CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

The Final Countdown [reissue] - John Scott - JOS
Mulan - Harry Gregson-Williams - Disney (import)

IN THEATERS TODAY

IFC is set to open the film The Nest (score by Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire), starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, in some parts of the country where theaters are open.

Quartet has just released a two-disc edition of John Addison's light-hearted orchestral score for SWASHBUCKLER, the 1976 pirate adventure starring Robert Shaw, Genevieve Bujold, James Earl Jones, Peter Boyle, Beau Bridges, and Geoffrey Holder (yes, there is a big studio film where Robert Shaw is the romantic hero and James Earl Jones is his sidekick). Quartet's release features the full original score plus extra cues on Disc One, and the original 1976 LP sequencing on Disc Two.

CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Der Bestatter - Raphael Benjamin Meyer - Alhambra
Mussolini: The Untold Story [reissue] - Laurence Rosenthal - Intrada Special Collection
One Potato, Two Potato - Gerald Fried - Caldera
Outlander: Season 5 - Bear McCreary - Sony
Swashbuckler - John Addison - Quartet

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The latest release from the Varese Sarabande CD Club is a Deluxe Edition of the score to WILD WILD WEST, director Barry Sonnenfeld's infamous yet lavish 1999 feature film version of the beloved 1960s Western/spy/fantasy TV series. The surprising but inspired choice to score the film was Elmer Bernstein, who wrote some of Hollywood's greatest Western scores. Varese Sarabande released a score CD featuring 30 minutes of the film's music back in 1999; the Deluxe Edition features a whopping 76 minutes of music, including cues composed by or with Elmer's son, Peter Bernstein.

Varese Sarabande is expected to announce one new limited edition CD Club release today. 

Looking over the list of new films I managed to see in theaters in 2020 in the two-and-a-half months before the shutdown, I was surprised to notice that more of their scores have received vinyl-only releases (Bacurau, Emma., The Gentlemen, The Invisible Man, The Lodge, Ordinary Love, The Photograph) than have been released on CD (Birds of Prey, Color Out of Space, Gretel & Hansel, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Way Back).

Some of the latest scores to have vinyl releases announced include Terence Blanchard's score for Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, Nathan Halpern's score for Swallow, and of course the 8-LP set of Ludwig Goransson's The Mandalorian, due in November from Mondo.

Emmy-winning composer Billy Goldenberg died on August 4, 2020 at the age of 84. Born William Leon Goldenberg in Brooklyn, New York, his parents were both musicians – his mother was a violinist, and his father, Morris Goldenberg, was a percussionist as well as an author and a teacher at Juilliard. The younger Goldenberg began playing the piano at the age of 5, and after his graduation from Columbia College he wrote songs for the popular children’s series The Kukla, Fran and Ollie Show.

He worked steadily on Broadway productions through the 1960s.  He was the pianist and composer of incidental music for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and provided dance arrangements and dance music for such Broadway musicals as 110 in the Shade (based on The Rainmaker) and Henry, Sweet Henry (based on The World of Henry Orient).

In the late 1960s, he served as musical director for the TV special Elvis ‘68 and began working for Stanley Wilson, music director at Universal Television. It was in television that he would go on to spend most of his scoring career, though he had more than a dozen feature films to his credit, including the Elvis comedy-drama Change of Habit; the coming-of-age romance Red Sky at Morning; Herbert Ross’ film version of Woody Allen’s stage hit Play It Again, Sam, the first film to pair Allen with Diane Keaton; the change-of-pace Barbra Streisand vehicle Up the Sandbox; the cult classic Hollywood murder mystery The Last of Sheila, from a screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins; Peter Hyams’ feature directing debut Busting; Stanley Kramer’s conspiracy thriller The Domino Principle; and the comedy-drama Reuben, Reuben, which earned Tom Conti a Best Actor nomination, opposite Kelly McGillis in her first film role. (Goldenberg may be one of the few film composers of the past who still has more scores released on vinyl than on CD)

Goldenberg’s scoring career at Universal began with episodes of It Takes a Thief and the supernatural mystery movie Fear No Evil, starring Louis Jourdan (as well as its sequel, Ritual of Evil). His assignment to score the three-story pilot for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery was especially notable as one of the segments was directed by Steven Spielberg. Goldenberg would work with Spielberg again on “Murder by the Book,” the first regular episode of Columbo, “LA 2017,” the off-beat, sci-fi themed episode of The Name of the Game, and, most famously, the movie-of-the-week Duel, directed by Spielberg from a Richard Matheson teleplay and story, which was a critical and popular smash that helped propel Spielberg to his feature directing career. (Years later, Goldenberg would score three episodes of the Spielberg-produced Amazing Stories, including stories directed by Peter Hyams and Paul Bartel, and one written by Spielberg’s sister Anne, co-writer of Big).

Before scoring Spielberg’s Columbo episode, he had scored the second of the show’s two pilot movies, Ransom for a Dead Man, and his witty approach helped set the tone for the show’s music throughout its run, with his main theme showing up as a source cue in several episodes. One of Goldenberg’s most notable TV successes was the original musical Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, directed by legendary editor Sam O’Steen (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown), and starring Maureen Stapleton and Charles Durning. It won three Emmys and received 11 nominations, including an Emmy and two nominations for Goldenberg and lyricists Alan & Marilyn Bergman. Goldenberg and the Bergmans reteamed with teleplay writer Jerome Kass to adapt the film into the 1978 Broadway musical Ballroom, which marked director-choreographer Michael Bennett’s first show after A Chorus Line. The musical, starring Dorothy Loudon and Vincent Gardenia, ran for 116 performances, winning one Tony (for Choreography) and eight nominations.

Particularly during the 1970s and ‘80s, Goldenberg would become one of the most prolific and honored composers in television. He won Emmys for the Lives of Benjamin Franklin episode “The Rebel;” the miniseries King, starring Paul Winfield as MLK and Cicely Tyson as Coretta; the miniseries Rage of Angels, from the Sidney Sheldon book; and the "special musical material" for Stardust Ballroom. He earned a total of 24 Primetime Emmy nominations over the course of his career in a variety of categories, and one Daytime Emmy nomination. His memorable TV projects include the delightful theme for Banacek as well as scores for The UFO Incident, Helter Skelter, and the miniseries remake of Around the World in 80 Days. For one of his final projects, he teamed up with his friend Beatrice Arthur for the one-woman show Bea Arthur on Broadway, serving as her accompanist and receiving co-credit for the show’s conception. (Research sources for this article include the Variety obituary by Jon Burlingame and the Hollywood Reporter obituary by Mike Barnes; special thanks to Jon Burlingame for pointing out some errors in the original posted version of this column, regarding the date of Goldenberg's passing and his total Emmy wins/nominations, which have now been corrected).