The record label's press release about the soundtrack CD
"Ultimately, Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas is a love story," says award-winning composer Harry Gregson-Williams. "And for me, the challenge of scoring an animated movie is forgetting we're talking about two drawings falling in love - just like I had to forget that Antz was about insects and Chicken Run was about poultry. 'Honest' might seem a strange word to use in this context, but if you try to fool the audience musically they won't believe you. What you want is to be plunged into a world you can believe in so you can invest your emotions in the characters. That's why there's no tinkly cartoon music to remind you that it's really Brad Pitt in a sound booth and not Sinbad in a ship."
Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas - Original Motion Picture Score (set for release June 24, 2003, on DreamWorks Records) is a commanding, entirely classical orchestral score, composed and conducted by Gregson-Williams for the DreamWorks film, which opens nationwide July 2, 2003. The score also represents the work of an 80-piece orchestra and the esteemed Metro Voices choir, the contributions of which were recorded at London's famed Abbey Road Studios.
Gregson-Williams has also created the scores for such varied live-action pictures as the thriller Phone Booth, the Brad Pitt/Robert Redford vehicle Spy Game and the upcoming films Veronica Guerin (about a true-story murder in Ireland) and The Rundown (starring The Rock). Additionally, he has scored the animated hits Antz, Chicken Run and Academy Award-winning blockbuster Shrek. The composer reveals that, like these projects, Sinbad afforded him an opportunity to stretch creatively.
Shrek was so irreverent," he notes. "The score was as over-the-top as the characters. Sinbad is also set in a fantastic world, but the character development and wide emotional arc are unusual for animation [its screenwriter also penned Gladiator]. Even how it looks is different - a hybrid of traditional and more contemporary techniques." He is quick to praise the more than 550 artists, animators and technicians at DreamWorks' Glendale Animation Studio who worked on Sinbad for more than three years.
"The music had to mirror the emphasis on character and the mix of classic and modern, he continues. "At its core, yes, it's an orchestral score, but there are overtones of other elements throughout, such as ethnic - particularly Middle Eastern - textures, percussion and flutes."
The Sinbad story and the performances that bring it to life are equally rich.
Academy Award nominee Brad Pitt (Twelve Monkeys), Academy Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago), three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Love Field), Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare In Love) and Dennis Haysbert (Far From Heaven, TV's 24) lend their voices to the animated action-adventure film.
Sinbad (Brad Pitt), the most daring and notorious rogue ever to sail the seven seas, has spent his life asking for trouble, and trouble has finally answered . in a big way. Framed for stealing one of the world's most priceless and powerful treasures - The Book Of Peace - Sinbad has one chance to find and return the precious book or his best friend, Proteus (Joseph Fiennes), will die. But Sinbad decides not to take that chance and instead sets a course for the fun and sun of the Fiji Islands.
But the best laid plans...
Proteus' beautiful betrothed, Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones), has stowed away, determined to make sure Sinbad fulfills his mission. Now, the man who put the "bad" in Sinbad is about to find out how bad bad can be. It's never a good thing when Eris, the goddess of chaos (Michelle Pfeiffer), has it out for you, and Eris lives up to her name - dispatching both monstrous creatures and the elements to do battle with Sinbad along the way. There is even mutiny afoot - times four - when Sinbad's loyal dog Spike switches allegiances. Adding insult to injury, the crew has decided they like taking orders from Marina better than from Sinbad.
Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas was directed by Tim Johnson (Antz) and Patrick Gilmore and produced by Mireille Soria (Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (Shrek), from a screenplay by John Logan (Gladiator).
Throughout the Sinbad score, composer Gregson-Williams juxtaposes the epic and heroic with the intimate and personal. Sinbad's theme, which commences near the end of the opening music titled "Let The Games Begin," is forceful and portentous. "Early in the film, he's a bit of an anti-hero," says Gregson-Williams, "a bit of a loser, a thief, self-obsessed, can't get a girl . But he then transforms into a noble hero. There are many ways of translating the heroic to the scoring stage - including a bank of 12 French horns."
On the other hand, Marina's theme, heard first in "The Stowaway," is delicate and exotic. Many of the story's twists are instigated by the character of Eris, whose bouncy, mischievous theme is woven throughout the score, then climaxes during "Sinbad Returns And Eris Pays Up."
In terms of narrative musical highlights, Sinbad's initial indecision is crystallized in the gentle "Is It The Shore Or The Sea?" when he puts Marina's hand on the wheel of his ship. Immediately thereafter, their themes cross in the 10-minute piece "Tartarus."
