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Kitarō: Heaven & Earth (Ten to Chi)

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Domo Records
Released: 1993.12.07
Time:
 57:55
Category: New Age
Producer(s): Kitarō
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.domomusicgroup.com/kitaro/
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2015
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Heaven & Earth [Land Theme] (Le Ly Hayslip) - 7:38
[2] Sau Dau Tree (Kitarō) - 3:37
[3] Ahn & Le Ly Love Theme (Kitarō) - 4:55
[4] Saigon Reunion (Kitarō) - 5:48
[5] ARVN (Kitarō) - 3:41
[6] Sau Nightmare (Kitarō) - 0:58
[7] V.C. Bonfire (Kitarō) - 0:47
[8] Trong Com (Traditional) - 0:43
[9] Ahn's House: Entrance/Please Come Visit My Village of Hoa Qui (Barry Fasman/Budd Carr/Hiep Thi Le/Le Ly Hayslip) - 6:26
[10] Destiny (Kitarō) - 1:13
[11] Last Phone Call (Kitarō) - 1:40
[12] A Child Without A Father (Kitarō) - 2:04
[13] Village Attack/ The Arrest (Kitarō) - 1:21
[14] Walk To The Village (Kitarō) - 2:59
[15] Steve's Ghosts (Kitarō) - 1:31
[16] Return To Vietnam (Kitarō) - 2:04
[17] Heaven & Earth [End Title] (Kitarō) - 10:27

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Kitarō - Varous Instruments, Producer

Yu Xiao Guang - Huqin, Production Coordination
Hiep Thi Le - Vocals on [2,9]

The Orchestra - Orchestra
Randy Miller - Arrangements, Conductor

Gary Barlough - Co-Producer, Engineer, Synclavier Programming
Gary LeMel - Executive Producer, Music Executive
Bruce Botnick - Orchestra Recording Engineer
Budd Carr  - Executive Producer on [8]
George Marino - Mastering
David W. Brenner - Editing
Amy Dunn - Coordination
Victor Kempster - Production Design
Sidney Baldwin - Photography
Dennis Keeley - Photography
Roland Neveu - Photography
Elizabeth Stone - Photography
Janet Wolsborn - Design
Oliver Stone - Director
Robert Richardson - Director

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Heaven & Earth is the official soundtrack to the 1993 Golden Globe-winning film of the same name starring Tommy Lee Jones, Haing S. Ngor, Joan Chen, and Hiep Thi Le. The original score was composed by Kitarō. The score won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.


International recording artist and keyboardist Kitarō scored the music for Oliver Stone's film Heaven and Earth. This movie examines the life of a Vietnamese woman...Kitarō performs on many unusual Vietnamese instruments, ones that have a melodic Asian flavor due to the use of special Chinese instruments played by Yu Xiao Guang. This is the first time Kitarō has collaborated with Stone. He spent more than a year working on his compositions and says that the scope of the film has given him the opportunity to explore a new musical style. Kitarō feels this is his greatest endeavor to date...

All Music Guide



Heaven & Earth: (Kitarō) Oliver Stone's trilogy of films inspired by his own experiences with the Vietnam War ended with Heaven & Earth, following the critically and popularly praised Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Never experiencing the same success as its predecessors, Heaven & Earth suffered from a lack of satisfying continuity in its script and drew disappointing returns despite featuring Stone's typically lavish visual sense. The story of Heaven & Earth is based on the autobiographical books of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman whose tragedy in her worn-torn homeland led to an unpredictably successful business career in the United States. After being tortured as a girl by both sides of the war, her journey from her village leads to a marriage proposal from a dissolutioned American soldier. Together, they reside in San Diego, forcing her to endure both the disdain of her in-laws and acclimation to the new society of excesses. The torments shown in the film's first half are gut-wrenching, though they represent the more engaging narrative material. Balancing the ideas of heaven and earth for Stone would be an unlikely choice for composer for the film, with his collaborator for the project before and after Heaven & Earth (John Williams) unavailable during his busy 1993 scoring schedule for Spielberg films. Perhaps the unlikeliest hiring came when it was announced that Japanese musician Kitarō was assigned to the project. Kitarō had written a small handful of scores in the 80's and had contributed production talents to a few others. His experience in large-scale Western scoring for Hollywood films was non-existent, though after Stone's questionable treatment of music in Platoon, few were surprised. Kitarō would go on to write one other major film score in 1997 (The Soong Sisters) before devoting his time to performing as an actor in films instead. His concert work and album compositions, however, live on, and are by far the source of Kitarō's larger fame as a composer through the decades.

