THE SOUNDTRACK TO ONE OF THIS HOLIDAY SEASON’S MOST ANTICIPATED FILMS
THE LAST SAMURAI TO BE RELEASED ON ELEKTRA RECORDS

100th Career Film Score by Academy Award™-Winning Composer Hans Zimmer!

(November 3, 2003) - New York, NY - On November 25, 2003, Elektra Records will release Academy Award™-winning composer Hans Zimmer's score from this holiday season's highly anticipated film, the epic action drama The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, Timothy Spall, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada and Koyuki.

The Last Samurai marks a career milestone for world-famous composer Hans Zimmer: his 100th film score. Zimmer began his film music career in the mid 1980s after achieving success as a pop recording artist in London, and entered film scoring through his collaborations with composer Stanley Meyers (The Deer Hunter, My Beautiful Launderette, Moonlighting), making his solo debut with A World Apart in 1988. His outstanding collection of work includes The Lion King, for which Zimmer won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Grammy and a Tony, in addition to six other Oscar-nominated scores, including those for Best Picture winners Rain Man and Driving Miss Daisy, along with The Thin Red Line, As Good As it Gets, The Preachers Wife and The Prince of Egypt. His other diverse credits include Mission Impossible 2, Black Hawk Down, A League of Their Own, True Romance, the Grammy-winning Crimson Tide, and five films with director Ridley Scott, including Thelma & Louise, Hannibal, the multi-award winning Gladiator and, most recently, Matchstick Men. A pioneer in the use of synthesizers, digital instruments, and the latest computer technology, Zimmer is widely considered to be the father of integrating electronic sound with traditional orchestral arrangements.

Set in Japan during the 1870s, The Last Samurai tells the story of Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), an American military officer hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country's army in the art of modern warfare. As the government attempts to eradicate the ancient Samurai warrior class, led by Kazumoto (Ken Watanabe), in preparation for more Westernized and trade-friendly policies, Algren finds himself unexpectedly affected by his encounters with Kazumoto and the Samurai, placing him at the center of a struggle between the two eras and worlds with only his own sense of honor to guide him.

“The first obstacle I faced with this score was that Japanese music can be truly inaccessible to most Western audiences”, explained Zimmer. “So I needed to immerse Cruise’s Algren character into this foreign world to such a degree that it ultimately becomes his home. The key to this was a concept I formed right at the beginning of the project: writing Western melodies informed by a Japanese aesthetic, to find a way of contrasting the romanticism of America with the formality and stillness of Japan. So I wrote a typically overblown, restless, and, ultimately, very Western theme for Algren; but one that also develops alongside the character as he’s drawn towards Katzumoto’s peaceful themes concerning power and nature.”

To highlight the formality of Japanese culture in his score, Zimmer makes great use of the large, wooden Japanese Taiko drum. “Everybody uses Taikos in their scores these days, but I felt that nobody had ever really captured their awesome and emotional power. For example, when you stand next to someone who hits an enormous Taiko with something resembling a baseball bat, your whole ribcage expands from the shear size of the sound; but if you tap them lightly, it’s like thunder rolling down a valley.” To achieve these sonic qualities for the film, Zimmer turned to electronics: “I spent three weeks recording and manipulating around 10,000 Taiko hits electronically until they started to sound natural, and then selected the best ones by their emotional resonance. The whole process of molding and sculpting these sounds in my studio was very Last Samurai, and I think it’s best summed up by Kazumoto himself in the movie, that you can spend your life looking for a perfect cherry-blossom and it wouldn’t be a wasted life.”

The Last Samurai will be released nationwide by Warner Bros. Pictures on December 5, 2003. The Elektra Records soundtrack will be in stores on November 25, 2003.

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