Went to the Margaret Herrick Library, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences library today… and I got to go through Jerry Goldsmith’s original sketches for Star Trek: The Motion Picture… including the original rejected score, like it was sketch paper he wrote on in pencil!! I loved the library and can see this turning into a weekly visit to look at scores and just revel in film history. #ampas #margaretherricklibrary #jerrygoldsmith #startrek #filmmusic
I'm 3 days late, but happy heavenly birthday to @henrymancini ... here's a scoring session I wish I could've attended. #henrymancini #bobbymcferrin #pinkpanther #filmmusic #filmscoring #filmcomposer
This is mostly rambling and probably only makes sense to me, but I won’t be taking questions or defending this… I’m sleepy and grumpy today… ‘best little boy who always behaves himself’ Max will be on duty tomorrow. #film #filmindustry
Celebrating today! For the last 10 years or so, I've been slowly, when I had time, reconstructing Jerry Goldsmith's score to the 1985 Ridley Scott movie "Legend". I've reconstructed parts of it for various live concerts and a Varese Sarabande compilation album (which got me a big hug from Carol Goldsmith, Jerry's widow).
I adore the score so much, and have a lot of personal/emotional reasons for wanting to reconstruct the whole thing, so I did! The sketches were well annotated, but mostly IMPOSSIBLE to read. I reconstructed 28 cues, comprising of nearly 100 minutes of music for full orchestra, choir and 3 synthesizers.
The reason the score needed to be 'reconstructed' is that Universal replaced Goldsmith's score in the U.S. release of the film with a score by the band Tangerine Dream. In Europe, the film was released as a different cut with Jerry's score. Somehow, this led to the full scores and parts being lost, and the only thing surviving is the 8-stave sketches.
There are cues that, as far as I can tell were never recorded, or if they were, were never released, so it was cool to be the first pair of ears to hear some of this Goldsmith music, even in NotePerformer playback form.
Step 2: lead up to (a) do a re-recording of the score and (b) I want to see the movie re-imagined as a ballet with Goldsmith's score, but for today, I'm celebrating my finishing this passion project!
#legend #tomcruise #ridleyscott #jerrygoldsmith #filmmusic #filmscoring #filmcomposer #miasara #timcurry #orchestra #symphony #composer
I will give you $1,000,000 if you can find the video that this screenshot is from on YouTube in 2007... I bought that shirt from Pac Sun I think, because I knew I was moving to California, and thought it was state mandated wardrobe.
I think these books are going to give me so much clarity for my composing, my music education initiatives and my music activism work I want to set up this year. Very excited to dive in.
Happy Singles Awareness Day. I remember in a recent therapy session, my therapist asked me "how would you feel if someone said they were in love with you?" and I recoiled and said "that's my job to love me! They can't take my job from me!" #stephensondheim
It was a sad day with everything going on in the world. I'm turning 37 tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to being more contributory to suffering and righting injustice in my community. I've been struggling lately with not being into the thing I came here to do, but being COMPLETELY compelled to re-imagine music education and appreciation as more than a 'civic beautification project, but as a 'mental health and community organizing/activism tool'...
Film music is lame right now because no one is writing music that reflects the values I care about in the art form, and it seems like there's a lot of studio/money people red tape that's gonna hold up my dreams coming true for a while.
But there's so much I want to do with film music history, archiving, harnessing the canon for educational opportunities for young performers and composers, and my aforementioned personal exercises in activism.
It seems tacky to have dreams of being a film composer right now in this timeline when I could be doing so much more good for others in my community with my gifts, so I may follow that road for a while.
I hope this little musical offering feels like a hug from me, because that's my intention. Love you all, and here's to another 37 years and then maybe a few more after that.
#billyjoel #cello
