10/19/2021

Treats for Jerry Goldsmith fans. Two of them! Our recording sessions with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow went beautifully. Simply awesome! Coming up ahead you’ll be able to enjoy listening (at last!) to Goldsmith’s very first feature film score, complete in a world class performance. Black Patch turns out to be a much more involved and varied score than the 1957 film soundtrack, often buried under dialog and sound effects, suggests. Standing on its own, the architecture reveals the structural genius Goldsmith applied to his dramatic music, right from the first bar. Speaking of which, here’s a really cool delight: the Warner Bros. film opens with a brooding b&w outdoor shot and Goldsmith’s score begins in a very low key manner. That’s what we all have known and become used to. But he actually scored a powerful opening fanfare for orchestra that he titled “Warner Bros. Presents” (1m1) to accompany the opening image. This has never been heard before and it makes for a sensational opener to the score, introducing one of his key themes right off the bat. Wow! And then there’s that crucial love theme, heard in its lengthiest treatment during “Love Reunited Part 2” (3m1) which is one of the composer’s most haunting. And for those fans wondering about that piece of saloon music that plays under the opening credits, yes, it is by Goldsmith and is titled “Player Piano (Main Titles)” (1m3). And yes again, we are including it. A particular treat is hearing the complexities and ferocious writing in Goldsmith’s very first action cue for a movie: “The Fight” (5m1) with numerous devices that became signatures, including mixed-meter rhythms, staccato snare drums and zigzagging bars of full orchestra excitement.

Ahhhh… on to that second treat. And what a treat! 1972’s The Man, starring James Earl Jones and written by Rod Serling, opens with one of Goldsmith’s most arresting and declamatory cues of his entire career. Called “Douglass Dilman (Main Titles)”, Goldsmith wrote this prelude in a soaring, stentorian vernacular that would have made Aaron Copland proud. Fortissimo brass and percussion in the lead! And for anyone familiar with Goldsmith’s magnificent “The Monument” from Logan’s Run (1976), revel in the gestation of that piece in this score’s “The Lincoln Memorial”, illuminating the same stirring images! And following that music is “The Oval Office’, with imposing music framing all of the portraits of past presidents. What a score!

Both scores will be presented complete, in terrific readings by the orchestra under maestro William T. Stromberg. Using the composer’s actual original scores which survived intact, supervised by Leigh Phillips, who also masterfully reconstructed The Man, everything was recorded and mixed by ace scoring engineer Simon Rhodes, the extraordinary audio wizard behind so many classic James Horner scores as well as our own Dial M For Murder recording. We’ll keep everyone posted as this fabulous release is readied for release. As they say… stay tuned!

10/3/2021

In one week we’ll be in Glasgow, recording two never-before-available Jerry Goldsmith scores with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. We’ll have William Stromberg on the podium and Simon Rhodes in the booth, ensuring everyone this is going to be one sensational album! The Man is Goldsmith scoring in his most powerful Americana vernacular, right down to the brilliant opening fanfare, written in a soaring brass and percussion-dominated Coplandesque manner. When James Earl Jones picks up that telephone and answers, “Yes, this is Douglass Dillman speaking”, not only is Jones about to become the first African American President of the United States (well, in fictional 1972 Hollywood terms), but Goldsmith announces this historical event to the world.

Black Patch takes us all the way back to Goldsmith’s very first film score, written in 1957. It’s a western, a genre in which fans particularly love the composer’s work. And the central love theme for this score is one of Goldsmith’s most haunting of a lengthy career filled with great themes.

As for this week’s newest CD, we are simply pairing the two most requested and popular of the six albums included in our praised Elmer Bernstein  collection of Ava titles from the 1960’s: To Kill A Mockingbird and Walk On The Wild Side for those who just want those two landmark recordings together on a single disc. For anyone wondering, of the many recordings of To Kill A Mockingbird thus far released, none really compares with the original 1962 album. Captured in crisp stereo sound, this very first version has the particular detail and intimacy from close miking that the treasured score benefits from. With many of the players from the actual soundtrack sessions involved, it is simply the one to enjoy. Copies will be available starting this Tuesday, October 5.

View more at our INTRADA SOUNDTRACK FORUM