Intrada Soundtrack Forum

INTRADA Announces:



THE MONKEY KING
Composed by CHRISTOPHER YOUNG
The Slovak National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nic Raine
Lucnica Chorus conducted by Allan Wilson
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 338

For the 2014 Chinese production of The Monkey King, composer Christopher Young composed a breathtaking, epic score. Hired well in advance of the visual effects completion, Young wrote most of his music without the benefit of finished effects shots or a locked film. Armed with this creative freedom, Young crafted an expansive score of a type not commonly seen in present-day Hollywood. The music brims and bristles with lush melody, ornamenting the ethereal beauty and majesty of the various gods, fueling the stormy wrath of the Bull Demon King, and charting Sun Wukong’s journey from a playful, wide-eyed innocent to a towering avatar of fury and divine retribution. "The thing that holds the score together, in a way that perhaps differentiates it from a lot of contemporary orchestral action scores, is the ever-presence of melody," comments Young. He infused the already sumptuous score with an array of Asian colors and textures, including ehru (a bowed Chinese fiddle), guzheng (a type of Chinese zither), shamisen (a three-string Japanese lute derived from the Chinese sanxian), pipa (a four-string pear-shaped Chinese lute) and assorted winds and percussion.

The sessions for The Monkey King took place at the Slovak Radio Concert Hall, with Nic Raine conducting the 80-piece Slovak National Symphony Orchestra and Young’s frequent collaborator Allan Wilson conducting the 40-member Lucnica Chorus. To present The Monkey King on album, Young drew inspiration from English composer Gustav Holst and his famous orchestral suite The Planets, arranging his cues into ten selections titled after Chinese deities and other prominent characters from the film.

The legend of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and how he came to wreak havoc in Heaven and challenge the power of the gods, is one of the most enduring stories in all Chinese literature. Rooted in myth and folklore, the tale first appeared as an episode within the sprawling sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. Published anonymously, though commonly attributed to Wu Cheng’en, the work is celebrated as one of the four great literary masterpieces of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Portions of Sun Wukong’s story have been retold many times for film, television and the stage, but no adaptation to date has rivaled 2014’s The Monkey King for sheer scale.

INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 338
Retail Price: $19.99
SHIPS WEEK OF 11/3
For track listing and sound samples, please visit:
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.9967/.f

Picked this up at Creature Features on Saturday.

Highly recommended.

I recall an interview where Young said that he scored this mostly to characters in front of a green (or blue) screen without all that much knowledge of what's going on. Considering the result, that kind of imagination makes me wish that he composed non-soundtrack symphonies full-time where there aren't the limitations of film.

Very impressive samples. It's too bad this isn't getting the same attention as the other titles from this batch as it easily holds it own and is the one I'm now looking forward to the most.

_________________
Top 10 Grails: Revenge of the Ninja/Less Than Zero/Making Contact/Cobra/Over the Top/Highlander/Time Bandits/Top Gun/Listen to Me
Last 5 purchased: Jaws/Jaws 2/Back to the Future II/Back to the Future III/Nightmare Elm Street Box/Amityville Horror

Chris Young returned to scoring duties for Monkey King 2, which opened in China 5th February. Hopefully, we'll see a CD release to this score.

So does this mean you guys are releasing it?

This remains my favorite of recent scores. Memorable themes, carefully orchestrated with colorful percussion, and big drums where they are needed. So much more "character" than we usually hear these days.

Tom