12-Mile Reef

The Airport --> Battle of Syracuse --> Centuries Join Hands
 
May be my favorite 3 cues in a row by JW in a long time

@BTR1701
It was more challenging than I anticipated, requiring quite a bit of pixel-shifting...

 
Another I made years back...

I went back over my previous "Crystal Skull"-inspired cover and replaced the official 1-sheet with the new gorgeous poster by Matt Ferguson.
 

 
 
 
Also, @crumbs was so generous to let me borrow his awesome Dial of Destiny cover design to use it for 4 more Indy covers. So, to mark the occasion of a brand-new JW score, here is a completed set:
 

(c) crumbs
 

 

 

 

 
 

New covers for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
 

 

 

 

 

 

Just got back to the hotel after the premier of Dial of Destiny, and the John Williams moment was one I had predicted at breakfast would happen. But that takes nothing away from the moment when the screen rose to reveal the Maestro and the orchestra. Truly an amazing moment even from the back row of the mezzanine section. Hearing Helena's Theme live was truly wonderful. I think Adventures of Mutt was not as amazing as other live performances I heard. Raiders March was fantastic. 
 
The place was hopping after the performance.
 
And I very much enjoyed the film and cannot wait to see it again.
 
On the soundtrack - ordered the LP and CD from Disney although hoping to get the CD sooner from Amazon. Really surprised at the August date for both. I do hope we'll get a digital release on June 30.
 
 

Actually, here's some further interesting info, quickly transcribed from Coppola's commentary track:
 
(the 1 minute at the end probably referring back to the story of Coppola wanting Lutosławski, who answered something along the lines of "young man, do you know how many hours it takes me to write a minute of music?")

Amazing, thank you!

@Steffromuk Nice work, but you may want to check the lower edge, there's something there I can't unsee
 
Thank you John. Makes me wonder if Tom Guernsey, the chap who requested it, has seen it? I haven't got around to Prince Of Players yet but it's in the pipeline

This is stunning as always! I don't suppose you've also made a cover for 'Prince of Players' that's paired with it on the disc?

*revised

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
 

Couldn’t agree more but I think Mike M did a phenomenal job on the original recording considering its age and I listen to and thoroughly enjoy the Kritzerland release regularly. It’s one of my very favourite underwater scores and certainly in my top 10 Herrmann.
 
But to me no composer benefits more from a great sounding re-recording than Herrmann to really revel in the detail of those orchestrations and my top 2 wished for Herrmann re-recordings are ‘Beneath the 12 Mile Reef’ and ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’. But if they never come I’ll always be grateful for the Gerhardt ‘reef’ suite and the Herrmann conducted ‘Journey’ suite on Phase IV and the fact that such a great job has been done by Mike M on both original recordings.

Also couldn't agree more than the original recording sounds pretty great all things considered, but guess there are always limits. However, also agree that Herrmann benefits greatly from re-recordings, you can hear so much more of his unusual orchestral textures - particularly the bass instruments, bassoons and so forth, which are more easily lost in older recordings. Guess that applies equally to 12-Mile Reef as it does to Centre of the Earth. Having said that, my main gripe with the latter are the interpolated songs, which could hopefully be artfully taken out in a new recording (not sure how integrated they in the original written score).

Couldn’t agree more but I think Mike M did a phenomenal job on the original recording considering its age and I listen to and thoroughly enjoy the Kritzerland release regularly. It’s one of my very favourite underwater scores and certainly in my top 10 Herrmann.
 
But to me no composer benefits more from a great sounding re-recording than Herrmann to really revel in the detail of those orchestrations and my top 2 wished for Herrmann re-recordings are ‘Beneath the 12 Mile Reef’ and ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’. But if they never come I’ll always be grateful for the Gerhardt ‘reef’ suite and the Herrmann conducted ‘Journey’ suite on Phase IV and the fact that such a great job has been done by Mike M on both original recordings.

Couldn’t agree more but I think Mike M did a phenomenal job on the original recording considering its age and I listen to and thoroughly enjoy the Kritzerland release regularly. It’s one of my very favourite underwater scores and certainly in my top 10 Herrmann.
 
But to me no composer benefits more from a great sounding re-recording than Herrmann to really revel in the detail of those orchestrations and my top 2 wished for Herrmann re-recordings are ‘Beneath the 12 Mile Reef’ and ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’. But if they never come I’ll always be grateful for the Gerhardt ‘reef’ suite and the Herrmann conducted ‘Journey’ suite on Phase IV and the fact that such a great job has been done by Mike M on both original recordings.

I’m about to post knowing I won’t be able to put all the things I love about Jaws into words but here goes. 
 
I think I saw it for its first theatrical rerelease. I was probably 6 or 7 I guess. I remember I kept asking my mother “is this a true story?”  Yeah, it definitely was real to me. The thought of the shark being fake never ever crossed my mind.  These days, he’s a classic movie monster to me.  Real great whites aren’t as cool looking as Bruce.  
 
I also have fond memories of renting the Super8 ten minute reel from the public library and projecting that on a bedsheet in my room.  Make no mistake, even that little highlight reel would scare the shit out of me.  Although with that tech you could run it in reverse to watch Quint’s death backwards, quite amusing to a pre teen. 
 
The score… well obviously most joes can’t see the forest through the trees composed of two notes.   There is so much complexity and nuance to the complete score. Stuff you definitely don’t even pick up on the wonderful OST presentation. 
 
So many moments. 
 
