November 24, 2019
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Soundtrack Due on Dec 20
– Randall D. Larson
Walt Disney Records will release the official soundtrack album for Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, the ninth episode in the central STAR WARS saga, on December 20 in both digital and CD formats. The album features John Williams’ original score for the eagerly-awaited film, which is also the conclusion of the STAR WARS saga that began in 1977.
This will be John Williams’ final score for the STAR WARS franchise; he’s declined to score any of the other spin-offs. The composer’s brother, Don Williams, dropped a few hints as to what we might be hearing from the RISE OF SKYWALKER score in an article by Sean Keane posted at cnet last August: When he started on the film, John Williams had 135 minutes of music to write, so it remains to be seen how much of it fits on the soundtrack album. Amazon’s pre-order page shows the album as being a single disc, so we may be hoping for expanded releases in the future. In talking with Keane, Don Williams referred “to themes for Leia, Yoda, ‘the Phantom’ and ‘Darth,’ which likely refer to ‘Duel of the Fates’ (from THE PHANTOM MENACE) and ‘The Imperial March’ respectively, but noted his brother ‘hides them,’ so we’ll have to listen closely – ‘You’ll be sitting there watching the film go by and, Oh, there it is! There’s two bars of it and it grabs you and takes you away,’ ” Don Williams told Keane.
The CD can be pre-ordered now through Amazon here
The Lucasfilm production releases to theaters on December 20 via Walt Disney Pictures.
– via filmmusicreporter and cnet
