AUDIO: On The Score With Danny Elfman
ON THE SCORE is sponsored by La-La Land Records
(Photo by Jimmy Ienner, Jr.)
Alfred Hitchcock may have had Bernard Herrmann. Francois Truffaut was in tune with Georges Delerue. And Steven Spielberg made beautiful music with John Williams. All of these legendary director-composer collaborations are well and good. But perhaps none can boast of the inspirational insanity that’s possessed the thirteen feature films and twenty-five years that Danny Elfman and Tim Burton have fed off each other’s fine madness.
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Taking the musician from his Oingo Boingo rock shows to the Hollywood scoring stage with 1985’s “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” Burton’s used Elfman to conjure a wonderland of beautifully eccentric scores to match his unhinged cinematic wonderlands. Icy choral fantasias, brooding super-heroics, warmly ghoulish melodies, tender familial bonds, primal pounding, and confections of rhythmic craziness have been heard through the likes of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Big Fish,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” – all works of strikingly unique filmmaking and composition. Yet all of Burton’s movies are bound with Elfman’s quickly recognizable voice for fairy tale melodies, no matter what musical dimensions they might be exploring.
And there might not be a more famous alternate reality in literature, and film than the one author Lewis Carroll first conjured in 1865, a wonderland that has been seen and heard since in numerous adaptations and sequels for all forms of media. This latest celluloid edition’s original story has a now 19 year-old Alice going back down under into the satirical realm, finding far more perilous adventurous as tries to keep her head against the Red Queen and her truly menacing minions. A pleasant tea party this “Alice” is not.
However, this is material that inspires Elfman to even lusher flights of dark fantasy, yet not the outright craziness that the composer unleashed for Burton in the past. For while “Alice in Wonderland” as a CD listen is a lush, almost classical affair as its music meets the iconic Mad Hatter, March Hare and Blue Caterpillar, the movie soundtrack itself is a more wonderfully demonic affair, filled with menacing percussion, eerie voices, organ and symphonic sounds worthy of were-beasts and a Christopher Lee-voiced Jabberwocky. In its rousingly epic way, “Alice in Wonderland” ranks as one of the composer’s most impressive works for his favorite Mad Hatter, music that’s as much about a Dark Knighted Alice as it is about the peculiar realm that Elfman’s always found within Burton’s imagination. Now in a new episode of “On the Score,” the composer reveals the journey he took after stepping once again into Tim Burton’s looking glass.
Listen to the previous ON THE SCORE show featuring HAROLD FALTERMEYER
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Comments
By ltgalloway on March 10th, 2010 at 11:22
I wonder if this is the image Elfman talks about.
http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alicepic/alice-in-wonderland/1book4.jpg
By jXe on March 10th, 2010 at 16:12
Great interview with Danny. I wonder why no mention of Wolfman? The Boingo question gets asked of him every now and then, I wish someone would just throw the idea at him at just doing a solo album… I mean he did the Little Things for Wanted, he doesnt have to tour. Id buy it!
By Smerrill on March 23rd, 2010 at 21:22
A little of Black Beauty and Sommersby in there. This might be one of Elfman’s best.
By JOHN DAVID QUIROS aka OI-BOY-66 on April 7th, 2010 at 07:18
YES HE IS MY GOD OF MUSIC… GOD I LOVE THIS MAN’S MIND,, OINGO BOINGO LIVES IN MY MIND… THANK YOU MR ELFMAN FOR ALL YOUR WORKS…
By Kristopher James on April 7th, 2010 at 21:16
Danny has been my hero since 4th grade!
By Mike Garcia on April 21st, 2010 at 22:23
Just bought The Wolfman soundtrack on Itunes and it’s Danny’s best work in years. Also loved the movie sort of the old horror movies that were made in the late 60′s.
By robin on June 21st, 2010 at 06:25
To answer you “jXe”. Danny has Serenada Schizophrana, orches. music. I hope that”s what you want or looking for!!
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