It would be a very safe bet that there is not a person who has gone to the movies in the past 40 years that has not heard the flute playing of Louise DiTullio.  DiTullio has over 1200 film score recordings to her credit and also bears the distinction of having made some of the classic Stravinsky Columbia recordings with the composer conducting.  Her exquisite playing in films like DANCES WITH WOLVES and HOOK elevated the music in ways its composers might never have expected.  The present disc is a pet project of the flautist intending to pull together some of the finest flute solo moments from some fond film scores so that they can be performed more often in concert.  The chamber music format allows a wider opportunity for the music to be used as well. 

The CD opens with a suite of selections arranged from HOOK by Mark Watters.  Watters has managed a fine reduction of this classic John Williams’ score and the reduced forces are not noticeable at all.  The music moves beautifully from the “Prologue” through smaller cues, the beautiful “You Are the Pan,” “When You’re Alone,” and concludes with “The Lost Boys Chase.”  It all works rather splendidly.

Conductor Ronald Royer arranged the remaining film music selections.  Again, pulling out more of the flute lines for the music from Dances With Wolves does not damage the integrity of Barry’s musical ideas at all.  They are helped by DiTullio’s sensitive and rich playing.  The music from Elfman’s CHARLOTTE’S WEB is an odd choice and less interesting than much of the other material on the disc, but it does provide for some stylistic diversity.  There are two Jerry Goldsmith themes included on the disc.  The first one from SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY has a sinuously dark quality while the sheer beauty of the theme from RUDY, which closes the entire program, is a gorgeous and fitting conclusion to the disc. 

Music inspired by the Wind in the Willows stories is heard in the unaccompanied flute piece by Laurence Rosenthal, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.  The work is receiving a premiere recording here and is an amazing demonstration of DiTullio’s technical skill as well as being a fine solo flute work in its own right.  It begins a segment of the disc devoted to concert hall pieces with some Hollywood connection.  The thirteen-minute Short Stories by conductor Ronald Royer is a sort of homage to great film music styles and composers from film noir to Mancini.  It a rather unique work in that each movement uses a flute from a different register allowing for a quick exploration of the virtuosic abilities on each.  The alto flute, bass flute, C flute (regular flute), and piccolo each get their own movement.  David Rose wrote Le Papillon for DiTullio in 1980 and through the work of Royer the piece can now be enjoyed by a host of chamber music audiences in this reduced ensemble version.  This near fifteen-minute piece is simply gorgeous with enough of Rose’s filmic touches to identify his musical voice quite easily.

Overall, the sound of this release is superb.  The flute manages to cut through the chamber textures quite well.  Apart from a couple of perhaps overly-exuberant French horn moments that almost blurt, the music making here by the Sinfonia Toronto is perfect with a dedication to rival their colleagues in Southern California.  DiTullio’s playing is simply magical and one quickly hears why so many of Hollywood’s finest composers turned and continue to turn to her to interpret their music.  Her brief comments personalize this music in a way we might otherwise overlook while the additional liner notes remind the listener that so often Hollywood performers come to sessions music unseen and have roughly an hour for every 5 minutes of music to get it right.  The present CD is worth tracking down for any number of reasons whether it be repertoire or performance.  It ends far too soon even though it is quite generous in its playing time.  Some might find themselves running to their music libraries to listen carefully again to DiTullio’s performances in their original score sessions.  Easily one of the best film music compilations this year!

The film list presented for this new Horror movie music compilation from BSX records (available at www.buysoundtrax.com) features a number of selections that are cause for a raised eyebrow:  Creepshow, Dawn of the Dead, Psycho II, Warlock, True Blood.  The music runs the gamut from the innocuous Vic Mizzy music for The Addams Family and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and Jack Marshall’s theme from The Munster’s; to several John Carpenter selections (Halloween, The Fog, and Christine; and Morricone’s music for The Thing); and a host of creepy classics from A Nightmare on Elm Street, to Fright Night and Shock Treatment.  There are several other TV shows featured here as well:  Tales from the Crypt and The New Outer Limits.  Though the BSX catalogue includes original score releases from a couple of the films represented here, all of the selections are contemporary electronic recreations of these pieces.  It does help that many of the selections were already synthesizer/electronic scores to begin with and that the state of the art sound makes many of these arrangements quite engaging.

Dominik Hauser is the primary producer/arranger/performer (he is either a good brass player, or has some great samples, or both) for selections in the first half of the disc.  His performances/realizations of the Carpenter pieces are quite good and make for an engaging introduction to these selections.  The little children’s march, “The Gonk,” from Dawn of the Dead by Herbert Chappell receives a performance that sounds like acoustic brass are being used as well as xylophone which helps break up some of the previous electronic material.  It is a delightful change of pace and one of the albums highlights.  His arrangement of “Carol Anne’s Theme” from Poltergeist is a fine example of samples used wisely to imitate a live orchestra though it can be a little stiff at times as is the “Overture” from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Chick Cirino provides a fine arrangement of music from Creepshow, a suite from his score to 1989’s Roger Corman comedy Transylvania Twist, and music from Wendy Carlos’ The Shining which closes the album.  Joohyun Park, who has worked on a number of Christopher Young projects, provides arrangements of Goldsmith’s music from Psycho II (a tantalizing take on the “Main Title”) and Warlock (“The Sentence”); and a good reproduction of Nathan Barr’s “Love Theme” from True Blood and music from Fiedel’s Fright Night.

There are some other fun surprises.  John Beal performs his trailer for Graveyard Shift and provides an arrangement of music from Christine.  And there is Dennis McCarthy’s chilling take on Charles Bernstein’s music from A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Another potential point of interest are several songs performed by actress Victoria De Mare (Shadows-2005) from Shock Treatment (“Looking for Trade”), The Return of the Living Dead (“Tonight”) and Brian Hacksaw Williams from True Blood (“Bad Things”).  Charles Fernandez (Robot Chicken, and orchestrator for the films The Butterfly Effect, Mr. Magoo and others) performs and provides arrangements for The Addams Family (a little too cutesy at times) and “The Haunted Organ” from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (taken a little slow and a bit laboriously).

Overall this is a fun disc with a generous playing time that traverses a number of classic electronic scores and does a good job reproducing selections from those that were originally orchestral.  The production values are high for the music.  The booklet includes paragraph summaries of the films and little or no information about the performances or equipment used to pull these pieces off.  The disc will likely sell best at Comic-Con with its built in fan base.  There are still plenty of fine selections here though to warrant a look by fans of these scores looking for a sampler.  The disc starts out fairly creepy enough but then slowly gives way to the lighter horror music, and pop-influenced selections.  The first half is perhaps the msot succsessful part of the release.