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Durango: (Mark McKenzie) Between 1997 and 1999,
Hallmark Entertainment produced films for which few corners were cut in
the musical score budget, and several of the industry's finest from the
younger generation of composers took advantage of the opportunities to
write and record some of the best music ever to be heard on the small
screen. Mark McKenzie, whose career was largely littered with B-rate
film scores and a wild variety of orchestration work for major
blockbuster scores, entered the list of talented composers contributing
to the Hallmark Hall of Fame series with 1999's
Durango. A cast
with a few familiar faces stars in a story of love and maturation set
against 1940's Ireland, with the lush scenery stealing the show with its
alluring greens. McKenzie's score responds with an equal tone of beauty,
sparing no chance to underscore the landscape with a lyrical melody. Its
Irish influences are never in doubt, and that flavor was particularly
popular at a time when James Horner was ramming it into every score he
possibly could. Even listeners who were worn by the constant Irish sound
infused into film scores at the time made comments about McKenzie's
knack for maintaining a fresh outlook on that ethnicity. While bodhran
drums, uilleann pipes, penny whistles, pan pipes, and recorder are prominently featured in
thematic statements and the melodies are rich with progressions familiar
to traditional Irish musical verse, McKenzie does not allow them to fall
into the predictable ruts that plagued Horner and other composers
attempting the same Irish influence in the late 1990's. McKenzie's own
personable and accessible style, evident in many of his character-based
scores, lends
Durango a unique feel that separates it from the
pack. Among such McKenzie scores, including many similarly small-budget
productions to follow,
Durango is among his finest
accomplishments.
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McKenzie employs a satisfying 70 members of The City of
Prague Philharmonic, a group that was becoming quite accomplished in its
film music recordings at the time. Unlike most scores that rely on the
specialty instrument performers to carry the rest of the ensemble, the
strength of
Durango exists in its balance between those solo
elements, the ensemble's tasteful and well mixed performance, and the
beauty of McKenzie's several themes. While the score deceives you into
thinking that it is parochial and simplistic upon first listen, the
suite at the very start demonstrates that the score consists of great
thematic wealth and complexity. No less than five themes grace
Durango, each with significant performances by both the full
ensemble and by the soloists. These themes are provided in snapshot
succession in the score's two best cues, "Durango Suite" and "The
Journey Begins." Each maintains the same elegant spirit, with McKenzie's
usual lush and soft touch gracing their performances in the opening
suite. The latter cue adds rhythmically satisfying drums to the
equation. One of the more remarkable aspects of these suites, and the
other thematic performances that almost always are in play, is
McKenzie's ability to switch off between themes so seamlessly that it
becomes difficult to distinguish them at times. When you apply this
technique to the rare action material in
Durango, you get a
restrained but effective elevation in bombast without that resists the realm of
simple loudness. Two solos by trumpet and several simply gorgeous solos
by the recorder are the ultimate selling points of the score, raising
memories of some of the most enchanting moments of John Williams' popular
but seldom heralded music for
Far and Away. On album, dissonance is
almost completely absent, allowing for 45 minutes of the most relaxing
Irish-flavored underscore available today, though with its release pressed
by Intrada Records (McKenzie's most active supporter through the years),
don't expect to find wide availability of the product.
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| Bias Check: | For Mark McKenzie reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.78 (in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.45
(in 3,022 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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