TownerFan

Looking forward to hearing this!

Wow! You're certainly pulling in some impressive talent for your website @TownerFan. Awesome work! 
 
Cannot wait to listen to this, I loved Kraemer's score for MI. 
 

The trumpet main theme as heard in the end credits (opening track on the album) has certainly some of those Southern Italian-esque traits in common with the famous "Godfather Waltz", so perhaps that was a suggestion from the temp track. The similarities however pretty much end there. The score doesn't sound anything like The Godfather.
 
(I'd love to know what Nino Rota thought of John Williams, though. He was very knowledgeable on Hollywood film composers, Alfred Newman was his favourite).

Here's the new installment of the "Legacy Conversations" series: the new episode features an engaging and wide-ranging interview with film composer Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot), who talks about being inspired by the music of John Williams since childhood and how it led him to a career as a film composer in Hollywood:
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/06/10/joe-kraemer-podcast/

This is the kind of discussion I wished to stimulate. I reckon you're working in the film music industry, so I'm interested in hearing different perspectives.
 
Personally, I don't think Conrad sounded all that pessimistic and negative. He's certainly a man devoted to a craft and to a method largely disappearing, so he might feel nostalgic about certain things. But I was particularly struck when he questioned the current status quo of film music and asked "are we taking enough about what we learned from the past?". I think this is a very intersting subject to discuss, as JW is certainly one of the last of a dying breed of musicians and one of the last to express a certain kind of musicianship. This isn't to say that after he will be gone, everything will be lost and nobody will be at that level. I think JW himself is the first to be very curious about what the future holds.
 
That's certainly one of the main reasons why I started this project to celebrate and study the legacy of JW, to keep that tradition aflame and let musicians talk about precisely these things.

Here's the new installment of the "Legacy Conversations" series: the new episode features an engaging and wide-ranging interview with film composer Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot), who talks about being inspired by the music of John Williams since childhood and how it led him to a career as a film composer in Hollywood:
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/06/10/joe-kraemer-podcast/

Sky's the limit
 
To be honest, while it'd be a dream to talk with Spielberg of course, at this moment I'm more focused in talking with musicians, composers and conductors, including people who worked/collaborated with him, but also people who have been inspired to go for a career in music and/or film through his music. I think right now it's more important to pursue this "mission" about celebrating JW's legacy.

Here's the new installment of the "Legacy Conversations" series: the new episode features an engaging and wide-ranging interview with film composer Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot), who talks about being inspired by the music of John Williams since childhood and how it led him to a career as a film composer in Hollywood:
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/06/10/joe-kraemer-podcast/

Sky's the limit
 
To be honest, while it'd be a dream to talk with Spielberg of course, at this moment I'm more focused in talking with musicians, composers and conductors, including people who worked/collaborated with him, but also people who have been inspired to go for a career in music and/or film through his music. I think right now it's more important to pursue this "mission" about celebrating JW's legacy.

Here's the new installment of the "Legacy Conversations" series: the new episode features an engaging and wide-ranging interview with film composer Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot), who talks about being inspired by the music of John Williams since childhood and how it led him to a career as a film composer in Hollywood:
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/06/10/joe-kraemer-podcast/

Here's the new installment of the "Legacy Conversations" series: the new episode features an engaging and wide-ranging interview with film composer Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot), who talks about being inspired by the music of John Williams since childhood and how it led him to a career as a film composer in Hollywood:
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2019/06/10/joe-kraemer-podcast/

The trumpet main theme as heard in the end credits (opening track on the album) has certainly some of those Southern Italian-esque traits in common with the famous "Godfather Waltz", so perhaps that was a suggestion from the temp track. The similarities however pretty much end there. The score doesn't sound anything like The Godfather.
 
(I'd love to know what Nino Rota thought of John Williams, though. He was very knowledgeable on Hollywood film composers, Alfred Newman was his favourite).

Sorry, it is not a hint by any means. I don’t have any insider info. It’s just a rational hope based on common sense.

I too always found it overtly bombastic, especially the first half. The piece gets a lot better when the secondary thematic idea (the “Et in terra pax ominibus” section) kicks in, with some wonderful contrapuntal writing later on. Overall, it’s a quite heavy handed composition, though.

Until the day we’ll hear to Williams’ demo cues, we can only speculate. I don’t have issues believing things went exactly as JP said and that he got input and perhaps even inspiration from what JW did. It’s surely an unusual collaboration, but considering how good the final result is, I think it was a smart choice from everyone else involved.
 
Sandy Courage wrote the whole score, using Williams’ three newly-penned themes and also reusing and adapting themes and cues from the 1978 score. It was a job mostly of adaptation, but a very creative one, something that could be done only by a serious real music man like Courage. Yes, it’s an unusual collaboration for JW’s usual modus operandi, but it’s the kind of mutual effort that people like him and Courage were used to see during their time at Fox and MGM.

Until the day we’ll hear to Williams’ demo cues, we can only speculate. I don’t have issues believing things went exactly as JP said and that he got input and perhaps even inspiration from what JW did. It’s surely an unusual collaboration, but considering how good the final result is, I think it was a smart choice from everyone else involved.
 
Sandy Courage wrote the whole score, using Williams’ three newly-penned themes and also reusing and adapting themes and cues from the 1978 score. It was a job mostly of adaptation, but a very creative one, something that could be done only by a serious real music man like Courage. Yes, it’s an unusual collaboration for JW’s usual modus operandi, but it’s the kind of mutual effort that people like him and Courage were used to see during their time at Fox and MGM.

