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patmos.beje
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« on: January 04, 2018, 10:05:40 am » |
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Final tally is Ł44,382 has been raised of the Ł40,000 target (half the recording costs) by 352 backers.
Whilst my interest in film scores is limited, the success of this project has great potential for film music enthusiasts and the future of re-recordings. It might also provide a template for classical music enthusiasts to see their dreams come true.
James Fitzpatrick of the Tadlow label, who had announced his retirement from funding any more re-recordings of soundtracks, had consistently stated on several occasions that he would not fund a re-recording of King of Kings unless someone paid him Ł80,000 to do so (a slight understatement of the estimated costs of producing a 2 x CD set given the length of the score, the size of orchestra and chorus and the fact that the score will have to be reconstructed) [Tadlow's recent re-recording of Ben-Hur cost about Ł90,000 to produce]. He then changed his mind and said he would be willing to fund half the costs of the re-recording if a Kickstarter project could raise the other half.
There are a few other scores which he has indicated he will fund half the costs of one of which - Walter Schumann's score for the 1955 Charles Laughton directed The Night of the Hunter and estimated to cost about Ł40,000 to record - is the only non-Rózsa score I am likely to support in the future. However, he has indicated he will record other scores if film enthusiasts rasied the entire funds via crowdfunding or otherwise. As many of these are unlikely to cost anything like the amount required for King of Kings, this raises a real possibility for film enthusiasts to partner with Tadlow, or other films specialist labels, to make their dreams come true.
Could partnering with a label and instigating a Kickstarter project be a template for classical music enthusiasts to see their dreams come true (as an alternative to, for example, members of the RVW Society contributing to Albion recordings)? Possibly, but one major advantage King of Kings has over, say, Mackenzie's The Rose of Sharon, something I have longed to hear for many years and, probably, almost as expensive to produce as a recording of King of Kings, is that the latter, through the medium of the cinema and TV, is already a well known and beloved score to many. However, who knows what may be possible if there is a willing number of classical music enthusiasts in relation to a particular recording project.
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