Read how Corigliano's Red Violin film score was turned into a 17-minute chaconne to end the soundtrack album, then how that chaconne was turned into the first movement of a violin concerto based on The Red Violin.

A number of American orchestras will play the work this season.

On January 11th, 2004 at 8PM Eastern, radio station WHYY in Philadelphia will broadcast the Philadelphia Orchestra concert of the work.
Normally available for internet streaming right here: http://www.whyy.org/91FM/live.html

Well, Adams needs to get over his odd prejudice towards film music first - though I have seem him speak fondly of Elfman.<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey Doug,

Any relation? I once spoke to Adams after a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in which he conducted Virgil Thompson's THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS accompanied to the b & w film. I'm surprised of his prejudice towards film music considering how cinematic his operas like NIXON IN CHINA and THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER are structured. I've always felt that he would do better than Philip Glass in films, due to his accessability (Corigliano's goal and relationship to his audiences), but there is still that stigma from concert composers about film, but the differences are slowly ebbing due to the increase in concerts playing film music in their programs over the last fifteen years.

Adams, interviewed by John Walters:

quote:

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If a really outlandish project came along, like a film score with a director you admired, or a pop album with some unusual singer . . .would you grasp that?

Oh I certainly would like to, but these seductions always come with a hidden price tag. Commercial films in the US are so market-driven that there are few creative directors who are able to continue for more than one or two films. If they become a success they are invariably destroyed by this very success. Money becomes the major issue, and almost every succeeding film is ruined by the baggage of this budget. In Hollywood you're only as good as your last film. It's an impossibly bad environment to work in as a composer. Leonard Bernstein tried it only once ("On the Waterfront") and the experience was so traumatic that he never did it a second time. So I've never had any interest in working in big commercial films.

Could you have worked on, say, Twin Peaks, or 'sex, lies and videotape'?

I don't know. I think most of the people who work in the film business do only that, living a life completely devoted to the realities and the rhythm of the industry. Someone like Danny Elfman, for instance, has had a huge success writing scores that are clever manipulations of the old formulas of film music with a few added borrowings from Bartok, Stravinsky or Prokofiev. The scores are recorded in zillion-channel mixes and then blasted through monstrous speakers at the audience along with bone-crunching sound effects. It's hard not to be overwhelmed in one way or another. But this is not an arena for real creativity, and that is a shame, because music and film are made for each other and ought to be able to achieve overwhelming aesthetic power. Economics, though, simply forbid it. It's not an exaggeration to say that television and comic books and popular iconography really run our cultural life. What comes out of official popular culture in the US, whether it's from Hollywood or the pop music and TV industry is absolutely, utterly corrupted.

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So for Adams to do a film score, I suppose it would have to be a project that would really, really appeal to him. He has scored two documentaries, a 1982 film called Matter of Heart and in 1999 An American Tapestry, which was apparently a Showtime production. I don't know much about either of them though.

I have to learn to check these links out when people first post them, because the article Dinko pointed to above now appears to be gone. Sounds like it was interesting though. I still haven't really explored Corigliano's work, though I've been meaning to for quite some time.

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Oscar an honored guest at Corigliano concerto
Statuette drew crowds at debut of composer's 'The Red Violin'
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By Jamie Stiehm
Sun Staff Writer
Originally published September 28, 2003

The Oscar that John Corigliano won three years ago for composing the movie score for The Red Violin stood last week, enclosed in glass, in the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
Corigliano was in town for the world debut of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Dallas Symphony and San Francisco Ballet and based upon his movie score for The Red Violin. It was the first night of the new season and the BSO had gone all out.

Large, red letters shouted The Red Violin from the mezzanine, brilliant red faux-chandeliers dangled from the ceiling of the lobby, and black-suited bartenders served Red Violins (champagne, chambord and a splash of vodka) in martini glasses whose rims had been dipped in sparkling scarlet sugar.