It was Powell himself who told about this. The process was that Williams saw the film with Ron Howard and Powell, they spotted the movie together, then JW wrote the themes and worked on six cues that were sort of “demos” or temp tracks for JP to refer to. Here’s one of the interview where he speaks about this (around the 9:00 minute mark):
 
https://youtu.be/VvHXxGw4KwU
 
Powell says also he incorporated some of those cues into his own, but we don’t know what they are.

Sky's the limit
 
To be honest, while it'd be a dream to talk with Spielberg of course, at this moment I'm more focused in talking with musicians, composers and conductors, including people who worked/collaborated with him, but also people who have been inspired to go for a career in music and/or film through his music. I think right now it's more important to pursue this "mission" about celebrating JW's legacy.

Sky's the limit
 
To be honest, while it'd be a dream to talk with Spielberg of course, at this moment I'm more focused in talking with musicians, composers and conductors, including people who worked/collaborated with him, but also people who have been inspired to go for a career in music and/or film through his music. I think right now it's more important to pursue this "mission" about celebrating JW's legacy.

There's no such thing. I guess that comment generated from the talk with Rodney Newton last October in London during Mike's symposium at NBC Universal. Rodney talked about Williams writing and recording "traveling music" for Monsignor that wasnt used in the film. I think he likely was referring to the "Meeting in Sicily" piece, which is a concert arrangement of the "traveling" theme heard during the score.
 
 
It's stated in the press release:
 
 
It's just two brief cues, but we're talking about a quite short score (at least from the perspective of Williams' standards in those years)
 
 
It's 12 years ago (eek!) and it was out-of-print since quite a few years. While all the hard-core Williams' fans probably already have the previous release, I think it's nice to have it back in circulation for people who didn't, but first and foremost I'm particularly glad Mike was able to work with better-resolution tapes this time. It's an archival process of restoration and preservation which is very important to keep going on.

There's no such thing. I guess that comment generated from the talk with Rodney Newton last October in London during Mike's symposium at NBC Universal. Rodney talked about Williams writing and recording "traveling music" for Monsignor that wasnt used in the film. I think he likely was referring to the "Meeting in Sicily" piece, which is a concert arrangement of the "traveling" theme heard during the score.
 
 
It's stated in the press release:
 
 
It's just two brief cues, but we're talking about a quite short score (at least from the perspective of Williams' standards in those years)
 
 
It's 12 years ago (eek!) and it was out-of-print since quite a few years. While all the hard-core Williams' fans probably already have the previous release, I think it's nice to have it back in circulation for people who didn't, but first and foremost I'm particularly glad Mike was able to work with better-resolution tapes this time. It's an archival process of restoration and preservation which is very important to keep going on.

Sky's the limit
 
To be honest, while it'd be a dream to talk with Spielberg of course, at this moment I'm more focused in talking with musicians, composers and conductors, including people who worked/collaborated with him, but also people who have been inspired to go for a career in music and/or film through his music. I think right now it's more important to pursue this "mission" about celebrating JW's legacy.

All those three titles are similar to Monsignor--they all have almost-complete OST albums, with only a small amount of unreleased music (and frankly not substantial) and all three OSTs flow splendidly in terms of musical presentation. However, they all feature different mixes than their filmic counterparts, so it would be nice to have newly expanded releases for all three like this one of Monsignor, mostly because of preservation and restoration from the best-sounding elements available.
 
 
"The Meeting in Sicily" IS basically the Esplanade Overture. Williams reworked the piece furtherly after the recording of Monsignor, extending the opening, the middle development section and the coda. He premiered the piece at the opening concert for the 1983 Pops season. The best hope to have the piece properly recorded is telling some of Williams' friends like Dudamel or Lockhart to convince the Maestro to dust off the piece...

All those three titles are similar to Monsignor--they all have almost-complete OST albums, with only a small amount of unreleased music (and frankly not substantial) and all three OSTs flow splendidly in terms of musical presentation. However, they all feature different mixes than their filmic counterparts, so it would be nice to have newly expanded releases for all three like this one of Monsignor, mostly because of preservation and restoration from the best-sounding elements available.
 
 
"The Meeting in Sicily" IS basically the Esplanade Overture. Williams reworked the piece furtherly after the recording of Monsignor, extending the opening, the middle development section and the coda. He premiered the piece at the opening concert for the 1983 Pops season. The best hope to have the piece properly recorded is telling some of Williams' friends like Dudamel or Lockhart to convince the Maestro to dust off the piece...

There's no such thing. I guess that comment generated from the talk with Rodney Newton last October in London during Mike's symposium at NBC Universal. Rodney talked about Williams writing and recording "traveling music" for Monsignor that wasnt used in the film. I think he likely was referring to the "Meeting in Sicily" piece, which is a concert arrangement of the "traveling" theme heard during the score.
 
 
It's stated in the press release:
 
 
It's just two brief cues, but we're talking about a quite short score (at least from the perspective of Williams' standards in those years)
 
 
It's 12 years ago (eek!) and it was out-of-print since quite a few years. While all the hard-core Williams' fans probably already have the previous release, I think it's nice to have it back in circulation for people who didn't, but first and foremost I'm particularly glad Mike was able to work with better-resolution tapes this time. It's an archival process of restoration and preservation which is very important to keep going on.