Music from the Movies
by Andrew Keech

In 1803 US President Thomas Jefferson dispatched a small expedition, called the Corps of Discovery and headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the uncharted West and search for the North West passage. Their historic and epic journey was one of the most important expeditions in American history and has been celebrated in many previous films. The Discovery Channel has produced a documentary, entitled In Search Of Lewis and Clark, charting this adventure backed by newly unearthed facts and theories. The producers turned to Alan Williams for the score, a composer who is no stranger to documentaries having written wonderful music for IMAX films like Island Of The Sharks and Amazon as well as television documentaries 'Lions Of America' and 'Dead Sea Scrolls'. The music for In Search Of Lewis and Clark is beautiful combination of powerful orchestral scoring and gentle, almost ethnic, acoustic guitar. The main title has occasional echoes of the composer's earlier work for Island Of The Sharks, but the addition of a haunting trumpet gives the music a wistful, yet vaguely military flavour. The cues dedicated to Sacajawea, a Shoshone Indian and wife of a member of the expedition, who is credited with guiding the party along their tortuous route, are characterized by a lingering, almost eerie Indian female voice that generates a mystical atmosphere. Elsewhere, the contrast of the delicacy of the flute against the harsh trumpet is used to great effect, but it is often the guitar that adds a background detail that gives score a feel of the great outdoors. The music easily generates images of sacrifice and of joy, of hardship and of achievement but most of all, of a passion for both exploration and music. Alan Williams again demonstrates a mastery of music that captures complex moods and projects detailed images. The score for In Search Of Lewis and Clark is undoubtedly one of his best scores to date and surely must herald his deserving and overdue graduation to big-budget films where his style of intense and melodic music is often needed, but sadly missing.