Latest NewsUpcoming score movies and soundtrack albums:
- Revolutionary Road (December 2008)
- Towelhead (August 2008)
- WALL-E (June 2008)
British film music label Silva Screen has announced the first compilation album of music by Thomas Newman. The cd will be released in the fall of 2008 and will contain music from previous Silva Screen-albums from movies such as American Beauty, Road to Perdition, The Shawshank Redemption, The Good German, Little Women and The Horse Whisperer. Most, if not all, music will not be original soundtrack recordings, but rerecordings with The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
Soundtrack label Varese Sarabande has announced on its website that it will release the score to The Good German in January 2007. The soundtrack is described as "an homage to the Golden Age of film noir thrillers" and as "a glistening reflection on a bygone era of film." Varese Sarabande continue: "The absolutely brilliant score is cut from the cloth of such Golden Age masters as Max Steiner, Miklós Rózsa and his own father, the legendary Alfred Newman. The Good German is one of the best scores of the year and a strong Oscar contender."
Film music journalist Daniel Schweiger interviews Thomas Newman in the latest edition of On the Score, the on-demand radio show of Film Music Radio, which can be found at www.filmmusicworld.com/radio. The two hour show features an in-depth interview with Mr Newman about his career and includes several highlight-tracks from Mr Newman's movie scoring career. The show also offers a first listen at Mr Newman's latest score for director Todd Field suburbia-drama Little Children.
On December 25, Steven Soderbergh's post-war murder mystery The Good German will feature a new score by Thomas Newman. The movie, based upon the novel by Joseph Kanon and featuring an all-star cast including Cate Blanchett and George Clooney, will be the second time Mr Newman will have scored a movie for Mr Soderbergh, after the very successful Erin Brockovich.
Thomas Newman-fan Sam Smith has started a blog for Thomas Newman-news. His blog can be found here: thomasnewmannews.blogspot.com.
The soundtrack for Little Children will be released as an iTunes-exclusive for the time being on October 26. According to Film Score Monthly, a CD of the score will be released by New Line Records in January of 2007 featuring the bulk of Mr Newman's score. In the U.K., the score soundtrack will be released on December 11. The soundtrack will feature 18 score tracks by Mr Newman, including the 7-minute-long "End Title"-track, and a lounge-version of "Fly me to the Moon" by Sammy Nestico. Little Children marks the 12th album of Mr Newman to appear on iTunes; the first Thomas Newman-album that was available as a music download was The Salton Sea in 2002, which was the only Thomas Newman-album available when iTunes was launched.
Intrada Records has released the second volume of its Amazing Stories-anthology series. The 2CD-set also contains the full score that Thomas Newman composed for the first season-Christmas episode Santa '85, which was based upon a story written by Steven Spielberg. The episode originally aired on December 15, 1985 and it has taken more than twenty years for this score to see the light of day. But fans of Mr Newman will not pass up this chance to hear a suite of gentle holiday music with the sounds of celeste, glockenspiel, chimes and harp, and three pianos playing repeated figures. Hurry, because Intrada released the CD as a limited edition of only 3,000 copies.
Thomas Newman is currently composing his second score for director Todd Field, with whom he first collaborated in 2001 on the acclaimed In the Bedroom. Their second collaboration is Little Children, based upon the novel by Tom Perrotta. The movie is slated for an early November release. A soundtrack will be released by New Line Records.
Composer Thomas Newman will receive the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing on 7 January at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala.
Thomas Newman has scored the latest Sam Mendes-movie, the Gulf War-drama Jarhead. It is Thomas Newman's third score for director Mendes, after American Beauty and Road to Perdition. An album, featuring music from Newman's score, will be released by Decca Records on December 6, 2005.
On May 24, 2005, Decca Records released Thomas Newman's latest score for The Cinderella Man, his second film score for director Ron Howard. The 35-minute score is interspersed with Depression-era tunes such as Chicago tenor saxist Bud Freeman’s "Tillieąs Downtown Now," Roane's Pennsylvanians' "We’ve Got to Put that Sun Back in the Sky," and Eddie Cantor "Cheer Up, Smile, Nertz".
