Composer Interview: Jeff Grace haunts THE INNKEEPERS

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/10/2012
THE INNKEEPERS soundtrack | ©2012 Movie Score Media

Any horror-centric composer can enter a haunted house and awake the resident spooks by throwing a battery of percussion instruments and equally unsubtle samples down the steps of a dark basement. But it’s one thing to rattle the nerves, and another to truly frighten the listener. With subtlety, and melody becoming many since-deceased composers like Bernard Herrmann and Jerry Goldsmith, a young musical Turk named Jeff Grace is successively scaring the hell out of us with more of a whisper than a scream, even if he might not have his predecessor’s orchestral resources. It’s a similar high-quality, low budget appeal […]Read On »


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Composer Interview: Howard Shore talks HUGO and A DANGEROUS METHOD

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/27/2011
Howard Shore | ©2011 Howard Shore

In the near four decades that have taken him from being the bandleader of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE  to walking onto the stage to accept a couple of Oscars, you could say that Howard Shore has been on a continual journey of wide-eyed wonderment, one encompassing as much tender emotion as utter insanity. In over eighty scores, Shore’s used cheerful bells to embody MISS DOUBTFIRE, reached into the percussively booming pit of a serial killer’s mind in SEVEN, given a hack director the symphonic glory of Orson Welles in ED WOOD, created the mind-blowing pulsations of SCANNERS and took the side […]Read On »


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Composer Interview: Conrad Pope spends time with MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/10/2011
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN soundtrack | ©2011 Sony Classical

It takes many skilled hands to keep Hollywood running as the stars take their bows- an army that includes personal assistants, makeup artists and publicists, all of whom are sure to step out of the way of the glaring flashbulbs. Then there’s the even less sexy caste of the studio machine called “below the line,” the mostly unrecognized visual effects artists, writers, production designers, editors, costumers and other skilled craftspeople who allow the stars to shine- their own jobs eased on the steam of even more obscure laborers chained to computers and sewing machines. Yet these toiling men and women […]Read On »


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Composer Interview: Jane Antonia Cornish brings emotional light to FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/03/2011
Jane Antonia Cornish | ©2011 Jane Antonia Cornish

When the recriminations of an intellectual clan’s past collide with a tragedy in their present, familial fireworks are sure to ensue in the finger-pointing fallout. But tender is the musical night in the delicate hands of composer Jane Antonia Cornish, who handles FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN with a gentle, and greatly affecting touch. She also bridges two classical worlds as Dennis Lee’s film segues from past to present, as the beautiful melancholy of piano and violin-driven chamber music meets the progressive rhythms of such modern classicists as Arvo Part and John Adams. It’s an approach that’s entirely apropos for the […]Read On »


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Composer Interview: MICHAEL ANDREWS likes to score with the BAD TEACHER

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/14/2011
Composer Michael Andrews | © 2011 Michael Andrews

BAD TEACHER | ©2011 Sony Pictures There’s nothing wrong with the wacka-wacka style of pizzicato comedy scoring to hit all of the talking animal orchestral shenanigans for the younger set. And though comedies for older folks might share many of those PG movies’ fondness for bathroom jokes, cute string hits just don’t cut it for potty-mouthed R-rated characters whose best idea for a bodily function is getting it on. And they do the nasty with guitar chords, funk rhythms and saucy pop-jazz, vibes that stand for much of the approach when it comes to scoring contemporary teen-adult comedies. However, when […]Read On »


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CD Review: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/11/2011
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT soundtrack | ©2011 Nathan Furst

Imagine a rom-com score for a meeting between Wall Street and The Mob, and you might hear the bubbly orchestral jazz of Nathan Furst. For a guy who’s usually busy scoring killer alligators and crocodiles, the melodically sparkling production values of UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT are a terrifically apt way for Furst to tell the world he’s not going to get pulled back in. The menace here is definitely of the more playful type, as a slicked back financial man about town tries to take the old family business legit, even if his Costra Nostra friends would rather break heads than […]Read On »


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WonderCon 2011: SCRE4M composer Marco Beltrami on returning to the franchise

By PETER BROWN 04/02/2011
Neve Campbell in SCRE4M | ©2011 Dimension Films

During the “Behind the Music with CW3PR: Composing for Sci-Fi Horror and Fantasy” panel during Wondercon 2011 in San Francisco, composer Marco Beltrami was asked about returning to the horror franchise SCRE4M (aka SCREAM 4) and how it was different. “It was great working again with [director] Wes [Craven], he is a lot of fun,” Beltrami says. “It is really a  continuation of the previous SCREAM movies, but the fun thing about this one is since there was another killer, it gave me a chance to play around with the general theme.” Beltrami also says he played around with Sidney’s […]Read On »


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Interview: Composer John Ottman enters the UNKNOWN

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/10/2011
UNKNOWN movie poster | ©2011 Warner Bros.

Among the composers who’ve been chased by international killers, engaged in murderous games of cops and robbers, or have spied on the antics of various psychopaths, John Ottman might consider himself a marked man. Making a huge splash along with film school buddy Bryan Singer as the editor and composer of 1995’s THE USUAL SUSPECTS, Ottman’s way of ratcheting the dramatic stakes up with walls of creeping, orchestra-heavy melody has led his talents to far more visceral ends in the genre with the likes of TRAPPED, CELLULAR and HIDE AND SEEK, topping off his multi-hyphenate hat as perhaps the one […]Read On »


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CD Review: 48 HRS. soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/03/2011
48 HRS. soundtrack | © 2011 Intrada Records

While James Horner showed he could go where no Enterprise scorer had gone before with his breakthrough, nautical-styled space adventure for 1982’s STAR TREK II, it would be that year’s 48 HRS. which truly showed him off as being far from a one-note composer. If audiences hadn’t seen this kind of hilariously foul-mouthed, squib-filled “buddy cop” movie before, then they certainly hadn’t heard the vibrant, ethnic spin that Horner put on the genre – a ferociously energetic approach that made KHAN’s musical wrath sound positively sedate by comparison. Horner likely keyed off of the manic urban energy that filled Eddie […]Read On »


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In Remembrance: The 10 Best Scores of Composer John Barry

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/01/2011
John Barry - THE CONCERT

If the theme’s the thing in film scoring, then the passing of  composer John Barry Sunday at age 77  represents the true end of unabashed, symphonic lyricism. There were few composers who had his way with melody. Even the most explosive action of Barry’s Bond scores had a slow, hypnotically seductive rhythm. It was a lyricism that made generations fall in love, not only with their dates in the darkened theater, but with the lush possibility of film music itself. And that was just fine for Barry, who like so many of us, spent the better part of his youth […]Read On »


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