Kitarō's work for Heaven & Earth would overshadow Schindler's List at the 1994 Golden Globes, however, winning the award that year for "Best Score." There are so few scores that perfectly balance the magnificence of a Western orchestral ensemble with the delicate sensibilities of Eastern instrumentation, but Kitarō managed to negotiate the differences with fantastic results in Heaven & Earth. His music is massively rendered, with a full orchestral ensemble joined by specialty instruments from around the Far East, wildly creative percussive arrays, and a variety of vocal effects ranging from source performances by the lead actress in the film to operatic and ensemble choral contributions. On top of this, Kitarō employs various synthetic elements so seamlessly integrated into the score that they only barely give the music a slight new age tilt. In basic structure, there are two distinct halves of the music for Heaven & Earth, arguably split between the two concepts. For the idea of "heaven," Kitarō writes harmonic and grand thematic material for the full ensemble, lead by the huqin (Chinese violin) and mixed choir. While simplistic in progression, this heavenly music is nothing less than gorgeous, making sweeping use of upper range percussion and woodwinds, along with the synthetic sounds of blowing wind, to offer a completely unashamedly positive outlook on life. The recording's mix between the ensemble and each specialty instrument is precise and satisfying. This form of crossover music extends through the first four cues, including the concert-worthy "Land Theme" and the huqin-led "Love Theme." The most impressive bombastic piece is the monumentally powerful "Saigon Reunion," with grand percussion rips and brass domination. Finally, the exquisite "End Title" suite presents extended operatic and other stylish performances of the score's themes. With the strings leading the theme while brass eloquently performs supporting whole notes (as well as the ethereal voices and pinpointed timpani use), many of these sequences will remind listeners of John Barry's music, though with much more robust style and variance here.

The remainder of the score, representing "earth," consists of savage percussion pieces, sometimes interrupted by frightening choral effects (as in the opening to "Village Attack"). The throat singing and chanting of monks expands the score's horizons even further. The primordial sound of some of these cues will be fresh to Western ears (outside of one similarly percussive approach by Jerry Goldsmith early in Rambo III), though to call them readily listenable is suspect. The use of synthesizers only irritates with the heartbeat effect heart for the duration of the disturbing "Steve's Ghosts." The synth keyboarding in the "End Title" is almost identical in sound to the high pitch equivalent in Goldsmith's Under Fire. A positive inclusion by Kitarō throughout the score are adaptations of traditional Vietnamese folks pieces, performed in parts once again by the lead actress of the film. Hiep Thi Le's vocals are somewhat sparse in their direct mix, and her tone may be harsh given the force with which performs her language. One respite from the dissonance in the middle of the album is "Ahn's House," a cue featuring both a Le vocal and a lush performance of the love theme to conclude the scene. Overall, however, Kitarō's first major film score can be considered nothing less than a work of beauty. Conducted and orchestrated by Hellraiser III's Randy Miller, Heaven & Earth is rare blend of elements that will provide you with half an hour of stunning harmony. The horror cues amount to less than half of the album's length, and are concentrated in the center of the product. With Heaven & Earth being one of the most engaging scores of 1993, fans of Kitarō and this score continue to be disappointed by the composer's lack of activity in the scoring world since 1997. Some of the same cross-cultural ideas would be utilized by Klaus Badelt in his 2006 score for The Promise, and although Kitarō doesn't match the snazzy style of that equally powerful score, his Heaven & Earth is an achievement in basic beauty that shouldn't be discounted by any film score collector.

FilmTracks.com Editorial Review
 

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