.
 
 

Introducing John Quincy Adams is used as is.
Meeting of the Minds is a strange case - it's more like semi-wild mood music than specific scoring adhering to sync points, and it runs longer than the scene, where it's only partially used.
Counsel Meets Client, The Ship Remembers, Visiting Adams and What Is Their Story? again are used as is, but Learning To Count is the same case as Meeting of the Minds - not really specific and runs a lot longer than its scene.
 
 

Tale of the Lion's Tooth is used as is.
The Capture of Cinque and The Crossing are complicated - for this video I had to shorten the storm/birthing scene and entirely remove the feeding scene between the suicide/lashing and the mass drowning scenes. In the film, parts of Capture of Cinque are looped over these and other parts of the same track, and even mostly in place of or over The Crossing - only the opening minute and the Spanish guitar part remains from it, edited, then the ending's replaced by solo humming again.
Tales of Horror remains untouched except for a percussion overlay coming from The Ship Remembers (if you don't count that the original take's ending was replaced by the second revision, replicated here instead of sticking with the LLL edit), same with Discovering the Bible.
 
 

After a long unscored section, including the victory on state level, The Letter to Massachusetts and Cinque's Legal Mind are used as is.
The footage for African Violet had to be edited very slightly.
Adams' Address to the Court and Adams' Summation are used as is.
The Verdict is edited slightly in the film.
Liberation of Lomboko is used as is, Going Home starts with the choir only mix, the soloist only comes in starting with the Civil War shots. The film starts the credits with a third solo humming take, then used Dry Your Tears, Afrika as is on the LLL, with more obvious Lomboko tracking edit points and the ending cut short - if we use only it and The Long Road to Justice like I did here, they fit the credits' length well.
 
 

The Capture (alternate) is basically a different mix of the main program version.
The Ship Remembers (alternate) is a slightly different take with different percussion overlay usage.
What Is Their Story (alternate) is the original take, featuring another Adams rendition in place of the revision's DYTA.
The Crossing (alternate) was written for an even shorter cut, I couldn't really come up with a good way to edit it down.
Tales of Horror had an original take with Cinque's theme scoring his outburst, more as a low moment where he can't hold in his despair any longer - I had to shorten this footage for this original ending. The first revision doubles down on this idea and utilises the longer edit to add in another statement that helps the theme climax, still scoring Cinque's despair. The second revision, ultimately used in the film, takes the first revision's structure but pulls Dry Your Tears, Afrika onto it, making it a moment of uplifting triumph, where Cinque stands up for himself and demands the justice he'll ultimately receive. The third revision keeps the DYTA idea, but tones it down significantly, more as a quiet release than a triumphant climax.
Discovering the Bible (alternate) is a different original approach - while the revised film version starts with representing the Africans with percussion, the Bible discussion with harp and Cinque on flute, and the church scenes with semi-religioso strings and brass, and eventually starts melding them, moving Cinque to different instruments and stops changing styles with the latter back and forth cuts, this version represents the Africans with sad strings (probably coming off of one of the Cinque versions of Tales of Horror), the Bible scenes, while still prominent in harp, are also scored with strings and multiple kinds of woodwinds while the church is mostly brass-based - they still meld but the cutting back and forth is not so obvious. I had to extend the ending a bit so Cinque's theme entering would sync up with the cut back to the jail.
Cinque's Memories of Home, a revision of Cinque's Legal Mind, sets the "communication" theme on cello, solo vocal humming and percussion - IMO moving the material a bit too far to the east from the US, possibly why it wasn't used.
Going Home (alternate) is the choir take without the solo vocal, as it is partially  used in the film.
And finally, an idea by @BrotherSound: Cinque's Theme (solo flute) is also 2:06 long, like Going Home, why not try to see if it fits. In my opinion, it kind of does, many of the percussion hits and phrase borders match with shot changes.

Listened to it tonight, finally; for me, this is one of those "I knew I liked this score, but I didn't know I liked it THIS much" type releases.  In other words, it's an expanded John Williams score.  Glad to add it to the collection, glad I'll get to revisit it many more times over the years.  Looking forward to the next one!

Well I finally received my copy and have given it a couple of spins. This new magnificent release sort of opens up the score in a completely different way compared to the OST or even to how the music is heard in the film. Every aspect of the score receives a more extensive and satisfying arc on this release. You can now hear clearly the different thematic threads from start to finish the way Williams conceived them, which is usually the highlight of many of Williams' expanded scores, the strong arc of the musical storytelling. Cinque's theme is now clearly shown to be the central theme of the work through numerous new variations from the beginning of the score to the final notes but various other musical ideas are now much clearer in the overall musical story.
 
The unreleased and unused music is a revelation and further increases my already considerable appreciation of this music and especially Williams' skills at adapting like a chameleon to these different musical worlds in various films he has scored with such seeming ease.  There are too many highlights to mention here, from the African vocal and percussion work to the intimate moments for solo instruments and vocalists. Just fantastic and the album flows wonderfully from start to finish.
 
And then there are those nearly 50 minutes of alternates and extra music on disc 2. I never expected that this score would have so many alternates but they do in addition to being more great music give those wonderful behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the film scoring process works and the different compositions evolve (a special thank you to Mike and Jay for providing nice, concise and clear write-up on what these pieces are and how they differ from the finished film versions).
 
The excellent liner notes by Jeff Bond (and Mike and Jay) and the great art direction by Jim Titus round out the whole package, which is fantastic! As a Williams fan one could not wish for a better Christmas gift.