One of my favorite end-of-year assignments involves choosing the top 20 albums of “classic film music” released during the previous 12 months. This year’s task seemed harder than ever, because several labels gave us truly remarkable discs — some of them expanded classics, some previously unreleased scores, some of them reissues of very rare LPs. I enjoyed all of these, from the music of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith to that of Aaron Copland and Vince Guaraldi and many more. The list spilled well over the 20 slots, so I added an “honorable mention” paragraph to sneak in a few more titles.
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Hans Zimmer Concert Review
Nearing the end of his world tour, composer Hans Zimmer brought his live concert show to L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium, where 6,000 fans screamed and cheered to his iconic themes from The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception and many others. I attended the Friday-evening concert and filed this report for Variety the next day. The photo at left, incidentally, is the cover of the $10 “souvenir program” — which turned out to be worth the price for its set list, Zimmer interview and thoughts by several of the musicians performing with him.
Contenders for best score, part two!
For Variety‘s second installment in our series on potential Oscar nominees in the music categories, I interviewed five composers, seven songwriters, a music supervisor and a director. Our main story features John Williams, in his first interview offering details of his new Star Wars score, as well as Hateful Eight music supervisor Mary Ramos talking about Ennio Morricone’s music; and The 33 director Patricia Riggen discussing the late James Horner’s contributions to her film. I also wrote four of the six composer profiles (on Thomas Newman, Michael Giacchino, Carter Burwell and Brian Tyler) and half of the song story (including interviews with Spectre singer-songwriter Sam Smith and The Hunting Ground songwriters Diane Warren and Lady Gaga). And there’s still more to come!