Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



THE BLACK STALLION
Composed and Conducted by CARMINE COPPOLA
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 107

Special 3-CD Edition!


The 1979 film version of The Black Stallion tells the story of a young boy named Alec Ramsey, who becomes shipwrecked on a desert island with only a wild Arabian stallion for a companion. Although the animal is untamed and dangerously fierce, boy and beast manage to save each other’s lives and forge a deep bond before they are finally rescued. They return to America, where Alec cares for “the Black,” gaining celebrity and— with the help of a kindly ex-trainer named Henry— eventually proving their worth in a climactic race against the nation’s most competitive racehorses. An early undertaking for Francis Ford Coppola's relatively new production company, Zoetrope, the end result is a timeless, elegant presentation of what had become one of the best-loved boys adventure stories when first published in 1941.

Primary scoring duties for The Black Stallion came to Coppola's father, Carmine. While Coppola focused on the orchestral scoring, Shirley Walker was asked to help develop new underscore for some of the film’s more intimate sequences, particularly those taking place on the island. Nyle Steiner, inventor of the EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument), was brought on board, together with guitarist Dick Rosmini, famed Nubian composer and soloist Hamza El Din (to highlight the story’s North African connection) and a handful of others. Coppola recorded the finished score at Burbank Studios outside of LA, at which point it was added to the film for a preview screening. Certain scenes were musically too strong, and Shirley Walker adapted and reworked a number of cues, while keeping Coppola’s themes.

The Black Stallion is a musical mélange of tonal colors, sometimes exotic, sometimes folksy, and often possessed of a classical elegance. Certain passages (many of them unused in the finished film) evoke the Golden Age of Hollywood, while others incorporate elements of jazz and bluegrass. Coppola’s material is widely varied, --- a reflection of the film’s stylistic range. Indeed, the film’s latter half, with its down home locales and more conventional “young underdog defies the odds” narrative, might almost be a different movie from the poetic island sequences, where the boy never speaks and emotion is conveyed through action and music alone.

At the time of the film's release, United Artists released an LP which became very popular. The same contents of this LP were later released on CD, paired with the sequel score to The Black Stallion Returns. For this release, Intrada has returned to the complete multitrack elements stored at MGM and has assembled the complete score into a stunning two-disc presentation, including all of the unused original material. Since this unused music is so diverse from the actual tracks used in the film (and often featuring large orchestra), they have been placed in film sequence along with their film version counterparts. As an added bonus, a third disc includes the original LP program, remastered in 24-bit for the ultimate sound quality.

This release is limited to 1500 copies.

INTRADA Special Collection - Volume 107
Retail Price: 29.99
AVAILABLE AUGUST 18th, 2009
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6272/.f