Film Scores

Tuesday's Disney music concert is just one of many movie-music events happening in the L.A. area this month, suggesting that film music in the concert hall is a growing trend. This weekend, John Williams has been conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a series of film-music concerts labeled "Music From the City of Angels." Next Sunday, Italian maestro Ennio Morricone ("The Mission," "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") will make his West Coast debut conducting his own scores at Hollywood Bowl.

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, a prolific British composer, arranger and pianist whose film scores were nominated three times for Academy Awards, has died in New York City. He was 76. Bennett died Dec. 24 after a brief illness, his publisher Novello & Co said in a statement. [For the Record, 2:50 p.m. PST, Dec. 30: A previous version of this post cited the title of the film "Far From the Madding Crowd" as "Far From the Maddening Crowd. " ] In 1967, Bennett was nominated for his first Oscar for the score of " Far From the Madding Crowd.

A film's music is often considered a character itself, and this season the roles composers have to play aren't getting any easier. Talking about love between the emotionally unstable is one thing, but how, for instance, does that sound? Or when a character speaks to God, should God answer back with silence or an orchestra? And what of a period piece that isn't a period piece, or a piece that's six periods at once? Here we offer a look at just a handful of 2012's notable film scores. Mychael Danna It was early September, and Mychael Danna was nearing the end of his eight months of work on "Life of Pi," the composer's third collaboration with director Ang Lee. The 80-piece orchestra assembled at the 20th Century Fox lot was on a break, and Danna, in a rare quiet moment in the studio's harp room, was asked to reflect on his initial conversations with Lee about the film.

Composer Danny Elfman was deep into completing his work on David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" when the director called an audible. Perhaps, the musician remembers Russell telling him, there should be no original music. Elfman said he tried to stay calm. "Maybe we should sit on that thought for a bit," Elfman said he told Russell. If Elfman was frustrated, forgive him, as his time in 2012 was rather limited. "Silver Linings Playbook" is one of six full-length films released this year featuring an Elfman score, and one of three, including "Hitchcock" and "Promised Land," to be in theaters during awards season.

Composer Danny Elfman was deep into completing his work on David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" when the director called an audible. Perhaps, the musician remembers Russell telling him, there should be no original music. Elfman said he tried to stay calm. "Maybe we should sit on that thought for a bit," Elfman said he told Russell. If Elfman was frustrated, forgive him, as his time in 2012 was rather limited. "Silver Linings Playbook" is one of six full-length films released this year featuring an Elfman score, and one of three, including "Hitchcock" and "Promised Land," to be in theaters during awards season.

Broadway and film star Debbie Reynolds will open the Pacific Symphony's 1997-98 Pops series at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Nov. 21. The series also will include appearances by Wayne Newton (Feb. 6-7), Bernadette Peters (March 6-7), Davis Gaines (April 17-18) and Marvin Hamlisch (June 5-6, 1998); joint appearances by saxophonist David Sanborn and Michael Kamen, composer of "Mr. Holland's Opus" and other film scores (Jan. 16-17); and Christmas programs Dec.

The American Film Institute, which has produced a series of TV specials in recent years about great moments in film history, is taking its act live. It has sent out ballots to filmmakers, performers, critics and others to name the top 25 movie scores of all time, with the winners to be unveiled in a performance at the Hollywood Bowl Sept. 23. Excerpts from the winning selections will be played by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra while scenes from the movies are projected on the Bowl's video

If you're listening carefully, you can hear an early clue to solving the Rosebud mystery in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," long before it's revealed at the end. Composer Bernard Herrmann has tipped us off in his music for the movie. If you have doubts, get over to the new exhibit on the role of music in film at the Library of Congress / Ira Gershwin Gallery on the second floor of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The often-floated idea that symphonic film music needs more exposure just doesn't wash. Thanks to multiplexes and DVDs, more people hear the symphonic music of John Williams than Mozart and Beethoven combined. Such ensembles as the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra and regional outfits regularly, even lovingly, play film scores of past and present.

Ann Ronell, who was writing popular songs and film scores when women were not writing much American music at all, has died. Jackie Laster said her longtime friend, who was the widow of film producer Lester Cowan, was 85 when she died Saturday in New York City. Miss Ronell's song credits range from the children's classic "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" to the soulful and often recorded blues standard "Willow Weep for Me."