Small motifs, like the serene “open ocean” motif that closes out the Preparing the Cage fugue on the OST makes two appearances in the score, when Brody looks through the estuary bridge to the open sea, and when Hooper and Brody are attempting to snag the two barrels.   That sustained note almost makes a sort of reprise of the final note in the End Titles as if to suggest the ocean is still and the water is calm once again. 
 
The sea shanties elevate this from terror, beyond adventure, to something impossibly joyous when it shouldn’t be.  And they’re not all “Spanish Ladies”.  There’s the main one based on the Orca theme, a secondary one that really brings the high adventure in Man Against Beast, and a third, which bears similarity to Spanish Ladies when it appears in One Barrel Chase.  But you need the full score to get the delightfully woeful actual singular quote of Spanish Ladies played by flutes against strained high strings suggesting hopelessness as Quint looks at the soaked life vests below deck. (“Quint Thinks it Over”) Absolutely brilliant. 
 
Can we talk about the shark theme?  Isn’t it more than a motif?  That slithering French horn that plays counterpoint to the ostinato is absolutely beautiful and fearsome. It opens up “The Pier Incident” in woodwinds to great effect.  The OST Main Title also has that wonderful series of triplets after the first crescendo of the motif.  You hear these triplets on harp along with the woodwinds playing the slithery counterpoint at the beginning of “The Empty Raft” (Kintner’s attack) and of course the harp triplets start off Chrissie’s Death in both recordings.  When the Shark Theme really crescendos on the OST Main Title, the triplets yield to that awesome motif suggesting the massive size of the shark, also heard in Man Against Beast (or Sea Attack Number One on the OST). This is not a two-note motif!  And yet, strip away the horn counterpoint or the harp triplets and you have “The Shark Approaches”, perhaps one of the most machine like, unstoppable, and yeah even scary statement of the theme in the whole score.  Those celli and double bass just chug that to pieces!
 
The End Titles start with the gentle four note bed with tolling bell. The perfect denouement to bring peace back to the audience.  One masterful allusion to that happens in the full score (“Tug on the Line”) which was dialed out in the film.  Maybe Spielberg felt Williams was telegraphing an eventual happy ending, but musically it’s a wonderful callback, or call forward in this case. 
 
@Belloshmentioned Blown to Bits, which features  the Cage Fugue played as an adrenaline surging shark hunter theme for when the men are getting serious about their work.   I love its appearance in Sea Attack Number One and of course Man Against Beast.   It allllmost is a prototype sound for the military theme from CE3K.   And the proper full treatment of the Fugue in Preparing the Cage … well, I don’t really have words. 
 
My god, how many themes are we up to now?
 
I haven’t even mentioned pieces like Night Search (which is like a mini movie in itself) and the Indianapolis Story.  Two notes!? “Jesus H Christ” as Quint would say. 
 
The writing for harp in Jaws deserves its own “Greatest Thing Ever” thread.  The aforementioned triplets, almost suggestive of rising bubbles before the leviathan breaches and hell breaks loose.  The frantic harp glisses in The Underwater Siege are astonishingly violent. And although JW isn’t the first to orchestrate underwater with harp, he’s the best. Those prickly plucks of confusion just before the shark pulls the estuary victim under his capsized boat make my neck hairs bristle.  
 
AND THEN you have “Father and Son”. Holy God, how can so much be conveyed with so little?  The delicate harp and piano, against the long sustained bass, acting as almost a foghorn of doom that still looms above Brody as he has a tender moment with his kid.  That this cue exists in this kind of film from that era is a miracle. 
 
From delicate to as violent as an orchestra can sound with “Quint Meets His End” (dialed out in the film, but used iirc in some TV Spots.  Jeepers that is orchestral thunder. And those shrieking piccolo stabs, coupled with the relentless two note brass hits, which recall similar brass for Man Against Beast where Quint waits until the last second to fire the harpoon.   Incidentally, I happen to personally enjoy Sea Attack Number One just a hair more than Man Against Beast, which gets a lot more attention (used in live performances to show the scene with and without music). 
 
It’s getting late and I gotta go to bed and I still haven’t even gotten to Out to Sea or The Promenade Montage!!!
 
I guess I’ll stop by saying Jaws never stops surprising me.  I know every note of many scores from his golden era, but Jaws is the one where I continue to find those little moments, that connective tissue that suggests that nobody in the crew took their job more seriously than Williams. 
 
Anyway, he delivered the bomb. 

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/alan-silvestri-interview-it-s-very-intimidating-to-sit-and-try-to-understand-something-about-great-music

This one took me a long time to get to somewhere I like
 
BRAINSTORM
 

I can now share my covers for the new recordiing of Herrmann's scores by Intrada.
I have to say, I wasn't allowed to use any promotional material nor any cast member photo.
 

 

A new take on The Right Stuff.

They Live.
The UK Squad poster art for this movie is probably the best ever produced in my opinion.
I couldn't figure out who's the artist.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/alan-silvestri-interview-it-s-very-intimidating-to-sit-and-try-to-understand-something-about-great-music

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/alan-silvestri-interview-it-s-very-intimidating-to-sit-and-try-to-understand-something-about-great-music

I think there’s much unfair criticism for Laurent B here. Unlike some of his contemporaries when he was commissioned to do the bonus material content for Laserdisc and the early days of DVDs there was always a film music focus. It’s clearly a passion, not just a gig.
 
The original Jaws and 1941 documentaries were feature length and very in depth.
 
LB has also done superb docs on Hitchcock which accompany all Universal Studios films.
 
Yes the soundtrack releases had flaws, but even the great Shawn Murphy made errors with ones he was involved in.