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SPOTLIGHT ON JOHN WILLIAMS: A Prospero Classical CD release featuring new recordings of JW film music


SyncMan

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Your guess is as good as mine.

 

If you look at that orchestra's Facebook page, you'll find that among the JW works for the CD will be Harry Potter and SW:TFA.

 

Here's a video of them doing SW:TFA for that CD:

 

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1 hour ago, Thor said:

Would it be unrealistic to hope for something other than the greatest hits/evergreens, for once?

Yes, I feel it would. The mention of sax and vibraphone suggests we’ll get some CMIYC, but that might well be as much of a lane departure as we’re likely to get.

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3 hours ago, Thor said:

Would it be unrealistic to hope for something other than the greatest hits/evergreens, for once?


I have a feeling it’s most likely going to be recordings of the commercially available Hal Leonard Signature Editions, which do have some, if only a few, of the “non-greatest hits” in the series. Mention of trumpet and clarinet suggests maybe Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, or Lincoln for the trumpet, and The Terminal for the clarinet. All of these are part of the Signature Edition series. I feel like anything recording that isn’t a part of this series would likely be some other arrangement, unless it was Williams himself conducting.

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Complete score re-recordings including unreleased music... or just new useless compilations?

 

Like I already stated: "I wonder how many time Schindler's List Theme can be re-recorded..."

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Probably it will be as usual two CDs filled with the common popular stuff and just  one particular rarity. Like the Dudamel recording contained just the Adagio from Force Awakens or the Vienna recording the violin arrangement of The Witches of Eastwick. I find this quite annoying. 

 

But maybe this recording doesn't contain any film music?

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If it’s one CD, I’d say the “greatest hits” will be predominant.

 

If it’s two CDs, that does make it more likely that it contains a few hard-to find gems, or rarely recorded pieces, though. With double the run time, that opens up a whole lot of possibilities in terms of choices.

 

But it seems to be one CD, right?

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I hope they record Irina's Theme from Indy 4. or how aboyt 'Young Indys First Adventure' concert piece.-If they are going to do a live to film performance of Superman-I guess they can do a crisp job on this piece. Fingers crossed!

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Unsure if this is news in this thread but Valentine Michaud writes on his webpage that he performs the “Escapades” saxophone concerto from Catch me If You Can and the “Adventures of Tintin”.

 

https://valentinemichaud.com/language/en/archives/3700

 

Abd you can hear an excerpt from “Fawkes The Phoenix” on City Light Concerts’ FB-page.

 

https://m.facebook.com/CityLightConcerts/videos/spotlight-on-john-williams-city-light-symphony-orchestra-kkl-luzern/186009639927194/

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34 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

From what I've been told, it's mostly regular published versions, but they obtained permission to record a few things that aren't publicly out, like Slave Children Parade from Temple of Doom and the main titles from The Adventures of Tintin.

Not publicly out? The slave children's Parade is in the Spielberg Boston Pops album and from the Tintin main titles I am quite sure there exists a recording as well. I am currently not fully sure if it was Boston Pops or Prague or something else. But I habe it somewhere. 

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4 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Not publicly out? The slave children's Parade is in the Spielberg Boston Pops album and from the Tintin main titles I am quite sure there exists a recording as well. I am currently not fully sure if it was Boston Pops or Prague or something else. But I habe it somewhere. 

 

They're not published, hence if you want to perform them you have to ask for permission to JW's management. Of course there are recordings conducted by others out there where they used unauthorized transcriptions of pieces not officially published, but this isn't the case (or at least it doesn't look like so).

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I've always wanted to make a jazz album of Williams' rarer pieces from the 60s, if I had the money and resources. Alas, few are available as official sheet music, so I would have to ask someone else to transcribe something by ear -- like we did with CHECKMATE and "Mambone" from BACHELOR FLAT for our Oslo concert last year. But then this "dream" kinda evaporates when I think about getting permission from JW, and whatever costs are included not only in transcribing it, but royalties and such.

 

I wonder how Terry Trotter approached all of this, for his STAR WARS jazz album on Varese. Does anyone know?

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18 minutes ago, Thor said:

I've always wanted to make a jazz album of Williams' rarer pieces from the 60s, if I had the money and resources. Alas, few are available as official sheet music, so I would have to ask someone else to transcribe something by ear -- like we did with CHECKMATE and "Mambone" from BACHELOR FLAT for our Oslo concert last year. But then this "dream" kinda evaporates when I think about getting permission from JW, and whatever costs are included not only in transcribing it, but royalties and such.

 

I wonder how Terry Trotter approached all of this, for his STAR WARS jazz album on Varese. Does anyone know?

 

It's different if we're talking about orchestral recordings vs. covers and reinterpretations. For the former, a lot of things in the past were done without actually granting a permission, like unpublished stuff that was recorded in many Silva Screen compilations with the City of Prague. There was a kind of grey area for many years in terms of permissions, royalties and rights etc. Anyway, JW and his publisher became much more in control of what is out there over the years and tried to prevent people using unauthorized transcriptions (i.e. things not published and/or approved by JW and Hal Leonard) when it comes to the orchestral versions.

 

Piano/chamber/ensemble reductions are more tolerated and seen as the performer's right to interpret any kind of music. However, if you want to get things straight and nice, it's always better to grant some kind of official greenlight in any case.

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That's true, except that in the case of the 60 jazz stuff, it's jazz to begin with. It's not a reduction from orchestra to jazz. Although it does apply to the Trotter album, of course. Maybe that's why he "got away with it" at the time.

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57 minutes ago, Thor said:

That's true, except that in the case of the 60 jazz stuff, it's jazz to begin with. It's not a reduction from orchestra to jazz.

 

The main issue of performing stuff from the 60s is that there are no scores available, so if you want to recreate something you need to reconstruct it from the manuscripts. Some of the stuff is either in JW's possession or archived at JoAnn Kane Music Service, so it's very hard to get access to, but there are things that are probably lost. You might do a transcription by ear using the recordings available, but you have to be a really good arranger for that.

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15 minutes ago, TownerFan said:

 

The main issue of performing stuff from the 60s is that there are no scores available, so if you want to recreate something you need to reconstruct it from the manuscripts. Some of the stuff is either in JW's possession or archived at JoAnn Kane Music Service, so it's very hard to get access to, but there are things that are probably lost. You might do a transcription by ear using the recordings available, but you have to be a really good arranger for that.

 

Yes, that's what we did last year. We got Knut Avenstroup Haugen - an esteemed film composer here in Norway (most famous for his AGE OF CONAN scores) - to arrange the pieces from CHECKMATE and BACHELOR FLAT by ear, much like Leigh Philips did with THE SALAMANDER. It's a difficult process, though. And expensive.

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