I been walking since my heart attack in 2018. I average around 2 1/2 – 3 hrs of walking a week. During the walk I would listen to a variety of genres of music (mostly soundtracks) and find myself learning by analyzing the orchestration, arrangement and emotion of the music while I’m walking.
Today’s listening session is Mark Isham’s score “Honest Thief”
Synopsis
Tom Carter (Liam Nielsen) is a ex- marine, an expert in demolition, and also the “in and out bandit” who has stolen millions of dollars from banks and has never been caught. He eventually meets a girl and falls in love and wants to go straight and settle down; so he decides to turn himself in to the FBI for a reduced sentence. The two FBI agents who are assigned to the case are tempted by the opportunity and attempts to steal the money and frame him for murder. Tom Carter now has to prove his innocence before it’s too late.
Score
Years ago, a friend and I attended a composing seminar by Mark Isham. I remember that he said having a voice is important to composing for film. What came to mind was a scene from a movie he scored. This was the ending flying scene of the movie “Fly Away Home” where the young girl reached her destination in the small plane she was flying with the geese flying with her. It was such an epic emotional impact in that particular scene. The music had rhythmic motif textures and did not have any sense of time, it just basically followed the singer’s rubato interpretation of the song. To me Mark Isham’s voice in his scores are very chameleon like and his voice in his scores are in his subtleness with his choices of musical and rhythmic textures; this is the case with the score “Honest Thief” a hybrid approach of textures he does throughout the film. I also feel that the music is always in the moment which might explain his approaches to his scores due to his jazz background. I did not hear any kind of theme throughout the film, mostly just what emotionally was needed in the scenes; which is what Mark Isham does so well at.
