For the first time since
The Color Purple in 1985, someone other than John Williams will be scoring a Steven Spielberg movie.
The Spielberg/Williams connection is among the most prolific and longest-running partnerships in cinema history, but after nearly thirty collaborations in forty years, it’s high time a new composer stepped in to offer a completely different sound.
The new Spielberg movie is a cold war period thriller called
Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks, and the composer picking up the baton from John Williams is Thomas Newman. Williams was unavailable to score
Bridge of Spies because he took some time off recently due to health issues, but worry not: Williams has since recovered and is indeed still scoring
Star Wars: The Force Awakens this Christmas, and he will reportedly return to the orchestra pit to score Spielberg’s subsequent movie, an adaption of Roald Dahl’s children’s book
The BFG.Thomas Newman comes from a famous family of musicians and he’s been scoring movies for decades. His gentle and ethereal signature style for such classic modern-day dramas as
Scent of a Woman, The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty and
Road to Perdition tend to blend into his lighter motifs for movies like
The Player, Finding Nemo and
Wall-E, but he occasionally delivers something completely indelible, and he proved with the most recent James Bond flick
Skyfall that he can compose something exciting and grand for a giant action picture. Newman also has a tenuous connection to John Williams that makes his assignment as his substitute on
Bridge of Spies somewhat appropriate: he served as an (uncredited) orchestrator for
Return of the Jedi.Will Thomas Newman shake things up a bit and give audiences an entirely new musical soundscape for a Steven Spielberg picture?
Or, like co-producer/composer Quincy Jones did for
The Color Purple, will he produce lovely orchestral music that simply emulates the distinctive John Williams style?
We’ll know when
Bridge of Spies premieres in October. A month after that, we’ll get to hear what Newman has concocted for his second 007 adventure,
SPECTRE. Between the new Spielberg film, the latest James Bond outing, and the upcoming
Finding Nemo sequel
Finding Dory in 2016, it’s an exciting time to be a fan of Thomas Newman.
While we await his newest movie music, here’s a brief tour of some of my favorite Newman themes.
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