FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASESINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS
“Ultimately, ‘Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas’ is a love story,” says award-winning composer Harry Gregson-Williams. “And for me, the challenge of scoring an animated movie is forgetting we’re talking about two drawings falling in love – just like I had to forget that ‘Antz’ was about insects and ‘Chicken Run’ was about poultry. ‘Honest’ might seem a strange word to use in this context, but if you try to fool the audience musically they won’t believe you. What you want is to be plunged into a world you can believe in so you can invest your emotions in the characters. That’s why there’s no tinkly cartoon music to remind you that it’s really Brad Pitt in a sound booth and not Sinbad in a ship.”
Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas – Original Motion Picture Score (set for release June 24, 2003, on DreamWorks Records) is a commanding, entirely classical orchestral score, composed and conducted by Gregson-Williams for the DreamWorks film, which opens nationwide July 2, 2003. The score also represents the work of an 80-piece orchestra and the esteemed Metro Voices choir, the contributions of which were recorded at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios.
Gregson-Williams has also created the scores for such varied live-action pictures as the thriller “Phone Booth,” the Brad Pitt/Robert Redford vehicle “Spy Game” and the upcoming films “Veronica Guerin” (about a true-story murder in Ireland) and “The Rundown” (starring The Rock). Additionally, he has scored the animated hits “Antz,” “Chicken Run” and Academy Award-winning blockbuster “Shrek.” The composer reveals that, like these projects, “Sinbad” afforded him an opportunity to stretch creatively.
“‘Shrek’ was so irreverent,” he notes. “The score was as over-the-top as the characters. ‘Sinbad’ is also set in a fantastic world, but the character development and wide emotional arc are unusual for animation [its screenwriter also penned ‘Gladiator’]. Even how it looks is different – a hybrid of traditional and more contemporary techniques.” He is quick to praise the more than 550 artists, animators and technicians at DreamWorks’ Glendale Animation Studio who worked on “Sinbad” for more than three years.
“The music had to mirror the emphasis on character and the mix of classic and modern, he continues. “At its core, yes, it’s an orchestral score, but there are overtones of other elements throughout, such as ethnic – particularly Middle Eastern – textures, percussion and flutes.”
The “Sinbad” story and the performances that bring it to life are equally rich.
Academy Award nominee Brad Pitt (“Twelve Monkeys”), Academy Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Chicago”), three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “Love Field”), Joseph Fiennes (“Shakespeare In Love”) and Dennis Haysbert (“Far From Heaven,” TV’s “24”) lend their voices to the animated action-adventure film.
Sinbad (Brad Pitt), the most daring and notorious rogue ever to sail the seven seas, has spent his life asking for trouble, and trouble has finally answered … in a big way. Framed for stealing one of the world’s most priceless and powerful treasures – The Book Of Peace – Sinbad has one chance to find and return the precious book or his best friend, Proteus (Joseph Fiennes), will die. But Sinbad decides not to take that chance and instead sets a course for the fun and sun of the Fiji Islands.
But the best laid plans …
Proteus’ beautiful betrothed, Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones), has stowed away, determined to make sure Sinbad fulfills his mission. Now, the man who put the “bad” in Sinbad is about to find out how bad bad can be. It’s never a good thing when Eris, the goddess of chaos (Michelle Pfeiffer), has it out for you, and Eris lives up to her name – dispatching both monstrous creatures and the elements to do battle with Sinbad along the way. There is even mutiny afoot – times four – when Sinbad’s loyal dog Spike switches allegiances. Adding insult to injury, the crew has decided they like taking orders from Marina … better than from Sinbad.
“Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas” was directed by Tim Johnson (“Antz”) and Patrick Gilmore and produced by Mireille Soria (“Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron”) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (“Shrek”), from a screenplay by John Logan (“Gladiator”).
Throughout the “Sinbad” score, composer Gregson-Williams juxtaposes the epic and heroic with the intimate and personal. Sinbad’s theme, which commences near the end of the opening music titled “Let The Games Begin,” is forceful and portentous. “Early in the film, he’s a bit of an anti-hero,” says Gregson-Williams, “a bit of a loser, a thief, self-obsessed, can’t get a girl … But he then transforms into a noble hero. There are many ways of translating the heroic to the scoring stage – including a bank of 12 French horns.”