A film's music is often considered a character itself, and this season the roles composers have to play aren't getting any easier. Talking about love between the emotionally unstable is one thing, but how, for instance, does that sound? Or when a character speaks to God, should God answer back with silence or an orchestra? And what of a period piece that isn't a period piece, or a piece that's six periods at once? Here we offer a look at just a handful of 2012's notable film scores. Mychael Danna It was early September, and Mychael Danna was nearing the end of his eight months of work on "Life of Pi," the composer's third collaboration with director Ang Lee. The 80-piece orchestra assembled at the 20th Century Fox lot was on a break, and Danna, in a rare quiet moment in the studio's harp room, was asked to reflect on his initial conversations with Lee about the film.

British composer George Fenton, 61, is several decades into a career writing for film, theater and television. His film scores alone cover a great deal of ground, ranging from high-toned period pieces to smart comedies and much in between - "Dangerous Liaisons," "The Fisher King," "The History Boys,""Groundhog Day" and dozens of others. He's been nominated for five Academy Awards, including for the score of "Gandhi" with collaborator Ravi Shankar. Fenton's early days involved acting, including an important part in "Forty Years On," a play by Alan Bennett and some English television.

Anze Kopitar summed up the incredible dagger of a short-handed goal almost casually — say, one step removed from nonchalant. "It worked out pretty well," Kopitar said Tuesday. This wasn't a garden-variety goal scored by the Kings center in November. It was the goal rattling the psyche of the Blues in Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series Monday in St. Louis. These are the sort of opponent-deflating goals that can define a series. The score came with 5:44 left in the opening period to give the Kings a 2-0 lead on their way to a 5-2 victory and a 2-0 series lead against the Blues.

The first time Hans Zimmer made Pharrell Williams' head spin was in 2005, when the former was composing the score for the Ron Howard blockbuster "The Da Vinci Code. " Williams, half of the lauded hip-hop production duo the Neptunes and a third of the experimental rock group N.E.R.D., had heard through a mutual friend, music-supervisor Kathy Nelson, that he and Zimmer (one of Hollywood's most in-demand composers, with Oscar- and Grammy-winning credits including "The Lion King" and "The Dark Knight")

Extremely soft and incredibly far away. This was the scene as film composer Alexandre Desplat presided over one of the scoring sessions for the film "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. " The film's premiere was just a month away and Desplat was trying to get the sound of the piano to be even lighter than pianissimo. Cut to: pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, watching and listening to Desplat's direction via a video screen. The French virtuoso had been in Vienna two days before, now he was isolated in a Manhattan recording studio two floors below Desplat and the full orchestra.

As the lone artistic voice behind Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor regularly had the pleasure of answering to no one during NIN's approximately 20-year run of emotionally damaged hard rock. Now in his mid-40s and into his second career as a film composer, Reznor not only is having to learn a new discipline, but adjust to ceding control and holding back his reflex of saying 'no.' Take, for instance, the music that opens David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," which marks the second film score for Reznor and his latter-days NIN producer Atticus Ross.

Shirley Walker, an Emmy-winning composer and orchestrator who broke ground for women in the film industry by scoring major movies and carving out a niche in the action genre, including a prolific career writing music for animated superheroes on TV, has died. She was 61. Walker, who was also known as a mentor to young composers, died Nov. 30 at Washoe Medical Center in Reno of complications after a stroke, her family said.

Looking something like a futuristic drive-in theater, Hollywood Bowl sported a 56-by-21-foot movie screen across the top of the shell on Friday and Saturday for a program of film scores performed by John Mauceri and the Bowl Orchestra. Call it a high-concept concert: Mauceri conducting music from Hollywood classics in sync (more or less) with projected clips.

While vintage horror films are being dusted off for annual Halloween marathons, one band is combing through classic titles to solidify its set list. The members of Nilbog love horror. But they appreciate the sinister, electro-rock orchestrations that anchor the slasher flicks even more. The Los Angeles-based, five-piece act covers the scores of horror, sci-fi and giallo films (an Italian genre of horror fiction such as Dario Argento's "Sleepless"), and they are certain there's no other outfit like them.

For this sequel to 2007's far-roaming critique of the beauty industry, "America the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments" filmmaker Darryl Roberts narrowed his focus — a bit. The result is a mixed bag of a film that scores not when rehashing our national obsession with dieting but when it challenges the underpinnings of a national obesity epidemic. Loosely structured around Roberts' quest to get healthier through diet and exercise instead of prescription drugs, the film raises serious questions about undue influence — Big Pharma and medical professionals, the dieting industry and government health standards.