Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know many composers whose film and television work I have admired. I always loved the music that J.A.C. Redford wrote for St. Elsewhere, a show I never missed in the 1980s (and which I firmly believe is the greatest medical show in the history of television). Redford, who has in recent years orchestrated many scores for James Horner and Thomas Newman, is himself a distinguished composer of many choral and symphonic works. I was delighted that he asked me to write the notes for his latest collection of orchestral pieces.
I am very proud to have written this story. When composer James Horner was, tragically, killed in a plane crash last year, few knew that he had already written the main themes for his next assignment, the all-star remake of The Magnificent Seven — even though shooting hadn’t even begun. His longtime collaborator Simon Franglen (whose work with Horner went all the way back to their Oscar- and Grammy-winning Titanic) decided, with the approval of director Antoine Fuqua, to complete the score using those themes as a starting point. He reassembled the Horner team — including orchestrator J.A.C. Redford, mixer Simon Rhodes and their music editors — and made it happen.