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Joe Hisaishi (all of Miyazaki's films, most of Beat Takeshi's films)
Yoko Kanno (Turn A Gundam, Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus) and her orchestrator/spouse
Hajime Mizoguchi
Shiro Sagisu (Nadia, Evangelion)
Yuji Ohno (Lupin III jazz)
Kenji Kawai (Ghost in the Shell, Blue Seed, Patlabor, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Avalon)
Yuji Nomi (Whisper of the Heart, The Cat Returns)
Takayuki Hattori (Nadesico, Slayers)

There are domestic imprints of these titles now available in the US from ANIMEtrax, Tokyopop Music, and Disney imprint Milan Records. The Japanese versions of these discs are also available from Japanese bookstores or on-line from places like CD Japan, Amazon Japan, Anime Jungle (used goods), Mandarake (used goods), and Hoteiya Las Vegas (a little plug there since they're friends of mine ).

BTW I don't like to program vocals for non-sync. Too intrusive.

Later,

Paul
Last week in Long Beach, CA
Next week back in Las Vegas, NV
"Otaku wa tsurai yo!"
It's tough being a fan!

During Oscars month, we try to program the nominated songs if we think they'll work with the rest of the pre-show music.

We do not play instrumentals too often. That style is reserved for special occasions. My favorite Soundtrack CD would have to be "The Hollywood Sound" featuring John Williams conducting The London Symphony Orchestra. Sixteen Oscar-winning themes.

The 2-Disc set by James Horner called "Titanic: The Essential James Horner Collection" is a VERY good buy as is another 2-Disc set called "Orchestral Film Music" by Michael J. Lewis.

I visited the Muvico "Egyptian" in Florida about two years ago and was really impressed with their selection of music (all orchestral soundtracks with no ads). The music is piped out as far as the parking lot. It's quite an experience.

------------------
And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

~Manny.

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Gordon, You're so right.

How about all that great stuff from DeWolfe? Most of the Drive in ads usually had music of his or close rip offs.

We play the concerts at full volume and mean it to be listened to. It definately is not meant to be background music. Since we are a performing arts center, we already pay both ASCAP and BMI so I can play anything I want, except religious music -- I think that is carried by the third licensing company (SECAM or something?) which we don't pay. I explain to our audience that we have a great sound system, we are happy to let them hear their favorite music on it.

We try to play soundtrack cuts from the film, or at least end the preshow program with one cut from the film that is playing. We play lots of classical, but we won't play opera, although we get many suggestions for them and on occasion I will play cuts from those "Opera without the Words" series -- we don't play any vocals at all for that matter -- strictly orchestral, mostly movie scores from the great classic films, a number of times we've done the Mighty Wurlitzer CDs -- always a crowd pleaser, Anime scores are always good and an occasional new age thing if someone begs us. We NEVER play Yanni, however

Our non-sync concert is programmed, sometimes with multiple discs if I am matching cuts from movie scores. Usually the concerts last from 25 to 30 min. At 2min before the end of the program, the house lights go to 1/2 house. At 45 secs. the house goes to the "Credits" light-level and at 10 secs. Projector 1 rolls countdown, curtain warmers begin to fade-out and just as the last cord of the NS music fades and barely overlaps the first chord of the filmtrack, the curtains open and the sound of the Warner Brother cartoon theme begins, curtain-warmers fully out, house to "Show" light-level and we are off and running. And THAT'S the way it's done, boys and girls!

We pass the CD L/R output through a Sansui VarioMatrix Type II Quadraphonic decoder which gives us Left Front, Right Front, Left Rear, Right Rear extracted from the L/R program material -- lots of nice ambience and stereo spread into the rear channels. It is also passed through a DBX 115 (not sure of the number, might be 112) Subbass Enhancement processor for the subwoofers; the mixing console sums LF & RF for the center channel, hence "6 channel Total Surround MegaSound." .
In the mid-70's I produced THEATEROCK; same principle as above, 25 to 30 min programs, only it was rock-based because I was doing it for our college cinematheque. We were getting audiences of 1000+ every show in our big theatre and the rock programs were not just a nice interlude, but they became a real crowd control mechanism. The audiences responded so well to them that I started a service for other college theatres (in those days, before video, they actually ran FILM in college movie programs). I supplied them in either reel-to-reel or cassettes format. Both had the program recorded in both directions so the tapes never had to be rewound. It was music only -- pure rock, and although I did voice-over work at the time, there was NEVER any "DJing" during the THEATEROCK preshow programs. The only nod I gave to radio was, before the last rock cut, a top-40 jingle bridged the cuts and was a signal to the projectionist that he had only a few minutes left to film start. We had about 10 colleges subscribing to the service. Some of you may have heard THEATEROCK before the films if you went to any college cinemateques from about 1974 to 1980, mostly in the midwest, NJ and NY.

I was always into making the wait-time that audience has to sit waiting in a theatre, more than just "fill." I always thought, this is a theatre sound system, why not play everyone's favorite music through it. I remember when we ran NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for some 1800 college kids, the preshow was cuts from horror films with the last cut being an organ rendition of Bach's Tocatta & Fuge. Instead of doing all that lights fade and warmers fade, etc as above, when the last cord of that chilling piece ended, everthing in the theatre went instantly went to a total blackout, even the isle lights went out. As that happened, the very last item on the tape played at full volume -- it was a blood curdling woman's scream that panned around the theatre as everyone sat there in total darkness -- it made quite a number of girls scream as well. Ain't cinema fun!

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