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Main Title from The Last StarfighterAround 1989, Mr. Seems those boots should have been tested first. End Title from Twilight Zone: The Movie9. Outer Space from The Day the Earth Stood Still7.
Kunzel has a talent of making arraignments to sequences that sound more like the original tracks than the creators of them. Talking to other conductors and fans, this opinion is usually shared (I was in the business decades later). Kunzel choose 5 of the tracks appearing here.2. Kunzel was kind enough to invite me and a couple of guests to Cincinnati to see his Happy Trails concert. It took me a few minutes to help him out of them.While we were talking, I casually offered him my song/cut list and timings on the pieces I was interested in.
This was a RESPONSIVE creative team.Mr. End Title from Explorers16. Outside the concert hall were Blacksmiths, cows, horses; inside small calves in corrals made of hay bales. Safan was invited to conduct "The Last Starfighter" and I wasn't.umm, invited.
I was involved in the creation of this album (although I don't appear on the credits) and I helped Mr. Graciously he collected my offering and told me he'd check on it.Months later, I saw the cut list on this album and bought it on the spot. ALL my requests were in the album. His amplifications of the descants and harmony lines accentuate the actual melody rather than detract from it. The concert started out with a hangman's noose being swung by our host as a reminder of just what kind of show this was.My guests and I had a GREAT time and that concert later became an album.Turns out, after the concert in the spacious green room, Mr. Oh well.Still, the production was amazing, I learned a lot and I thank again Mr. End Title from The Boy Who Could Fly6.
Kunzel for being a REALLY great host. Impressive.My guests and I had been asked to come in WESTERN garb. Kunzel had trouble getting out of his borrowed garb; Nice six-shooters (could have been real too, I wasn't all that sure). I think that way in my own music and it's shared in his.The only part that was slightly sad was when Mr. Ok, so it's not 1989 anymore, but I'd do it again :)
Terrific performances of some great movies. I loved most of these movies and was excited to find a cd with all these themes. A great selection.
This CD has been around for a while now but it is still truly a good compilation of Science Fiction film music given a new dimension by being recorded digitally. The selections from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER and POLTERGEIST all composed by Jerry Goldsmith are all performed with passion and demonstrate Goldsmith's great versatility. The BATMAN selections composed by Danny Elfman are very powerful combing rousing elements with moody enigmatic passages. Most of the other selections are short or confined to one piece. Bernard Herrmann's "Outer Space" from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is brief but in effect makes it all the more powerful by its great innovation and lasting impact. The WAR OF THE WORLDS "Prelude" by Leith Stevens was a great surprise.
Often inserted as short introductions to a piece of music, most can be endured quickly and forgotten. That said, there are definitely keepers: The theme from "The Black Hole," the soundtrack to which was unavailable on CD anywhere until just recently and which by itself is worth the cost; the sweet chorus of Carol Ann's Theme from "Poltergeist"; the themes from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Beast Master" (I am Dar).
As usual with these collections, the CD contains selections that are hard to come by (if not impossible) on a soundtrack or any other recorded source. Maestro Kunzel has gathered together a mostly-entertaining mix of music from various s/f movies.
Not Kunzel's fault, I know, but those pieces tend to (for me) mar the overall likeability of the album. Not all of the tracks work, however.
Music from "Moonwalker" is annoying, and the theme from "War of the Worlds" is just plain weird. and "The Last Starfighter." Unfortunately, these movie collections tend to waste too much disk space on sound effects.
But on this CD, a whole track's worth following "The Black Hole" is devoted to the inane cacophony of electronic gibberish, space that would have been much better served by playing, say, the Love Theme from "Superman."Still, there are more things to like on this album than there are to dislike.
the neglected Last Starfighter piece here. This is another of the Telarc label's collections put together under the conductor Erich Kunzel and performed by the Cincinnati pops orchestra. However, the problem arises in the fact that many pieces of film score don't play well with a large orchestra -- they loose their focused intensity. Like all Telarc discs, the sound is pure digital and hence can really pack a punch. Moreover, Kunzel often chooses some vey nice gems in his collections -- e.g. The Batman here suffers from such a flaw and is weaker than the original score. The Pops orchestra is best with march-type themes, of which there are not enough on this album to make it outshine the original soundtracks from which it draws.
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