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CHILDREN OF MEN – John Tavener
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If you had asked me at the beginning of 2006 to name the working composer least likely to score a film during the year, I would have probably said Sir John Tavener. 62-year-old Tavener is as profound and well-respected a composer as can be, a darling of the classical set, a man seriously dedicated to his art, and whose deeply-held Orthodox Christian religious beliefs are the cornerstone of the 300 or so works he has written since the mid 1960s. This is the man who was chosen by the British government to write the deeply spiritual and moving music for the funeral of Princess Diana. The idea of him being hired to score a Hollywood film was about as likely as, say, Steve Reich scoring the next Spielberg movie, or Karl-Heinz Stockhausen scoring Scary Movie 5. His music has been featured in films before, but never has he written anything specifically for one. But yet, here he is, scoring Children of Men for director Alfonso Cuarón, whose last movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The world is a strange place indeed. Read more…