August 22, 2019
Dragon’s Domain Releasing Rare John Morgan Short Film Scores
John Morgan is best known as a leading reconstructionist of vintage film scores, in partnership with composer/conductor William T. Stromberg. With Morgan’s expertise in transcription and orchestration and Stromberg’s capability as a conductor, the pair have been involved in restoring significant film scores for new recordings, allowing rare historic and artistic film music in many genres to be recorded and released, many in complete form, for the first time.
Dragon’s Domain Records, to be distributed through buysoundtrax.com, presents THE JOHN MORGAN COLLECTION, VOLUME 1, featuring world premiere releases of music from several projects the composer has been involved with across his career. The scores demonstrate Morgan’s affinity to the form and style of classic film music and on their own contain some remarkable music which we are pleased to share.
THE VISAGE tells the story of a young man watches over the dead body of a spiritualist for three intense nights, gradually piecing together a history that leads the dead man’s family to madness. THE VISAGE gave Morgan some terrific opportunities to compose with a deeply Bernard Herrmann-styled vibe and to create some splendid shock moments. The score was performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stromberg.
Released in 1996, THE MACABRE PAIR OF SHORTS is an anthology of comic horror tales that follows a pair of snobby vampires, an English teacher with such an unhealthy obsession with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that he might lose his head over it, a psychotic mime with a violent sales pitch for eggs & ham, and a killer reel of film that erases everyone who watches it. Morgan composed two of the episodes, the scary HEADLESS HORSEMEN OF HALLOWEEN and the quirky fantasy THE EGGS, using the style of a jauntier Herrmann piece, that for Hitchcock’s THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, which gives the episode a clever, tongue-in-cheek progression.
In addition to these fantasy-related scores, the album includes two drama scores: THE TRIALS OF MRS. SURRATT, a 1982 audio play directed by filmmaker Nicholas Meyer for National Public Radio (NPR), and a sentimental story about heartbreak and coping called THE MEDAL, from 1992.
The album is released on CD and in digital format, and contains one hour and ten minutes of music; none of these recordings have been released before on soundtrack.
For more details, to sample tracks, or to order, see buysoundtrax
