elster

Easy one for me: "The Seduction of Sukie" from THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, closely followed by "The Face of Pan" from HOOK. I also like "The Cat" from THE TOWERING INFERNO - that cue has an interesting, quirky solo flute part, which suddenly becomes lyrical in the second half, under some interesting piano arpeggios.

I jsut picked this up from the Varese mailorder club. I always thought this was mostly electronic - quite surprised at how much *great* orchestral music is in here. Any ones who likes the JW style from the 1970s/1980s should run and pick this up. I hear suggestions of HOME ALONE, SUPERMAN, STAR WARS, A.I., etc. It also has the Prokofievian influences I like in his other scores like JAWS 2. The movie certainly didn't wow most people, I picked up the DVD and found it an interesting curiosity - but the music is truly awesome. There are some choral cues which remind me of SUPERMAN where young Clark Kent throws the crystal and creates the Fortress of Solitude.

Herrmann's score to BENEATH THE 12 MILE REEF has nine separate harp parts. The full score to the Prelude is quite amazing, the harp parts are on a different sheet from the reset of the orchestra. I guess otherwise the page would be over 3 feet tall....

I didn't interview Basil, it was just a phone call. I also spoke with his wife too. She told me stories about how the score cues were littered all over their hotel room floor in Rome. The two pages are in Scott Smalley's orchestration class book. It doesn't cover many bars, but it gets beyond the point where the melody begins.

I spoke with Basil about ten years at length about his CONAN score; he told me that they recorded the horns on a separate track and overdubbed them multiple times, hence you get 24. So in the recording you are hearing 24 horns simultaneously, but only 8 were recorded at a time. In the full score, there are 6 horn parts notated for the theme,along with 3 trombones and 1 bass trombone.