karelm

Lovely interview. I also really enjoyed the music from Flaberman's they played. Very enjoyable. Good luck at tomorrow's Oscars, Maestro!

Looking forward to it. I remember that when it premiered. At the time ANYTHING that said Star Wars was gold and even at 5 or 6 was like what the hell is this shit?

I don't think so. I attended classical concerts prior to this with the SF Symphony where they played Sergei Eisenstein's (1898-1948) films Ivan the Terrible and Battleship Potemkin with music by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. They were projecting Soviet era propaganda films from the 1930's and 1940's Soviet films, but the accompanying score was live with a large symphony orchestra. I'm certain even that wasn't the first time. JW doesn't conduct from the orchestral scores. He uses his 8 stave sketches which as you point out have the tempo but even then, prefers punches and streamers as much as possible. Basically, as close as you can get to free time but also making the necessary hits. I don't think anyone does that now other than JW. Tempo in film scores can go from 101.3 to 102.9 a few bars later to 98.72 a few bars later to nail a hit. Too hard for any person to notice. Getting rid of tempi like this and just making sure you land at the right spot lets the musicians speak and feel the music more. But if you stripe a score which is much more common now, you need each separated recording session to fully align.

The original story had a different ending. Donner's version, Superman went back in time to when they were trapped again in their floating prison thing. Donner got fired and Lester came in and made a very different movie.

Oh I wish others had heard the absolutely fantastic Basil Poledouris tribute concert last year. Special guests included his family (Zoe Poledouris Roche, Alexis Poledouris, Bobbie Poledouris, Angel Roché Jr.), screenwriter/director John Milius, agent: Richard Kraft, Doreen Ringer Ross, Music historian: Jon Burlingame, Robert Kraft, Composers/collaborators: John Debney, John Frizzell, John Ottman, Todd Haberman, Lolita Ritmanis, Curtis Roush, Tom Villano, Dan Carlin, Charles Bernstein. Plus special appearances from Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Weller, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. The orchestra played for three hours all his greatest hits. Klendathu Drop, Conan suite, RoboCop, everything.

Didn't he reuse the famous skeleton fight from a concert piece?

Chris Bacon is a solid composer. I met him at James Newton Howard's studio in 2006 and remember his friendliness and talent. He mentioned to my class his involvement in Peter Jackson's King Kong. I think he is talented and I was impressed with him and his music. I am excited to hear what he does with 65.

No, I was bass trombonist in the orchestra. The concert was a medley of popular opera sequences. I was the composer in residence and said you really need Puccini because many people heard opera through the "Three Tenors" concerts in the 1990's that includes Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti but introduced opera to many audiences. It was so full of Puccini and included one of the greatest signature arias "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's opera Turandot. The problem was there were so many fantastic arias from Puccini, how can we pick one? So I made a medley/arrangement of seven or so of his great operas in a 10 minute sequence to cover those very popular lyric operas.

I actually arranged a suite of Puccini themes...and played in this premier performance! 1015199182_PucciniArrElmahmoudi-ScenesdOp(1).wav I thought it was impressive but not clear on the contest, so the voice over and visuals are provided, and all the underscore is yours? Good matching of tempo to the visuals but thought some instruments sounded unnaturally forward in the mix (piano).

I think decades ago he started only doing projects he wanted to do. Being the recurring composer of Spielberg and Lucas during their blockbuster era affords you flexibility to be more selective on projects. His saying: “I might have meant that at the moment,” he says with a smile, “but you never want to say no unequivocally. If Steven or another director should come along with something that is so moving that you want to drop the phone and rush to the piano and have it all come out — should that happen, with the appropriate energy needed to do it, I wouldn’t rule out a situation like that.” is pretty much how he's been for decades. I'm sure it exists and much else we've probably never heard of. Stuff like aborted projects that are extant plus I've heard from other musicians that he has quite a bit on his task list that aren't mentioned in the Variety article. One can assume that's always been the case, that he has much more material. For example, his early jazz stuff, I'd assume there is alot he composed that wasn't recorded and those are all to be part of the Juilliard collection. I'd assume the other hundreds of five note "hello" motifs from CEOTTK too.

My "March of the Villains". 552730815_KEVilliany.mp3

He also said he was open to future film scoring. So come on Spielberg! Make two and three films at the same time just like you did in the '90's.

This was awesome! Crazy to think they were all in their mid 60's when this was done. They seem so youthful. It's rare to get the original trio together.

My bad.

I really enjoyed this charming interview with Bill Shatner just before the premiere of The Motion Picture.

Ok, you're right and Don who's played this a thousand times is wrong.

Have you ever looked up the definition of Hubris?

Don Williams literally said, though reluctantly, that he thought Star Wars was overly using timpani and said he mentioned it to JW and his feedback impacted the timpani part in subsequent recordings. The original version is more excessive than later versions. At 1:04, that particular descending sequence is only in ANH. After that, they are repeated notes....more practical. Don has performed this thousands of times and in sessions, would use 12 chromatic timpani but in concerts, might have four and has to tune that descending scale on a single drum. He said it could be done but was problematic - the drum takes a moment to settle and written like this, doesn't allow for that settling time meaning it's usually out of tune.

This is like picking the ugly Helmsworth. Yes, yes, one is better than the other, but all are incredibly impressive. ANH and ESB are some of tbe greatest scores in film history. Even if one is greater than the other, the other is still incredible. It's like picking the greatest Olympic swimmer. The difference between first place and last place is like .9 seconds. All are freaking amazing!

So, should Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique be played with ophicleides instead of tubas that are used these days? Should Handel's Messiah be played without women in the choir? Should Bach's passions be played without dynamics? It's important to understand conventions and limitations of the time but also do what the composer meant, not necessarily what they said. To me, period performances are just an interpretative device. Another point of view, not necessarily the better one.

How do I find this show? Star Trek used to be on Disney channel but now ca't find any of those shows. That's how I watched all of SNW. Did Disney remove it?

He's so full of charm and modesty. A real gem of a human being. It also looked like he was having some fun being a session player for a change. I bet he felt like 26 year old again.

Well she is 88. Our Johnny aside, almost anyone at her age has retired long before. From my late elderly neighbor who died in his mid 90's, he said each year at his age is like 10 years of aging. Respect that she lasted as long as she did. JW is superhuman so a different category altogether.

I liked it for other reasons. It is clearly a rip off of alien but in an HP Lovecraft setting of cosmic doom. Good film. You are asking for my review? It's a good film, very good story, good performances from the leads, engaging. I loved how the story slowly developed. It felt organic and clearly the cast cared about this film, and it shows. After seeing it, I saw an interview with Jennifer Grey where she said it was very, very low budget and they were all unsure it would work but regardless, it was her first starring role (not as supporting role) and clearly, she and Swayze gave it everything they could. I was engaged and found it nostalgic and well-cast, directed, and written. A good film I enjoyed but probably wouldn't have liked in 1987 when it came out feeling it was too shallow back then. Sort of like how Footloose, Rocky, The Karate Kid are all very solid scripts, well cast, well written, finely directed, very good films but in there time, I might have felt a bit shallow.

Dirty Dancing (1987)