Howard Shore - Maps To The Stars OST (2014)

Soundtrack / Score

Support the artists you like by buying their music!
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/maps-to-the-stars/id912338793
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00M0GKN9K





Tracklist:
01. Howard Shore - Greyhound (1:57)
02. Howard Shore - Set Me Free (1:58)
03. Howard Shore - Stolen Waters (2:23)
04. Howard Shore - Wildfire (2:25)
05. Howard Shore - A Little Crazy (3:22)
06. Howard Shore - Walk Of Fame (1:31)
07. Howard Shore - Fire And Water (2:16)
08. Howard Shore - Asylum Corridor (1:45)
09. Howard Shore - Brother And Sister (1:06)
10. Howard Shore - Secrets Kill (2:43)
11. Howard Shore - Burn Out (1:57)
12. Howard Shore - Love Is Stronger Than Death (2:33)
13. Howard Shore - I'm Sorry (2:41)
14. Howard Shore - I Write Your Name (3:47)
15. Howard Shore - Liberty (2:11)
16. Howard Shore - Blanket Of Stars (4:05)

About:
The 2014 film Maps to the Stars connects the savage beauty of writer Bruce Wagner’s Los Angeles with the riveting film making of director David Cronenberg and a stellar ensemble cast to take a tour into the darkly comic heart of a Hollywood family chasing celebrity, one another and the relentless ghosts of their pasts. The result is a modern Hollywood Gothic at once about the ravenous 21st Century need for fame and validation. Howard Shore’s breathtaking score emphasizes the yearning, loss and fragility that lurk in the shadows underneath.

A collaboration between David Cronenberg and Howard Shore always starts with a phone call, and not once has Shore turned down a project. The film director and composer have been teaming up since 1979, and they've completed 15 feature films together. Their latest, Maps to the Stars, has its North American premiere this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“When I have a call from David and he’s talking about the film, I immediately start to do a lot of reading and researching,” explains the 67-year-old composer from an office in New York City. “The brain starts clicking on what the musical possibilities are for the story.”

Cronenberg, who has known Shore since they were little boys, calls the composer a “chameleon.” He thinks of Shore as an actor who plays each of the parts and praises his intuitive understanding of what the movie needs.

“We’ve evolved together creatively,” Cronenberg told CBC Music at last year's TIFF. “I’ve never felt the need to go anywhere else.”

Cronenberg came to Shore with the script for Maps to the Stars several years ago. In early conversations, the pair discussed casting and shooting locations, but not so many specifics when it comes to the music. Instead Shore looked to Bruce Wagner’s dark screenplay, which chronicles a Hollywood family chasing fame and fortune. The film premiered at Cannes in May, where a jury recognized it with an award for an original score best suited to a feature film.

Like past Cronenberg–Shore collaborations Scanners and Videodrome, the score for Maps to the Stars combines electronic sounds with a small group of acoustic instruments. Tabla and harp give it an ethereal feeling, especially layered on the dream-like electronics. But the instrumentation, Shore explains, is an afterthought to composing the harmony and counterpoint. 

Shore stepped into the music industry as a founding member of the Canadian band Lighthouse in the late '60s, playing saxophone. After three years of intensive touring and recording he left the group. His next gig took him to the Big Apple, where Shore was the first musical director for Saturday Night Live, even starring in the occasional sketch.

Shore’s work extends far beyond his collaborations with Cronenberg. He has scored films by Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton and, most famously, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings franchise, which has earned him two Academy Awards (and counting). With credits ranging from family flicks like Hugo and Mrs. Doubtfire to darker fare including The Silence of the Lambs and The Departed, Shore has proven his versatility several times over. He’s also written music for the concert hall, including a six-movement symphony and a piano concerto for Lang Lang. In 2008, his first opera, The Fly, was premiered in Paris with Plácido Domingo on the podium. Cronenberg did the staging. 

He describes the difference between composing for film and concert hall as painting with different brushes.

“Concert music is essentially for an acoustic environment, it could be electronic but it’s still dealing with a physical space and an audience that’s present during the performance.” But film music is more about the recording process, he explains, from microphone placement to the physics of the room. The process is “changing all the time.”

One of the biggest changes in the film world is moving on from the days of the grand, lush orchestral scores. 

“[The symphony] has a way of reaching us in ways that not a lot of other music really can. The subtleties of it are so vast and far-ranging,” explains Shore. But composers are turning to new techniques, like combining solo instruments and electronics in Maps to the Stars.

“Directors have different ways of using music to tell their stories,” he explains thoughtfully. So, too, do film composers. And that’s why Cronenberg keeps calling. 

Biography
Howard Shore has composed the scores for over 50 films, including The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, After Hours, Seven, and both the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. His collaborations with David Cronenberg have resulted in scores for the films The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, and Crash, spanning a nearly 20-year period by the year 2001. Shore's formal education came at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. From 1969-1972 he recorded with the group Lighthouse. He was one of the original creators of Saturday Night Live and served as its musical director from 1975-1980. In 2000, Shore began work on one of the most expansive projects of his career when he signed on to produce scores for film adaptations of the Lord of the Rings series. He spent a year just working on the first film, using Tolkien's texts and drawing from eighth and ninth century music sources to try to evoke the books' magical worlds. Upon the completion of the Lords series in 2001, Shore created the scores for several Hollywood blockbusters including Panic Room (2002), The Aviator (2005), A History of Violence (2005), The Departed (2006), Doubt (2008), and Hugo (2011). In 2012 Shore, along with director Peter Jackson, returned to Middle Earth for the first of three Hobbit films.