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Official Danny Elfman Thread


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13 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Whether you agree or not, plenty of people think AMERICA is one of Morricone's best. 

I know.

That's why I said " every time someone mentions it".

It shows their lack of knowledge of his much better - much more original-work.

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On 29/06/2021 at 12:38 PM, Omen II said:

The London Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere Danny Elfman's Percussion Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 25th March 2022.  Also included in the programme will be suites from Alice in Wonderland and Batman, as well as excerpts from Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony.  Ludwig Wicki does the conducting while the London Philharmonic Choir does the singing, because the other way round would be silly.

 

Movie Legends

I assume there's no chance that Elfman will attend the premiere?

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1 hour ago, fommes said:

I assume there's no chance that Elfman will attend the premiere?

I don’t see why not, he’s attended a few concerts in London, I should know, I met him and got his autograph outside the Royal Albert Hall! I’m going to this concert so I’m really looking forward to hearing the percussion concertoNs hopefully we’ll get a recording sometime soon too. His concert work has been his most interesting writing of the last few years for my money, his violin concerto is superb

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For those of you who actually own this set, after the dust has settled, are you glad you purchased it? I would love to have this just to have the Big Fish expansion.


I love the idea behind this collection. And it obviously came from a place of deep love for the music and films. Buuut $500 for elaborate packaging? And now almost $1000 on the secondary market.🥺 
 

Is the book pretty cool at least?

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When this set will be reissued in a cheapier format I'll get it for sure.

 

Remastered versions of essential OSTs like Pee Wee, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Nightmare Before Christmas... and yes additional tracks to Big Fish.

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24 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Sorry, I cannot join the praise of the Big Fish score. It is rather boring and misses everything, that makes an Elfman score for me interesting outside the movie.

 

That's OK. More for the rest of us to love! ;)

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1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:

Sorry, I cannot join the praise of the Big Fish score. It is rather boring and misses everything, that makes an Elfman score for me interesting outside the movie.

Shame. 😢

But I could see how there’s a stretch in the middle that wouldn’t be as engaging to listen to.

 

I think it almost works like volume 3 of “Music for a Darkened Theater”. I think It’s a great synthesis of Elfman’s mature contemporary drama style he was toying with throughout the mid -90s mixed with his folksy style and a good amount of his classic “Burton Fantasy” sound. And that Finale cue? I mean c’mon! Just encapsulates all of that in 11 min. Probably beats the Edward Scissorhands finale for me. (Blasphemy I know 😉)

 

My confession: I find Alice in wonderland to be kinda boring 😬The theme is great. I just wish he had a handful of other themes just a punchy to hold my interest. Kinda just fades into generic underscoring for me.

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1 hour ago, WampaRat said:

Was the expansion they just did not remastered?

 

It's pure bait. He posted that exact "joke" about other expansions..

 

Also, I think you accidentally posted a Batman cover variant that is missing the logo, based on the other thread post.

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Great covers!  I don’t regret my purchase of the box, but I got it for below retail while it was still in print.  The extra music is great, the book is fantastic, the DVD is useless because it’s repeated verbatim in the more expansive book and the expensive package itself is the meanest joke you could possibly play on a fan, just pure disdain.

 

I wouldn’t pay post-retail prices, but I’d sure be upset that I missed it if I were in that position!  Hopefully the labels will step up and offer proper complete editions of all the rest of these scores.  They all deserve to be available and available at normal prices.

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2 hours ago, bruce marshall said:

You are the only one who didn't laugh.

Sorry I didn't amuse YOU!😅

 

It took people responding this one time for it to have any real weight (which is still a lot more than most of your other attempts to "punch up" the community).

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I hate to nitpick, and please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something, but shouldn't it be the 35th anniversary collection... at least?

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18 hours ago, LSH said:

I hate to nitpick, and please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something, but shouldn't it be the 35th anniversary collection... at least?

Not sure. I only swapped out the pictures and added the film logos. The frames I didn’t touch. So the “25th anniversary” was how the set came out originally in 2010/2011(?) Not sure if it was their 25th Anniversary of Elfman working with Burton or what. 

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I think it's technically a 2010 release?  That's when they put it up for sale and took everyone's money for pre-orders, and it was originally supposed to ship in December 2010, but delays with the packaged led to nobody actually receiving one until, I think February 2011?

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Anyway, everybody have it in FLACs.

 

I listen to the OSTs from it (well the first ones), instead of my original CDs, because the sound is so much better.

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So, I was streaming a YouTube playlist of various performances by l'Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France the other day. The stuff they played was all classical music (highly recommended by the way) but there was this surprise suite from The Nightmare Before Christmas at some point and it caught me surprise. It's brilliantly arranged, amazingly performed, and it covers all the major moments of the music.

 

Thought I'd share it here for everyone else to enjoy:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAfmjPwxspI

 

P.S. Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to embed videos.

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6 hours ago, Drawgoon said:

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to embed videos.

 

All you do is paste in the URL and the text editor turns it into an embed for you

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47 minutes ago, Tom Guernsey said:

Copied from awesome concert thread for those who might not follow that thread but are curious about his new percussion concerto!
 

I meant to write a few more comments just after the concert but I ended up hanging around the stage door for an autograph, but he never came out. Probably got whisked away via a separate entrance. He was indeed in the audience, in fact he was in my row! See photo… Disappointed not to have got an autograph and say hello but then I did meet him after Alice in Wonderland in concert a few years ago and got an autograph and a photo then so I can’t say I’m doing too badly!

