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Cold Mountain
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Composed, Co-Orchestrated, and Co-Produced by:
Co-Orchestrated by:
John Bell Kevin Townend Nick Ingman
Conducted by:
Harry Rabinowitz
Co-Produced by:
Anthony Minghella
Album Produced by:
T-Bone Burnett
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Regular U.S. release.
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AWARDS
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The songs "The Scarlet Tide" and "You Will Be My Ain True Love" were both nominated
for Academy Awards and Grammy Awards, and the latter was nominated for a Golden Globe. The
score won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. The
album was also nominated for a Grammy Award.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you can appreciate restrained, solemn performances of
traditional bluegrass tunes and a conservative suite of string and piano
underscore from Gabriel Yared.
Avoid it... if you are expecting either fast paced, enthusiastic bluegrass
performances or a robust orchestral score for the Civil War setting.
BUY IT
 | Yared |
Cold Mountain: (Gabriel Yared) Considered a front-runner for a
slew of awards in the late 2003 season, Cold Mountain opened to a harsh
split of positive and negative reviews, with critics often praising certain aspects
of the film as genuine while also slamming entire sequences of it for being
contrived and overly-melodramatic. Directed by Academy Award-winner Anthony
Minghella ( The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, among
others) and based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same
name, the film tells the story of a wounded confederate soldier (Jude Law) who
deserts his unit and makes a perilous journey through North Carolina to be with his
pre-war love, Ada (Nicole Kidman). Meanwhile, Ada attempts to survive on her own
while reviving her father's farm with the help of a more spirited female survivor,
Ruby (Renee Zellweger). The film alternates between treatments of romance, large
landscapes, chase sequences, and the horrors of war, and it is generally the
inconsistent treatment of these scenes compared to each other that seems to have
drawn negative criticism about the project. It was supported by an unusually high
budget for a Miramax film, and the soundtrack was immediately thought by the studio
to be one of the more successful aspects of the entire production. The genre of
music that was chosen for the era and location of the film was a historical
variation on bluegrass, as to be expected, and the studio was quick to recognize
the potential of that genre in soundtracks after the monumentally huge success of
the music from O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Thus, they hired producer T-Bone
Burnett (a Grammy-winner for organizing that project) to duplicate the success for
Cold Mountain. Miramax, with their sniffers pointed in the direction of a
"best song" Oscar nomination or win, even went so far as to hire Elvis Costello
and Sting to each write a song for the soundtrack, and despite early indications that
they would sing for the occasion, these performances never materialized on album.
In the end, a more humble collection of somber bluegrass tunes was combined with an
equally somber score by composer Gabriel Yared for the overall package. As you
could expect, however, the restrained approach for Cold Mountain makes it a
180 degree turn from the faster-paced enthusiasm of O Brother, Where Art
Thou?. The soundtrack in the film and on album alternates between traditional
bluegrass pieces and modern bluegrass adaptations of those ideas, all performed by
the same, contemporary voices.
In some cases, an argument could be made that the style of the
vocals is too polished in a contemporary sense to really bring out the
historically accurate qualities of the traditional tunes, and bluegrass
collectors should be aware of this flaw before diving into this album without
hearing its application in the film. Returning for T-Bone Burnett is the voice of
Alison Krauss, but this time her performances are so tentative that they lose
their appeal. Likewise, the songs performed by Jack White are lackluster in
energy and genuine bluegrass spirit. Only in the latter half of the album does a
more heartening sound take effect; Cassie Franklin finally puts some defiance
into the female vocals, and the two tracks by the Sacred Harp Singers (recorded
with fantastic authenticity in an old wooden-framed church) are easily the
highlight of the album. All of the bluegrass music will likely seem like a
foreign world to score collectors interested in Gabriel Yared's work for the
film. There can't be any greater difference between the fiddle, banjo, and
mandolin performances by the ensembles for the songs and the orchestral
composition for the score. This difference alone causes the album serious
trouble, because bluegrass listeners will be bored to death by Yared's typical,
meandering string writing. Even for score collectors, the album won't be worth
the price for the fifteen minutes (in four tracks) of score material, because it
is music that owners of Yared's albums have heard again and again. Having
collaborated with the same director for The English Patient (and winning
the Oscar for that effort), some might have expected something more than a
repetition of his sullen, uninteresting string writing for Sylvia just a
few months earlier. But even his title theme, performed in extended sequences by
piano and strings, is dragged on and on, taking forever to complete its own
statements and giving the whole chamber score a wishy-washy effect on the
listener. There is nothing here to indicate that there are chases, battles, or
even anything historical about the score. Yared failed to incorporate anything
related to the genre of the film, or the bluegrass soundtrack, and he was thus a
predictably curious choice to compose music for this film despite his
collaboration with the director. Overall, everything seems out of place, and for
the package to have worked to any listenable degree, the songs and score needed
to be separated into two distinct albums. Yared did release a promotional CD of
his score that helped him earn Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for his
work, but this recognition likely came via reputation only, and even score
collectors may not be impressed by Yared's promo. For both Yared and Burnett, the
lesson was that you sometimes just can't recapture the same magic a second time. ** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Gabriel Yared reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.11
(in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.19
(in 18,532 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Total Time: 63:07
1. Wayfaring Stranger - performed by Jack White (4:25)
2. Like a Songbird That Has Fallen - performed by Reeltime Travelers (3:13)
3. I Wish My Baby Was Born - performed by Tim Eriksen, Riley Baugus & Tim O'Brien (3:09)
4. The Scarlet Tide - performed by Alison Krauss (2:59)
5. The Cuckoo - performed by Tim Eriksen & Riley Baugus (1:39)
6. Sittin' On Top of the World - performed by Jack White (3:48)
7. Am I Born to Die? - performed by Tim Eriksen (2:32)
8. You Will Be My Ain True Love - performed by Alison Krauss (2:31)
9. I'm Going Home - performed by the Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty Church (2:18)
10. Never Far Away - performed by Jack White (3:40)
11. Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over - performed by Jack White (3:16)
12. Ruby with the Eyes That Sparkle - performed by Stuart Duncan & Dirk Powell (3:11)
13. Lady Margret - performed by Cassie Franklin (3:02)
14. Great High Mountain - performed by Jack White (4:33)
15. Anthem* (3:24)
16. Ada Plays* (3:18)
17. Ada and Inman* (5:03)
18. Love Theme* (3:40)
19. Idumea - performed by the Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty Church (3:18)
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* score track by Gabriel Yared
The insert includes extensive credits, but no information about the score
or film.
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