Filmtracks: John Barry: Zulu (Compilation)

Filmtracks Review >>

John Barry: Zulu (Compilation)

Full Review Menu ▼

Buy It

Viewer Ratings (496 Total)

About the score of the Zulu movie
Sheridan - August 26, 2006, at 4:55 a.m.

1 comment (2677 views)

More...

Credits

Composed by:

John Barry

Performed by:

The City of Prague Philharmonic

Conducted by:

Nic Raine

Ensemble Vocals Performed by:

The Crouch End Festival Chorus

Produced by:

James Fitzpatrick

Track Listings

Total Time: 101:36

CD 1: (49:56)

Zulu: (20:51)
• 1. Zulu Main Theme/Isandhlwana 1879 (2:22)
• 2. News of the Massacre/Rorke's Drift Threatened (2:52)
• 3. Bromhead's Safari/Wagons Over (1:43)
• 4. "You're All Going to Die!" (0:43)
• 5. First Zulu Appearance and Assault (5:09)
• 6. March of the "Men of Harlech" (2:44)
• 7. Durnford's Horses Arrive and Depart/The Third Assault (2:40)
• 8. Zulu's Final Appearnace and Salute (0:52)
• 9. "Men of Harlech"/End Title (1:46)

The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair:
• 10. (Music from the Sunsilk TV Commercial) (2:43)

The Specialist: Suite
• 11. Main Title/Bogota 1984/You Bastard, How Do You Feel, Better?/"Did You Call Me?" (6:35)

The Cotton Club: Suite
• 12.The Depression Hits/Best Beats Sandman/The Cotton Club (6:36)

King Rat:
• 13. March (3:15)

The Tamarind Seed: Suite
• 14. Play It Again/The Accident/Double Agent/End Credits (9:48)

CD 2: (51:40)

The Last Valley:
• 1. Main Theme (Choral Version) (3:43)

Love Among the Ruins:
• 2. Theme (4:10)

Mercury Rising:
• 3. The Story Ends (6:04)

Midnight Cowboy:
• 4. Florida Fantasy (2:05)

King Kong:
• 5. Prelude & Love Theme (4:56)

Frances:
• 6. Theme (4:15)

My Sister's Keeper:
• 7. Suite (6:41)

Hammett:
• 8. Theme (3:27)

Dances With Wolves:
• 9. The Buffalo Hunt (4:18)

The Deep:
• 10. Theme (4:01)

Mister Moses: Suite
• 11. Main Title/Moses in the River/An Elephant Called Emily/
The Dam/"What Would I Do For Laughs?" (7:58)

Album Cover Art

Label & Release Date

Silva Screen Records
(April 20th, 1999)

Album Availability

Regular U.S. release.

Also See

•	The Specialist
•	Mercury Rising

Notes & Quotes

The insert contains extensive notes about each of the tracks, as well as thorough credits.

Close Full Review Menu ▲

Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #798
Written 9/3/99, Revised 10/28/07

Invert Colors

Buy it... if you're tired of hearing John Barry collections with the same tired themes and seek a truly intellectual collection of the composer's more obscure works performed very accurately in vibrant stereo.

Avoid it... if those tired themes are the only reason you enjoy Barry's work, for his older and relatively unknown efforts like the ones on this set fail to muster the same dramatic interest.

Barry

John Barry: Zulu: (Compilation) The Silva Screen label and its lead producer, James Fitzpatrick, have always had a love affair with the music of John Barry, for their compilations haven't provided more performances of a single composer's work than Barry's. After releasing a few much shorter and less energized Barry compilations early in the 1990s, Silva Screen eventually offered a 2-CD set with over one hundred new minutes of Barry music in the same fashion with which they had treated the music of James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, and Bernard Herrmann over the previous year. The difference, however, is that the Barry set does not fall under the same "Essential Music of" descriptor by the label because the initial purpose of this Barry set was to provide a decent stereo release of the music from the composer's 1964 score to Zulu. This 2-CD set offers the complete score to Zulu as its centerpiece, with cues from films, musicals, and television commercials rounding out the compilation. The City of Prague Philharmonic and Crouch End Festival Chorus provide an improved performance of a wide variety of themes over their previous Barry performances, some of which were so poor in the early 1990's as to be unlistenable. For film score collectors, the inclusion of the complete score from Zulu is the main attraction. With the original master sources only existing in mono sound or badly edited attempts to transfer that mono to stereo, Fitzpatrick called upon veteran Barry orchestrator Nic Raine to help reconstruct the entire score in much the same way Raine would later resurrect some of Barry's other famous scores. As usual, Raine's work is outstandingly true to the original Barry sound. Every piece of music in the score was reconstructed and performed with exactly the same number of musicians as the original, which amounted to about 70 players overall. While this ensemble is well suited to match the original recording, the raw power of the brass performances in Zulu would still have been interesting to hear with the full City of Prague Philharmonic, perhaps as a concert version. The choral cues of "Men of Harlech" are of immense size by comparison.

Read More...

Barry's title theme for Zulu is a tad on the simplistic and pompous side, but entertaining nevertheless, and its only true weakness is the repetitive use of it throughout the score's 20 minutes. "First Zulu Appearance and Assault" features the bulk of Barry's rhythmically predictable action music and becomes tiresome after three minutes. Not surprisingly, Zulu is not a very complex score, but its title theme is strong enough to carry it for listening purposes. Barry, of course, would revisit the title theme in 1995 for Cry, The Beloved Country, for which he would tone the theme down to the haunting performances of solo woodwinds. The remaining tracks on the compilation aren't those that you'd typically expect to hear on a commercial Barry compilation, affirming that true Barry collectors are this set's target. The Sunsilk TV commercial piece is very stylish in the original James Bond sort of way. The suite from The Specialist would have been better off featuring just the final, sultry "Did You Call Me?" theme. The ten minute suite from The Tamarind Seed was the premiere recording for LP or CD from that score. The massively choral and fully symphonic theme from The Last Valley is excellent, and the insert notes feature the accompanying lyrics. Silva would go on to commission the re-recording of this entire score a few years later. The closing themes from Mercury Rising represent some of Barry's most recent compositions, and their jazzy undertones pick up right where The Specialist left off. The popular and quirky sax and organ theme for Midnight Cowboy has plenty of spirit (and it would end up in numerous commercials abroad), but it's perhaps a too spirited compared to its neighboring tracks. With the original release of Frances difficult to find in many places, this set gives an excellent chance to hear the best the score has to offer. Rounding out the CD are all strong selections, with the exception of the unfortunate crawl in pacing caused by Hammett. The final suite from 1965's Mister Moses, which like Zulu was also reconstructed, is better than the version that appears with the film. Overall, this set is definitely for the hardest Barry aficionados; the sound quality is excellent and the ensemble's performances are often superior to the originals. Just don't expect the same old tunes. **** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.86 (in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54 (in 28,763 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Return to Top (Full Menu) ▲

Filmtracks Home	Reviews
Scoreboard	Desktop Site

The Small Print