 

The percussion concerto was excellent and a world premiere performance. Oddly, the program notes don’t actually say anything about the music beyond that it was written after a chance meeting with Colin Currie who was the superb soloist. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before performing the world premiere of Michael Torke’s percussion concerto.


Elfman’s concerto is broken down into four movements, triangle, DSCH (that’s the four note motif Shostakovich used to use as his calling card and apparently was used by Elfman in his Dolores Claiborne score according to Wikipedia) down and syncopate.

 

Much like his other concert works it’s unmistakably Danny Elfman but with far more interesting development and precision than some of his film music. The scoring is for strings, percussion soloist, piano, celeste and four or five members of the percussion section who were positioned behind the strings so there was some brilliant interplay between them, the soloist and the orchestra.

 

The one thing about a percussion concerto is that it’s very theatrical compared to other instruments as the soloist has to dash round the stage as the wide range of mostly tuned percussion instruments were positioned either side of the conductor (Ludwig Wicki who did a great job with this as well as the other selections he was probably more familiar with… he’s the conductor on the recording of the LOTR symphony). 
 

Must be quite a challenge for a percussion soloist over and above the usual stresses of being a soloist. Essentially you have several different solo parts depending on which instrument you’re playing so have to be in the right place as well as playing the right notes! I’m sure there will be a recording at some point but it won’t quite convey the interplay between the soloist and the other percussionists which worked wonderfully well .

 

The Batman suite included (from what I recall - the programme notes by Jeff Bond no less, didn’t say) the opening titles, descent into mystery, waltz to the death, up the cathedral, and from Batman Returns, the music for Catwoman and Penguin, followed by finale from the first movie. There seemed to be a few places with either additional or more prominent choral contributions. I definitely got some chills when the Batman theme bursts through in the main titles, Wicki did a great job of milking those buildups for everything they were worth!

 

I think the “suite” from Alice in Wonderland was the opening track “Alice” from the sequel score which is about half the original Alice track but goes off in a slightly different direction in the middle and a different ending. It’s one of those scores I know the main theme but can never really remember much about the rest of it!

 

Alas there was no encore. I bet my other half a fiver they would play The Simpsons theme as a witty encore, sadly I was disappointed… That was probably the only disappointment, absolutely phenomenal concert.

It must’ve been a great concert, thanks for sharing! I attended his Burton collaboration concert at the Royal Albert Hall where he also sang from A Nightmare Before Christmas. I stayed at the same hotel as Steve Bartek and we chatted on the way to the RAH. 
I can’t wait to hear the percussion concerto. It’s great that Elfman is following in the footsteps of Williams in becoming a classical composer as well as a film composer. 
As for the BATMAN Suite, it was the absolute highlight for me at the concert, hearing it live was just as amazing as hearing the STAR WARS Main Theme live for the first time.

Congrats again for being there and glad you enjoyed it!

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1 minute ago, JTW said:

It must’ve been a great concert, thanks for sharing! I attended his Burton collaboration concert at the Royal Albert Hall where he also sang from A Nightmare Before Christmas. I stayed at the same hotel as Steve Bartek and we chatted on the way to the RAH. 
I can’t wait to hear the percussion concerto. It’s great that Elfman is following in the footsteps of Williams in becoming a classical composer as well as a film composer. 
as for the BATMAN Suite, it was the absolute highlight for me at the concert, hearing it live was just as amazing as hearing the STAR WARS Main Theme live for thr first time.

Congrats again for being there and glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you! It was the same concert hall (but don’t think it was the same orchestra) that I saw the premier of John Powell’s Prussian Requiem. Obviously very different but equally impressive. I must admit that I really appreciate Danny Elfman writing concert works in a style that is recognisable from his film work. I do really enjoy JW’s concert works, but given how many indelible melodies he’s given us, it would be great to have a violin concerto that was as memorable as the classics of the genre!

1 minute ago, ddddeeee said:

I was there too and my initial reaction is that I prefer it to the violin concerto (which I like very much!).

 

It followed the same broad structure of his violin concerto (1st and 4th movements are more classical, in the 2nd movement he allows himself to get a bit silly at times and the 3rd movement is more sombre). I think the shorter runtime helped the whole thing feel more assured. As someone who is still quite new to the classical scene, I was taken by how entertaining it was, which I'm sure is what he's going for.

 

The audience reaction and the chat I heard afterwards seemed to be very positive. It'll be hard to hear Batman on CD again after that performance, though. It'd be nice to have a recording of that suite at some point (along with many of the other Elfman/Burton suites).

 

Here's a video of Currie talking about the concerto.

 

 

I did enjoy the wit and humour in the concerto, including when the audience appreciated the humour of Currie having to dash round the stage. Thanks for the video! 

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After JW, Danny Elfman is by far the film composer I most dearly want to compose "classical" works. Considering the demoralizingly barren wasteland that Hollywood film scoring seems to be irretrievably turning into, I'd love it if Elfman one day decided to live off his existing royalties and go the JW route, scoring only Tim Burton's films and focusing on the far more fertile classical scene.

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Here are a few blurry photos of the occasion (these inconsiderate people just won't make like statues and pose for me!).  The first is of percussionist Colin Currie at the vibraphone, getting everything set up during the interval.  In the third photo you can see soprano Grace Davidson in the centre of the choir with the boy soloist who also sang beautifully.

 

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