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This briefly bothered me, but the apologetic line I take is

Well, so By your criteria, E.T. has a magical motif, as do the first three Harry Potter films, and the entirety of the Superman March is magical too

I know this one! This is what young people call asserting dominance, right? I've been meaning to pick this album up for a while, because I wasn't sure if Slatkin had done this one in his concerto cycle.

I've just had a cynical thought. I snapped to attention when the news broke that JW was providing a Han theme for Solo, and that greatly increased my enthusiasm for both the OST and the expanded release. This of course came on the heels of the whole ordeal of Rogue One, which coincidentally underwent its own expansion shortly after... I find myself similarly fidgety about waiting for what JW and Natalie Holt are doing here, and I'm going into the show with a markedly higher willingness to open my wallet for the score release — something that was nearly totally absent for Mandalorian. Well, JW's Kenobi theme follows on the heels of Göransson largely doing his own thing for the smash hit that was Mandalorian. If Kenobi does comparably well (lined up against Mandalorian), and if I were in the accounting department at Lucasfilm / Disney, I'd be trying to measure these like A/B tests for the "Williams premium" in the lineage of a score. I.E. I'd want to send a pitch deck up the chain saying, "All else equal, when JW pens the theme, sales go up X%." If this gets us more Williams Star Wars themes (that he doesn't mind doing), I'm all for it, but I wonder what it means for the future of this body of music.

Variety reports: Hisaishi's original score will be re-orchestrated by Will Stuart and performed live. I find this fascinating because I admit I hadn't paid attention to the Royal Shakespeare Company before now, and I'm surprised to see them taking on a project like this. I'm extremely curious what becomes of the music. The original score was a cornerstone of my childhood, but ultimately it was a score written for a children's movie. (Oddly enough, I find Ponyo to be a better listen than Totoro.) The main theme continues to be a calling-card for Hisaishi in his orchestral concerts. You can hear a representative recording of the standard concert arrangement, made with the LSO, on YouTube Music or on Spotify.

My sarcasm / satire detectors are still utterly blinkered from the Obi-"Benny"-Wan thread... Is there not a remote possibility (in addition to the licensing angle) that JW is being brought on as a music consultant? Years ago I would have even suggested a guest conductor, but I doubt he'd fly to Japan just for that...

My sarcasm and satire sensors have been so saturated by this thread that I'm not going to believe my eyes when DisneyMusicVEVO puts out "Breakfast at Benny's ft. the Hollywood Studio Marimba Nonet & LA Bagpipe Choir." I'm just going to fall out of my chair and die.

You know that thing that Hans Zimmer does where he assembles all the trombone players of a small nation-state in the Budokan and has them play deep unisons? This is the generalized form.

Interesting. The personnel page of my TLJ booklet (hastily captured with a phone camera) shows the AFM logo atop the mark of SAG-AFTRA, but I really don't recall seeing "Hollywood Studio Symphony" in there. I wonder if this was decided on a per-score basis prior.

I am unsure of what to make of that — that page is tagged with a "few-to-no citations" warning, and the HSS's admittedly sparse homepage makes no mention of the SW sequels (though Star Trek is there). In particular I remember Into Darkness bearing the ensemble name in the booklet (and that's what I wrote into my tags), but I don't recall any such credit for the sequel trilogy liner notes. This release from PR Newswire about the TFA score avoids mentioning any ensemble name and the TFA end credits don't give anything away. (Even JKMS gets a shout-out there.)

Somewhere along the line (probably random brain fart from Star Wars overdose) I got it into my head that the LSO was solely responsible for HP1. Many years later, I re-examined the album notes and was dismayed to find that I was wrong. To this day, I have a habit of insisting on crediting an ensemble in the "artist" field (in addition to JW) even if there's none explicitly named (think "Hollywood Studio Symphony"). I'll make up stupid names if I have to. For my tagging of the LLL expansion, HP1 was performed by Kierkegaard's Masons and HP3 by the Bentham Reformists.

I apologize for the gaffe, I'm not up to date on my reading This is why I'm still extremely partial to the build-up and climax of PS culminating in The Face of Voldemort. It reads (and sounds) like a standard DnD campaign, but surprisingly the big bad demands a talk-heavy climax with brooding (rather than agitated) scoring. Which score / track are you referring to? I'm not seeing it in your post.

This is often a positive for me but I'm not as sure in this case. Things like the "flying" theme (Hedwig B?) being used in Cakes for Crabbe and Goyle are fun to listen to, but feel a bit thematically off. To be fair — I have been largely uncritical of the uncontrolled expansion of scope for Star Wars motifs, so I have no strong basis for objection here I've finished the box and looped around for another pass at CoS. I think I will come to like it, but it may take some time and a lot more listening. IMO Dueling the Basilisk was always going to be difficult. Contrast the task against the talk-heavy scene of Harry's confrontation with Quirrell or the one-two punch macabre action scenes of vs. Lupin followed by vs. Dementors.

I've finally gotten around to listening to my box and I'm loving it. CoS is not my favorite of the three scores. William Ross's comments in the liner notes are enlightening, but the listening experience feels a bit like meager pickings after the feast of PS. The one knockout theme here (for me) is the Flying Car motif, which I'm still hung up on. Then again, I have to wonder how much of this opinion is biased by the general tone of the films (and the orchestration that follows). I am ashamed never to have noticed that the "Hogwarts Forever" rising motif is used as a sort of response to the two statements of the Quidditch fanfare. I was humming it to myself just now before I realized that it was a familiar idea in plain sight. Still working on PoA, starting (out of album order) from the additional and the source music.

If Lucasfilm ran a foie gras farm, I'd be their first dish. It's a vice, I know. Part of me hopes that if I watch long enough, I'll see interesting musical connections (a JW heir, an unexpected callback that I really enjoy, etc.). I've been pleasantly surprised by the two non-JW-penned cameos of "March of the Resistance," and it's fun — albeit extremely time-inefficient — to look for more.