Composer Danny Elfman started out with the offbeat LA group Oingo Boingo, who did several film soundtracks, included Weird Science. Since then Elfman has created some 100 movie and TV soundtracks, among them Dick Tracy, Batman, Beetlejuice, Mission Impossible, both Men in Blacks, Good Will Hunting, The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Planet of the Apes, and Chicago.
This SACD is his first concert work, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. It was premiered at Carnegie Hall last year and then used in a re-furbishing of the IMAX film Deep Sea 3D, which included narration by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. Elfman reports it was a challenge to work without the usual visual input to drive his orchestral music. He reports that he began working out several dozen short unrelated improvisational compositions, which slowly seemed to jell into six separate movements that felt in some way connected. Elfman says he is forever attached to the music of the early 20th century, including Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner and Erich Korngold in the film music area, and Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Orff, Bartok and early Ellington in other music. He also reports he recently discovered Harry Partch, Philip Glass and Lou Harrison.
From such a background one can expect to hear a wild variety of imaginative music in Serenada Schizophrana, and one certainly does. You could almost point to a little of all the influences just mentioned – sometimes a couple of them going on simultaneously. There’s also a vocalese choir and solo voices in some of the selections; like the lyrics in the Cirque du Soleil, probably gibberish. Here are the titles of the six movements and a bonus track: Pianos, Blue Strings, A Brass Thing, The Quadruped Patrol, “I Forget,” Bells and Whistles, :49 End Tag, Improv for Alto Sax. It does for the most part sound like soundtrack music, but isn’t that what would be expected? And it’s fascinating soundtrack music at that, highlighted by the clarity and detail provided by hi-res surround reproduction. You can direct your own movie in your head to match up with the sounds around you.
– John Sunier