As classical musical lovers pressed through the lobby, a group began forming around the gleaming figurine. Dozens of audience members, more young than old, stopped to stare. A few cameras flashed. One man, perhaps in his 20s, laughingly posed in front of the statue, arm outstretched and hand curved as though he were accepting an award.

Displaying the Oscar in the lobby was the brainchild of Gregory Tucker, the symphony's 41-year-old vice-president for public relations. At a time of graying symphony audiences, Tucker and his peers at other orchestras are constantly on the lookout for that extra something that can attract the attention of the under-40 crowd and form the beginning of a relationship.

A talented composer who creates orchestral works acclaimed by both classical and pop culture worlds is rare. And Corigliano, at 65, the silver-haired and strikingly handsome son of a former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, does just that. In 1991, he won the Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Composition for his Symphony No. 1; in 2001 a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2 and in 2000, for Best Musical Score, the Oscar, that glamorous and gleaming symbol of Hollywood.

Tucker knew an opportunity when he saw one. "It's not every day that a symphony gets to open its season with a world premiere by such a noted composer, after the first movement won an Academy Award," he said. "The stars were aligned, so not to seize the opportunity to make the most of it would be foolish."

As soon as the performance date was set, the marketing professional telephoned Corigliano in New York and suggested he bring the not-so-small statue to Baltimore. Corigliano was willing, but he was going to be in Helsinki - or was it Montreal? - and the thing tends to wreak havoc with airport security.

There things stood, with how to get it here from there unresolved. Enter Mark Adamo, Corigliano's friend and fellow composer. Adamo wrapped the statue in styrofoam and clear masking tape, put it in a shopping bag and took it on the Amtrak train from New York to Baltimore where it stood on display at the symphony hall, ensconced in a glass case on loan from the Walters Art Museum.

"It created a buzz and it was huge. People crowded around and got their picture taken with him," Tucker said later. "It's about enhancing the experience."

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NP Shout your fame (Thornton)

Any relation? I once spoke to Adams after a concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in which he conducted Virgil Thompson's THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS accompanied to the b & w film. I'm surprised of his prejudice towards film music considering how cinematic his operas like NIXON IN CHINA and THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER are structured. I've always felt that he would do better than Philip Glass in films, due to his accessability (Corigliano's goal and relationship to his audiences), but there is still that stigma from concert composers about film, but the differences are slowly ebbing due to the increase in concerts playing film music in their programs over the last fifteen years.>>>

Nope, no relation. But he did convince me that I'd have a much simpler life in music if I avoided using my first name, which is John. (Doug is the middle.)

Yes, I'm surprised that he's been so vocal about his distaste for film music, especially since it seems to be somewhat contradictory to his actions. He's gone out of his way to bring people like Rosenman to the general public. And he's composed a couple of film scores himself--though he publicly decries them as something he did for money instead of writing "real" pieces.

Personally, I think he's a phenomenal talent and he could bring something genuinely fresh to film - not unlike Corigliano. If he doesn't want to wander too close to hackery - well, then follow Corigliano's lead. Work only when you find a project that will allow the artistic leeway you seek. Just stay away from Pacino fronted period pieces!

That's an unfair slap on Corigliano doing REVOLUTION for Hugh Hudson, who originally wanted him to score GREYSTOKE, but Corigliano was too busy working on his opera.

Hudson did screw him with the way the score on REVOLUTION was used, but the music he composed for the film was far from "hackery"
as you said. Read Paul Andrew McLean's article REVOLUTION - JOHN CORIGLIANO: THE UNRECORDED SCORE, FSM, Sep. #25, 1992.

You have no idea how many films Corigliano was offered and turned down after ALTERED STATES, but film scoring was not his calling as far as what his personal artistic goals were at the time.

Thanks! By the way, that should have read "then follow Corigliano's lead" not "then DON'T follow...," and now does. Didn't mean to stick the Revolutions score under the "hackery" banner. The film however...

http://www.moviemusic.com/soundtrack/redviolin-concerto