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by Randall Larson

Pajama Gladiator and other Award Winning Shorts comprises suites from six short films, from the 2009 Student Academy Award winner Pajama Gladiator to the Student Emmy winner The Lion And The Mouse and the festival award winners The Loch, The Juror, The Adventures Of Space Baby And Mental Man and The Teller’s Tale.  The short stories run from family-oriented sci-fi and fantasy about aliens and children, and the world beneath Loch Ness, to an adaptation of Aesop’s fable, to a dramatic courtroom juror’s moment of decision, to an expressive historical family film.  The scores are, naturally, very different from one another, from the space wars swashbuckle of the title track to the straight-ahead dramatic nuances of Aesop’s The Lion and the Mouse with its brassy overture and breezy percussion, steel drums, and Caribbean melodies, culminating in a near epic sounding crescendo that segues into a charge for chanting chorus and full orchestra.  This little 6:42 minute film score has all the power and passion of any Bruckheimer battlefest, and just as much if not more orchestral flavoring.  Space Baby and Mental Man, at 8:34, is the longest suite on the album, and a warm and richly evocative score, emphasizing piano, winds, synth strings, and a nice embellishment from bell tree early on, all providing a gentle sonority in a story about an investor who discovers an alien child whose powers can help him save the world.  Eschewing the kind of massive orchestral strokes that energized Pajama Gladiator, this suite emphasizes childlike innocence and graceful lyricism; the oboe and flute lines that sweeten the synth colors at 5:25 are just marvelous, and lead into a provocative piano measure that opens into a lovely vocal coda that closes the score with a rich flavor of serenity.  The Loch is a rich and propulsive rhythmic action score, building a churning undercurrent that enlivens the environment in the loch beneath Loch Ness; The Juror’s music is housed in a reflective and considerate ambience of melodic strings; The Teller’s Tale, a wistful story about a young boy seeking to win a lucky Rabbit’s Foot in 1910 Connecticut, is a compelling score stepped in folk Americana that runs from gentle melodies to a propulsive, drum-driven motif and back again.  The six short scores proffer a diverse assortment of styles but are rooted in their composer’s characteristic sense of melody and symphonic orchestration.  Music for shorts rarely get collected and appreciated, so this collection is especially welcome.