The night before we hear the Oscar nominations, here are some fine "new" to the library discs of a fairly full month of "catch-up" for me. 

There are no classical releases to mention for the month of January, but two older scores quite different from each other and three newer scores.

First off, Film Score Monthly's release of Bullitt is a worthy release full of great music and one of Schifrin's best groovy themes of the 1960s.  This is a pretty full release of original score material and album presentation that will easily have you tapping your toes.  This is a disc that would easily have made "best of 2009" had it arrived in time for that article here.

The other older score, now already rare to find, was an expanded re-issue and remastering of Goldsmith's The Blue Max.  The score is one of the composer's finest efforts with a stunning main theme receiving many variations throughout the ample playing time.  This score has surfaced on a shorter Columbia "Legacy" CD here in the states but Intrada's sound is a vast improvement with a great article to accompany the package.  The first "best of 2010" release, look for this to make the list unless something even more wonderful can bump it out of my top 10 list next January.

Though I found some of Horner's Avatar to seem thematically like Titanic at times, it was good to hear a modern score that has intriguing melodic ideas and rich orchestral writing.  Most interesting in this score is the more ethnic-based musics Horner incorporates.  In some respects it is like a gentler version of his Apocalypto--a score which was probably the furthest from the composer's norm.  Though many have seen the film, I do not think its music will have the same lasting sense of the composer's Titanic love theme.

Now, if you only buy one film score, you will thoroughly enjoy Alexandre Desplat's gorgeous thematic score for Coco Before Chanel.  I think I played this about 5-6 times after receiving my copy (another of those that would have made "best of 2009"!) and it is probably the composer's most engaging theme since Girl With a Pear Earring.  The composer was pretty busy last year and this is just one of many charming themes.  If you enjoy Gallic scoring that is a cross between Ravel and Jarre this is a fine, though short at 40 minutes, release.

While Extraordinary Measures is mostly being skewered as a TV-movie-of-the-week that never should have been shown in theaters, Andrea Guerra's score is still quite beautiful.  It too has received its share of complaints by film reviewers but on its own this lovely little score makes for an enjoyable listen on its own.  If this score was written by a "big" name composer you would already have bought it.

The wait begins now to see which scores will be nominated for Oscars.  As to the Grammy's, Giacchino's Up received a Grammy (a score released as a digital download as of today) as a score and a Grammy for "Married Life" as "Best Instrumental Composition."  A.R. Rahman managed to get 2 Grammy's for Slumdog Millionaire--fortunately placed in a "compilation" category--one for his song "Jai Ho."

Both private orchestra labels for the Boston and San Francisco Symphonys picked up Grammys as well.

Congrats to all the winners and best of luck to those who will receive their early morning wake up call tomorrow.

The

18.  Extraordinary Measures (Guerra)                                                           Lakeshore

Sky Riders is a forgettable 1976 20^th Century Fox thriller starring Robert Culp and Susannah York as husband and wife.  York and the children are kidnapped and taken to a high aerie-esque crag where an ancient monastery sits seemingly impregnable.  That is until the ex-husband, played by James Coburn, arrives with a plan involving hang-gliding to the rescue.  It receives its debut here on the composer's Aleph label.

The most striking thing about Schifrin’s score for Sky Riders is its circus atmosphere and sound (scored for brass, percussion, and glockenspiel) which pervades the opening track.  “Flying Circus,” is a light, jazzy waltz reminiscent of the one for Rollercoaster.  “Climbers,” moves quickly into a typical tension-filled underscoring style for mid-1970s Schifrin, but with added Greek-flavored instrumentation mixed in amidst the eerie music.  This sense of ethnic instrumentation receives additional nods in the lighter “The Riders” with beautifully lyric string writing providing a fine contrast to the asymmetry of the Greek melody—all before we return to more tense held notes.  Schifrin does a fine job ratcheting up tension with astringent harmonies and angular thematic lines in “The Terrorists”—sounds reminiscent of his Mission Impossible scores but with more depth and a wild, accomplished abandon that often hints at continual piano ostinato lines but which come and go freely.  What helps the presentation of the score are the elongated tracks (compiled from several cues) themselves that provide an ample opportunity to experience long stretches of score.  This allows the listener to be drawn in to the music far more quickly and one gets to also hear how Schifrin must work to vary the thematic elements and orchestration to keep things moving.

While seemingly unimportant, Sky Riders holds a special transition for Schifrin from the funky styles of jazz underscores provided for a host of early 1970s films to a shifting more purely dramatic style.  Of the five other films he scored in 1976, this is the last of its kind until 1997’s Enter the Dragon.  Schifrin’s career would take a fascinating turn in his Oscar-nominated score for Voyage of the Damned (worth a re-issue itself) that would find him exploring more typical orchestral writing.  The final track is listed as the “original version” of the end credits—which begs the question why was the alternative one included, there was plenty of room.  That said, this is easily recommended for fans of good 1970s scoring and of the composer’s work when it appears towards the end of July.