Silva Screen Records presents The Film Music Of Thomas Newman featuring Highlights From Seven Of Thomas Newman’s Oscar Nominated Soundtracks Including The Now Cult Status Theme For American Beauty, Six Feet Under, Shawshank Redemption and His Latest Score The Good German

The leading light of new generation of top Hollywood composers, Thomas Montgomery Newman’s background and influences stretch into the Golden Era of Hollywood, with his father being the famous nine-time Oscar Winning composer Alfred Newman and uncle Lionel Newman Head of 20th Century Fox Studios.

This excellent collection features Newman’s scores from the 1990s, when he matured as a composer and formed his own recognisable music language. They alternate between a more traditional orchestral sound and the unconventional, non-Western, scores using modified instruments, such as processed hurdy gurdy, detuned mandolin, xaphoon, and saz, as well as electronic elements to create a percussive, gamelan-like sound.

Newman’s scores for The Player, American Beauty, and Erin Brockovich exemplify his more percussive, "experimental" sound, while his scores for The Shawshank Redemption and Road to Perdition use conventional orchestration equally effectively.

"I remember a teacher once asked me, what makes music sad? What a brilliant question. His answer was - it takes on the physical qualities of something sad… I guess what's wonderful about music is that it's utterly abstract and yet has a great kind of sinuous, subjective emotional reaction. I like the idea that music can be dimensional, that it's not necessarily playing what's there." - Thomas Newman

Performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic and London Music Works