Martha Montgomery Newman died on May 9, 2005 in Pacific Palisades, California at the age of 84. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, she was a model and a "Goldwyn Girl" before marrying composer Alfred Newman. After her husband's death in 1970, she married composer Robert O. Ragland, and is survived by her husband, her five children by her first marriage (including Thomas Newman, David Newman and Maria Newman), sixteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Thomas Newman has composed the music for the new Jim Carrey-comedy called Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, a family comedy helmed by director Brad Silberling. Also starring are Meryl Streep and Jude Law. The soundtrack is out on Sony Classical and contains 29 original Newman-tracks.
After almost twenty years, director Ron Howard has signed Thomas Newman for the second time to score one of his movies. The two worked together for the first time in 1986, on the Michael Keaton-comedy Gung Ho; in 2005, The Cinderella Man will be their second project together, a Depression-era drama starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger.
On November 25, 2004, Nonesuch released Thomas Newman's score to the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's acclaimed epic play Angels in America. Directed by Mike Nichols, the cast is led by Oscar winners Al Pacino (as Roy Cohn), Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson, and also features Mary Louise Parker, Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson, and Jeffrey Wright recreating his Broadway role. Coincidentally, Newman had previously scored Citizen Cohn, an HBO biopic with James Woods as Cohn.
Disney Records has released the soundtrack to Pixar's Finding Nemo. The album has 39 tracks of Mr. Newman's original score plus a song by Robbie Williams. In the liner notes, director Andrew Stanton writes that he wrote the entire screenplay for the movie listening to Thomas Newman's scores and that he wanted, from the beginning, his music to be an integral part of the story.
Tokyo 77, Thomas Newman non-soundtrack music project, has released its first album, called Tokyo 77. Recorded with his friends George Budd, Rick Cox and Chas Smith, Newman has composed 12 mesmerizing new pieces of experimental music, similar in style to soundtracks like The Rapture and Flesh and Bone. Tokyo 77 take the listener on a journey through a soundscape of fleeting sonic images and shifting textures and densities. The album is released by In Tone Records.
Varèse Sarabande is releasing Thomas Newman's score for White Oleander, the new Peter Kosminsky-movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Renée Zellweger, Robin Wright and Alison Lohman about a mother sent to prison for life, and her daughter, with whom she keeps in touch via letters. Newman has composed a powerfully dramatic, piano-based score for the movie. White Oleander, based on the novel by Janet Fitch, opens October 11, the soundtrack's release date is October 29.
Thomas Newman's main theme for the acclaimed HBO television series Six Feet Under has won the Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Main Theme Music. The other nominees in the category were Mark Leggett, for A Day in Their Lives, Bruce Broughton, for First Monday, Lolita Ritmanis, for Justice League and David Schwartz for Wolf Lake. Thomas Newman's original music for the series can be found, along with two remixes of the main theme, on the official Six Feet Under-album, released by MCA Records. Congratulations, Mr. Newman!
Thomas Newman
Please note that we are not at liberty to give out Mr Newman's personal e-mailaddress. All fan-based and professional mail should be addressed in writing to the above address.
Concept, design and text: Erwin Taets.
Erwin's favorite Thomas Newman-soundtrack: The Horse Whisperer.
If you want to know more about film music in general or about other composers, check out Filmtracks, the best site on the internet to find out more about film music (although they have very little information on Thomas Newman). Or subscribe to Film Score Monthly, a great magazine that anyone serious about listening to movie music should read.
This site is dedicated to all the fans of Mr Newman's music and, of course, to the composer himself.
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Contact
If you want to contact Mr. Newman, we suggest you write a letter to the following address:
c/o Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency
4111 W. Alameda Avenue
Suite 509
Burbank, CA 91505
USA
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Thomas Newman Complete has welcomed more than 1,800,000 visitors from over eighty different countries since February 9, 1997. Thanks for your visit. Bookmark us and visit us again in the future!
Additional information: Mark Hammon, Matt Hargreaves, Uwe Sperlich, James Torniainen and J. Todd Lamanca.
Synopses: Christophe van Cauwenbergh and Erwin Taets.
Articles and interviews: Doug Adams, Jason Comerford and Daniel Schweiger.
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