Monthly Archives: July 2018

Music in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”

If you’ve seen the latest Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible adventure, Fallout, there are two things you can’t miss: Cruise’s amazing stunts and Lorne Balfe’s musical score. Balfe utilizes  Lalo Schifrin’s classic Mission themes in practically every scene. He wrote approximately four hours of music for the film and it took an entire month to record in London, as the composer told me for this Variety story about his nine-month odyssey to create the music with director Christopher McQuarrie (and a little help from Cruise). The Variety piece also includes a wonderful three-minute video shot during the London recordings.

Music in “The Handmaid’s Tale”

Adam Taylor has just finished scoring the second season of the acclaimed, Emmy-winning Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale. I got to attend the final recording session for the season and was sworn to secrecy about the details of those last two episodes — but it was worth it to watch a 27-member string ensemble enhance the drama with their exquisite playing on the Warner Bros. recording stage. What was even more fascinating was interviewing both Taylor and, via email, star-producer Elisabeth Moss about the importance of music in the series. The story ran July 11 in Variety.