James Newton Howards and Friends

 

Not sure how many people remember the ST gem from James Newton Howard, who went on to such fame in a later career, but started off squarely in the progressive vein.  A very similar story to for example Larry Groupe posted here a year ago.  The bio on the above link goes a little like this:

Born: June 9, 1951, Los Angeles, California.

Composer, conductor, arranger and music producer. Dedicated mostly to film/TV scoring (The Prince of Tides, Wyatt Earp, ER, The Sixth Sense, Dinosaur, The Village, The Dark Knight...), job where he has recurrently collaborated with writers/directors Lawrence Kasdan and M. Night Shyamalan. He has worked also with pop/rock artists at the early years of his career (notably with Elton John, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Toto).

He's been nominated to 8 Academy Awards, having won an Emmy Award and a Grammy Award (with a total of 41 wins and 27 nominations to different awards).

They don't mention he was briefly married to Rosanna Arquette, for a year-- anyone out there remember her and the many stories / songs relating to her?  She was big in the eighties, millenials.  Long before you were born, a lifetime.

On the assumption you're all well aware of the ST work which was made at the tender young age of 23, going a long way to shed light on the creative energy found therein, I'll move on to this fusion exploration, all instrumental, from 1982.  I was curious about it partly because there's all kinds of hi-fi commentary in the youtube posts for the various tracks, for example here.  As old as I am it's all meaningless to me who grew up on the amazingly popular sony walkman, and I imagine even more so to the aforementioned millenial who only listens to music from a tiny handheld phone's microscopic speaker, and has no idea what enormous woofers and tweeters we used to buy back in the day (yes, real words there).  Probably they think we also had to buy that white dog with black spots to sit in front of the record player too.

The track called Borealis is the most progressive keyboard invention on here, it's utterly puzzling to me why it wasn't extended into a full-length song instead of just thrown away like a bit of metallic scrap, given the interesting chordal developments:

With regards to the ST album from 1974, with its beautiful cover art, a simple review from rym:

Pretty neat little album of keyboard prog. Imagine if Keith Emerson made a solo album at the height of ELP, that’s sort of what you’re presented with here: lots of acoustic piano and raunchy Hammond organ, as well as layers of ARP synth. There’s drums on a couple of tracks courtesy of Howard’s then-wife Brie (then playing with Fanny), otherwise it’s just James and his multiple keyboard instruments. Apparently this took the better part of a year to make, on account of the synthesizers and “string organ” (anyone know what that might be?) he was using being monophonic.

I'm surprised there are not more rave reviews, I really think it's an underrated, underheard little gem of composition, just packed with interesting ideas and totally unique melodies and chord changes.