On the other hand, Marina’s theme, heard first in “The Stowaway,” is delicate and exotic. Many
of the story’s twists are instigated by the character of Eris, whose bouncy, mischievous theme is woven throughout the score, then climaxes during “Sinbad Returns And Eris Pays Up.”
In terms of narrative musical highlights, Sinbad’s initial indecision is crystallized in the gentle “Is
It The Shore Or The Sea?” when he puts Marina’s hand on the wheel of his ship. Immediately thereafter, their themes cross in the 10-minute piece “Tartarus.”
That Gregson-Williams would be scoring animated films is perhaps not surprising. His first job out of school was teaching music to children, including a year in Egypt working with the disadvantaged and six months in a program with similar aims in Kenya’s Rift Valley. “I feel very connected to children,” attests the father of a four-year-old daughter and three-year-old son, “and a substantial amount of my output has been geared towards entertaining smaller people.”
In fact, his musical career began when he was a youngster. Born in England to a musical family (brother Rupert is also a film composer), Gregson-Williams earned a scholarship from the music school of St. John’s College in Cambridge at the age of seven. An outstanding singer, by the age of 13 he had appeared as a soloist on more than a dozen records, toured extensively in Europe and performed on radio and television. He also earned a coveted scholarship to the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama in London, where he studied piano and violin.
After his teaching adventures, Gregson-Williams returned to London. “I found myself making a go at seeing if I could do films,” he informs. “I had no track record so I was fortunate how it all panned out.”
He started as an orchestrator and arranger for composer Stanley Myers, quickly learning the techniques of film scoring and forming relationships with other top composers, including Hans Zimmer, who had also been a protégé of Myers. It was a natural progression for Gregson-Williams to work on projects that Zimmer scored and recorded in the U.K., including “The Lion King,” “Crimson Tide,” “Beyond Rangoon” and “K2.”
His first full score credit came with the independently released psychological thriller “White Angel” (1993). His first major scores, for Nicolas Roeg’s “Full Body Massage” and “Hotel Paradise,” followed in 1994.
In June 1995, Gregson-Williams traveled to Los Angeles to collaborate with Zimmer on “Muppet Treasure Island” and stayed on for Zimmer’s next film, “Broken Arrow.” In 1996, he recorded his much-lauded score for Billie August’s “Smilla’s Sense Of Snow,” which launched his career as a Hollywood composer.
Gregson-Williams later composed music for “The Rock,” forming a relationship with producer Jerry Bruckheimer. He also created additional music for “The Fan,” leading to another ongoing association, with director Tony Scott. He teamed with rock guitarist Trevor Rabin and Zimmer for work on the soundtracks to the Bruckheimer-produced films “Armageddon” and the Scott-directed “Enemy Of The State.”
With composer John Powell, he earned an Annie Award nomination from the International Animated Film Society for his work on “Antz” (1998), the first computer-animated success from PDI/DreamWorks. He subsequently composed cues for Zimmer’s score for “The Prince Of Egypt” (1998). The critically acclaimed “Chicken Run,” which Gregson-Williams scored with Powell, premiered in 2000.
In 2001, “Shrek,” which Gregson-Williams also composed with Powell, earned a nomination for the prestigious Anthony Asquith Award For Film Music, bestowed by BAFTA (the British equivalent of the Academy Awards). Moreover, the “Shrek” score won the Annie for Outstanding Individual Achievement For Music Score For An Animated Feature Production, and the “Shrek” soundtrack album, which included a score selection, earned a Grammy Award nod for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album.
In 2004, Gregson-Williams’ credits will range from the intense and decidedly adult Denzel Washington film “Man On Fire” to the family fare of “Shrek 2.”
He affirms that this cinematic breadth is no accident. “The danger is to be pigeonholed,” he says. “The desire to find movies in all genres and in all sizes is a no-brainer. From a creative standpoint, to go from a film like ‘Phone Booth,’ whose score started as a series of sounds on the street, to the orchestral nature of a film like ‘Sinbad’ is the most important thing for me. It’s something I have to do.”
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SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS: www.sinbad-themovie.com
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