We celebrate 2009 with a very special album featuring original music composed by Peter Melnick (L.A. Story, Arctic Blue, The Dinosaurs) for the Film Odyseey/WNET.org television movie Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood. Premiering on KQED on New Year's Eve, the programme follows the journey of Jewish filmmakers, actors - and composers - who fled Nazi Germany to America before WW2. Courtesy of John Waxman, we are also including a number of early original recordings of music by the legendary Franz Waxman. Peter Melnick's chamber-sized score provides an intimate and honest accompaniment to the dramatic story, but also offers a lot of infectious jazz numbers influenced by the popular music aesthetics of the era. Such Hollywood legends as Fritz Lang, Franz Waxman, Robert Siodmak and Erich Wolfgang Korngold are portrayed in Melnick's score. The album also features a wonderful rendition of the classic Friedrich Hollaender song 'Wenn ich mir was wunschen durfte.'

SNEAK PREVIEW: Listen to "Billy Wilder's America"!

MMS09001 • Album available on CD and digitally

Co-inciding with the US DVD release of award-winning Canadian dark comedy Just Buried, MovieScore Media releases the strikingly original orchestral score by up and coming composer Darren Fung. The music was recorded by the Czech FILMharmonic Orchestra in Prague and makes prominent use of the harpsichord to create an unusual atmosphere that combines quirkiness with elegance in a way that really makes you smile! In the words of Variety, "Darren Fung's prominent score lends pic a sense of ironic cheerfulness." Just Buried, which is described as "a (very) dark comedy about sex, greed and death" was released theatrically in the USA in October.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Listen to "Just Buried"!

MMS09003 • Album available on CD and digitally

We continue our exciting relationship with composer Ryan Shore, whose music for Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and Numb was released on CD by MovieScore Media last year. Shadows is the new film by Academy Award-nominated director Milcho Manchevski (Before the Rain) and it's a mysterious drama with thriller elements telling the story about the son of a famous physician. This CD release follows the theatrcial release of Shadows in the USA on January 30. Ryan Shore won the Gold Medal for Excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival for Shadows, Numb, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and The Girl Next Door - all of them available from MovieScore Media (The Girl Next Door as a digital album via Film Music Downloads)! His orchestral score for Shadows provides a dark and restrained emotional accompaniment to the film's story.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Listen to an excerpt from "Lazar and Dad"!

MMS09004 • Album available on CD and digitally

Finland's contribution to the 2009 Academy Awards, The Home of Dark Butterflies, features an astonishingly beautiful orchestral score penned by newcomer Panu Aaltio, a composer who has been working on many of Tuomas Kantelinen's scores as an assistant and orchestrator. His score for The Home of Dark Butterflies is a deeply emotional work, recorded with a string-dominated orchestra in London, conducted by Matt Dunkley. 26-year old Aaltio makes prominent use of solo piano in his score, while his string writing has a stroke of minimalism that perhaps will remind some listeners of the work of Michael

Nyman. The score is built upon sevearl themes, of which the most important one can be heard in the sneak preview sample below.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Listen to an excerpt from "Big Plans"!

MMS09005 • Album available on CD and digitally