Notes from the Soundscape

Michael Bay's science fiction action film, The Island, capped off a busy time of the year for composer Steve Jablonsky, who began work on the project after scoring Bay's Amityville Horror remake and finishing the season for the television series Desperate Housewives. L...

Ridley Scott's first historical action drama since Gladiator saw a change-up in composers when longtime Scott collaborator Hans Zimmer turned the project over to Harry Gregson-Williams, Tony Scott's frequent collaborator. Should fans expect a rehash of Gladiator? Possi...

Panu Aaltio, a native of Finland, is a relative newcomer to the film music industry, but already made an impression with his score to the 2008 drama, Home of Dark Butterflies. This film, about a group of boys in foster care on The Island, is a dark film, both in conten...

Upon his return to action scoring with King Arthur, Hans Zimmer has created a fusion of two of his common genres: historical drama and action/adventure. Despite the film's criticism about its historical accuracy and general storyline, at base value (i.e. without expect...

TD Garden, Boston MA, March 6, 2017

Large-scale television series can provide a composer the opportunity to create a musical world on a broader canvas and the capability to develop it thematically to a greater extent than more standalone film projects. Ramin Djawadi, gi...

Many soundtracks today rely on sheer volume of sound or unrelated  pop songs that it is a fresh experience to hear a score as authentic and grittily real as Harry Gregson-Williams' work for Joel Schumacher and Jerry Bruckheimer's Veronica Guerin starring Cate Blanchett...

Starset emerged onto the rock scene in late 2013 with two powerful singles, “My Demons” and “Carnivore” that were followed by their debut album, Transmissions, in the summer of 2014. I had the opportunity to meet the band after a performance at a small venue in Provide...

Unlike the beginnings of many Hans Zimmer scores (e.g. Gladiator, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Pearl Harbor) The Last Samurai score does not open with a powerful main theme performed by the French horns. Rather, the first track, "A Way of Life", starts almost inau...

In March 2009, I watched the conclusion to one of the best science fiction series ever aired on television: the re-imagining of "Battlestar Galactica". One of the many elements that made this show so spectacular was the music by Bear McCreary. Beginning with Richard Gi...