Where did the month of August go?  We've been busy here getting ready for our cross-country relocation which has taken up more time than one would think.  It is kind of that in between time when it feels like I have one foot here and one foot where we are heading (well, most of the time it is more like a toe!).  There were lots of things here for review which meant that took precedent over additional writing here too, so I apologize for folks who stop by here regularly...but maybe you were all on vacation too!

There were a couple of older releases that stood out for me in August.  The first of these was the 2-disc set from Silva of Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  These are arrangements of highlights of this monumental score working out to about an hour and a half of music.  Surprisingly, this is one of the Prague orchestra's better film music surveys hitting the highlights (how they could chose is anyone's guess) that really makes one want to go back and rehear the complete versions of this music.  But like many of the CDs I have of Silva, the sound quality allows for much easier listening while traveling in the car giving you just enough of the score to whet your appetite for more.

I was asked to write for the website Music 4 Games this past summer.  It was a bit of an honor, though I must admit that I am not much of a gamer.  I do appreciate well-written music and this genre has its share of really good composers that are doing a lot for the large-scale of interactive playing.  EMI recently released a compilation of music from a variety of games on their disc Video Games Live that is really worth checking out for a broad survey of older and newer scores.  The styles range from Wendy Carlos' Tron to Giacchino and a host of other great music recorded mostly live (though undetectibly so) in great sounding and exciting performances.

I spent a good deal of my August acquainting myself with two massive 3-disc sets of music by Laurie Johnson imported from Edsel in the UK.  Go here for a complete review of Volume 1 (http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/The%20Avengers.htm) and here for one of Volume 2 (http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/The%20Professionals.htm).  These are posted on Roger Hall's Film Music Review site which is worth bookmarking if you have not done so yet!

Roger and I got to visit for the first time this month and to also trade CDs we had reviewed and did not want (much to the chagrin of our spouses!).  So I owe to Roger the acquisition of David Newman's Galaxy Quest score.  This is one of my favorite "bad" movies and Newman's score is a lot of fun as it goes through a lot of Goldsmith-ian motions to infer the Star Trek parody which this film aspires to create.  There are great themes and wonderful orchestral writing on this composer promo available from specialty on-line sites.

Finally, Label X made a return to the near horizon with the re-release (occasionaly expanded) of some of their back catalogue.  A personal favorite, Schifrin's The Four Musketeers was sent here for review and it is a great score combining a late Renaissance, early Baroque sensibility with occasional 20th Century string writing and hints of the composer's jazz heritage.  For my complete review, go here:  http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/TheFourMusketeers.htm.

Lots of older score music this month, I know.  It was a pretty slow month in August as is often the case but we soon enter the season of Oscar-bait with many sleeper scores finding their way to our players by mid-September.

There were also announcemnets for a massive third Film Score Monthly Box set from MGM (which I managed to snag after much soul searching) and a complete 3-disc Shaft release from the same source. Blazing Saddles made it to CD finally increasing the number of John Morris scores available to 3 (?!) and I hope to comment on that here soon. 

Where did the month of July go!  There were plenty of sleeper announcements throughout the month of limited edition releases and tantalizing new scores on the horizon.  Distribution of Varese discs locally have made them slip down on the easy to acquire list along with the fact that they have reduced the number of discs sent out for review.  It is rather odd since Varese is one of the few labels that has not commited totally to downloadable releases (compare that to upstart Lakeshore which is constantly teasing us with potential score discs that end up as download only releases). 

So here are five favorite releases that arrived in July.

Having already encouraged folks to check out Naxos' earlier installments in their Leroy Anderson series, it should come as no surprise that Volume 3 would be easily recommendable as well.  This particular disc features more familiar fare from Anderson's pen (including the famous "Sleigh Ride") and they are at the same standard as the previous installments.  Leonard Slatkin really has a love for this music and this program duplicates more from his original RCA recordings made back when he was still in St. Louis.  Nice, gentle music to enjoy in the summer heat.  One thing I have learned from watching Naxos releases, and a few other companies, is that a quick release after a recording date often means the label is very proud and exicted by the results and this is proven out in this particular series.

Already reviewed here earlier in the month, Bill Stromberg's new recording of She by Max Steiner is one of the most remarkable re-recordings yet that he and his team have made.  Steiner's music is an amazing discovery of modernist and post-romantic orchestral writing which is quite surprising when one thinks about all the beatings this man's music has taken over the years.  Among many younger film music fans, myself included, Steiner is often dismissed as a hack tunesmith or music quoter.  It taks great recordings like this for us to eat some crow, so to speak, and remember just how progressive Steiner's music was at a time when no one knew just what to do with the musical portion of a film.  She is well worth your money as the Russian orchestra really has this approach down--it bears commonalities with music that was raised up during the Soviet regime.

A surprise score for me in July was Before the Rains by Mark Kilian.  This Lakeshore release features a score

for a film that noone probably saw but the period drama features a nice score that does not bear as much of the

Merchant Ivory sound familiar from the 1990s.  Worth seeking out to get to know this composer from down

under who hopefully will get more exposure here in the states.

Chandos, a label that made its name releasing beautiful recordings of unknown repertoire while making Neeme

Jarvi a household name for classical collectors, began their historic film series a few years ago.  While their

distribution suffers a bit here since the demise of real music stores, it is worth seeking out their releases.  This is

especially the case with their first new score release for a new film version of Brideshead Revisited by Adrian

Johnston.  This is a beautiful score in that Kaczmarek/Doyle hybrid style with an accompanying booklet that

makes your eyes water with its glossy photo inserts and extensive information about performers and composer

shaming our stateside productions.  With Chandos one is reminded that we buy CDs because of the music.

Unlike many of my other critics, I am a sucker for pops related arrangements fo film music because I enjoy hearing

what choices arrangers make.  It does change the music a lot sometimes but it also can reveal things about the

originals that you might not have been able to hear.  Silva is the more most maligned label when it comes to

re-recordings but they continue to turn out enticing releases of music available often no where else.  Their latest

multi-disc set, 100 Greatest TV Themes, vol. 2 is a 4-disc extravaganza of re-recordings focusing mostly on

television music from the last 20 years or so with a smattering of music from the 1960s and 1970s.  25 selections

per disc arranged rather randomly will create a great trip down memory lane for TV fans.  I have to admit that it

would make a great drive contest CD as you try to figure out what theme is from what TV show.  There are some

British themes included here as well and a host of Mike Post's work.  Unlike the TeeVee toons releases, these

tracks tend to run at least 3 minutes in length with the jazzier-influenced ones featuring a mild improv in their central

portions.  Purists will not bother, but there are some things here that might make you pause and debate whether to

add this to your collection (like music from Goldmsith's score for Police Story, Elfman's themes for Desperate

Housewives and Sledge Hammer).

Finally, I decided to finally pick up Silva's Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  I was hesitant only because I could not

imagine how they could pick just a couple of CDs worth of music for this and those complete box sets of Shore's

score arrived for review helping me revisit the music.  But I can say that this is one of Silva's more successful sets

with new arrangements of music from this score beautifully recorded and performed by the Prague orchestra here

under Nic Raine's direction.  Next to their Harry Potter set, this is really one of their better recordings that works

quite well on its own.  The thing that I really like about Silva's recording process is that they make great car CD

experiences.  So now I have another great set of music to add to long drives.