Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



THE SHADOW
Composed and Conducted by JERRY GOLDSMITH

INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 204

Universal Pictures' 1994 The Shadow allowed composer Jerry Goldsmith to put his imprimatur on the darkly gothic phase of the superhero genre that developed in the 1990s. Writing for a large orchestra, Goldsmith created a score that found the perfect mix between heroism and menace and resulted in one of his longest scores. Goldsmith’s main title music introduces many of the score’s core elements: an unnerving pitch bend, played by synthesizers; a grandly powerful brass melody for the Shadow; and a bouncing electronic figure that will become a key rhythmic device throughout the score. Goldsmith’s classic-sounding Shadow theme and the score’s large scale orchestrations complemented the film’s period setting and lavish look, while the composer’s trademark electronics helped better position the film for a contemporary audience.

When the original soundtrack for The Shadow was released in 1994, it presented only a fraction of Jerry Goldsmith’s hour-and-twenty-minute score, reducing the composer’s wealth of action material to two cues and barely hinting at the complete score’s range and scope. In particular, Goldsmith’s elegant and haunting love theme—one of his best of the ’90s—plays only briefly at the very end of the album. This premiere presentation of the complete score represents one of the most substantial restorations of a Goldsmith soundtrack, illuminated by the fact that just 30 minutes of the full 85-minute score appeared on the original 1994 soundtrack album. To present this dynamic work, Universal provided access to the original 48-track digital session elements plus the multi-track film mixes and live two-track session mixes and remixes. The result is a 2-CD set featuring the entire score and the original Arista CD program.

In the film, character Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) plays an expatriate American who becomes a vicious warlord in Tibet before a Tibetan mystic redeems him and teaches Cranston the powers of the mind that will allow him to become the Shadow. In New York, taking the guise of a millionaire playboy, Cranston becomes involved with Margo Lane (Penelope Anne Miller), the only person who seems immune to the Shadow’s mental powers. John Lone plays the Shadow’s Mongolian nemesis Shiwan Khan, who also studied under Tulku. Khan plans to conquer the world with his army of followers and an atomic bomb.

INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 204
Retail Price: $29.99
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For track listing and sound samples, please visit
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