In this month’s “9 on the 9th” post, I decided to forgo the usual composer format and highlight some film scores that may be unfamiliar to many film music fans. I heartily recommend the nine scores below. And instead of playing favorites this month, the titles are listed in alphabetical order. ABOVE AND BEYOND (1953) [...]

There’s no denying that Thomas Newman is one of the finest film composers working today. Along with father Alfred, uncles Lionel and Emil, cousin Randy, and brother David, film music runs in his blood. But with an instantly recognizable style filled with interesting orchestrations and exotic instrumentations, Newman has carved out a niche all to himself. [...]

Ah, the time-honored tradition of “desert island discs”–the discs, in our case the film scores, you simply can’t live without. Forget the fact that there probably won’t be any electricity. Or that heat, humidity, sun, sand, wind conditions and barometric pressure will all play a part in just how long your discs will weather your solitary [...]

Few composers in the history of film music are as prolific as Elmer Bernstein. Nearly every film genre has benefited from a Bernstein score. From his early days experimenting with jazz to Westerns and epic dramas, from comedies to intimate character studies, Bernstein’s music enriches and elevates every film it accompanies. As with all the [...]

I just recently finished Film Score Monthly’s massive, and massively entertaining, 15-CD Miklos Rozsa Treasury (1949-1968). So who better to focus on for this month’s “9 on the 9th” post than this multiple Oscar-winner. If you listen to Rozsa’s music with any regularity, you’ll notice many of the same harmonic progressions and rhythmic motifs. Much [...]

Danny Elfman is composer du jour at the multiplex with his recent scores for THE WOLFMAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. So it seemed the perfect time to add him to the “9 on the 9th” lineup. Though I enjoy Elfman’s music, he is not someone I usually turn to when I just want to listen [...]

Originally, this month’s “9 on the 9th” post was going to be dedicated to romantic film scores as a precursor to that evil holiday–Valentine’s Day. Then I realized most of what I had on the list was film music that made me cry. Since I had already visited that topic recently, I didn’t want to [...]

Since we’re at the start of a new year and a new decade, I thought I’d break tradition a bit for this month’s “9 on the 9th” post. Rather than concentrating on the scores of a single composer or genre, I wanted to take a look at nine reasons why, 33 years later, I still [...]

So why is a Scrooge like me writing a blog post about holiday film scores when I’m usually so down on the season? Because I needed a topic for this month’s “9 on the 9th” post. And because the best kind of holiday score captures that indefinable, and probably non-existent, Norman Rockwell-like quality that can [...]

For this month’s “9 on the 9th” post, we focus on one of my favorite film composers, Golden Age or otherwise–Franz Waxman . Waxman got his start in Germany scoring films like Marlene Dietrich’s THE BLUE ANGEL (1932) before he was forced to flee the country when the Third Reich came into power. He composed his [...]