I'm sure we all remember that scene from Shawshank Redemption, when Andy breaks into the office and shares some opera music with the prison, causing everyone to stand still and just listen to the beauty of the music, as it wafts from the speakers. It got me thinking. If you could play a score on a Universal Juke Box, to share with the world like Andy did, something you feel ONLY YOU know and love (even though that's probably not the case), what would it be? Obviously I would rule out things like TITANIC, E.T., STAR WARS, GONE WITH THE WIND etc, as those scores, like many others, are quite well known already. I'm looking for more obscure scores that you feel have dropped so far under the radar that no one else has grasped their beauty...yet!
Mine would be SYMPHONY OF HOPE - THE HAITI PROJECT, in which 25 film composers got together to create a 5 piece movement, in aid of a catastrophic earthquake in 2010. http://www.haitisymphony.com/
Whoa. GREAT question and not an easy choice to make. In a way this is the ultimate "desert island" choice!
I honestly don't know. There are so many pieces I love "profoundly". But I think it would have to be something gentle, something beautiful and just aching with humility - Because the world needs more of that.
But I think it would have to be something gentle, something beautiful and just aching with humility - Because the world needs more of that.
You've just described Ennio's "The Mission". I know Kev wanted to move away from famous scores, but this is the perfect one to reach out to the whole world - those cultures that only know the music of the human voice will delight in the native choir pieces and the more worldly will be calmed by Jeremy's oboe in times of stress and can join in with the sheer joy of other tracks when celebration, either religious or pagan, is called for.
I say what I usually say in such threads -- I would tailor the pick to whatever group I was playing for. I don't really have anything to share to the "whole world" (my brain collapses when the parameters are too wide).
So funny! I was JUST about to post that the final cue from this score would be perfect!
Beyond that, I'd have to go with Chris Young's theme from FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, or the title theme from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, or John Scott's main theme from MAN ON FIRE.
From the classical world, Holst's VENUS is about as humility-infused as orchestral music gets - At least for me.
Unusual question. I see a number of people have picked scores that evoke their films which tend to have something universal to say.
So why don't I throw out Alexander Desplat's THE IMITATION GAME. a delicate superb score for a thought provoking film. Amongst the thoughts, as one character put it, "Sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine." Also there are a number of heroes that literally changed the world that don't make the history books. And, last but not least, the world is seldom what we think it is.
I do this all the time at work. As a sound engineer I run a little something to test and tune the PA I'm using, so I'll just cue up recent acquisitions or whatever I'm listening to at the moment. Considering my tastes, you could be hearing 60s sci-fi, old Buck Rogers, Megaforce, new BSG, or Alan Silvestri's latin stylings for Soapdish.