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REMEMBER THE TITANS
Great, rousing sports music
A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Music composed by
TREVOR RABIN

Rating
* * * *



Performed by
UNNAMED ORCHESTRA
conducted by
UNNAMED INDIVIDUAL

Orchestration
GORDON GOODWIN
TREVOR RABIN

Engineered by
STEVE KEMPSTER
Engineered by
WILL KAPLAN
Produced by
TREVOR RABIN

Album running time
25:13

Released by
BLUE FOCUS MANAGEMENT
Catalog number
818 380 1919

Album cover copyright (c) 2000 Walt Disney; review copyright (c) 2006 James Southall

A sports movie also dealing with racial integration, Remember the Titans starred Denzel Washington as a high school American Football coach faced with the task of getting his black and white players to work together.  Apparently working together helps us all to achieve our goals in life - a valuable lesson learned, I'm sure you'll agree.  The film did quite well - you know exactly what you're going to get with a sports film, and one thing you're going to get is a crowd-pleasing tale.

The director, Boaz Yakin, was little-known, but you may have heard of Jerry Bruckheimer, who brought his favourite composer of the time, Trevor Rabin, along for the ride.  Rabin seems a natural for a film like this - he likes writing anthemic music designed to be inspirational at the best of times, and what better place for such music than in a sports movie?  And so it proves, with almost certainly the composer's strongest score to date, bolstered around a rousing and impressive theme, given a full workout in the opening cue of this album.  There's plenty more, too - a gorgeous, noble and respectful trumpet solo in "TC Williams", some rip-roaring action in "Virginia".  The brief "Black and White" offers perhaps the biggest version of the main theme, a spinetingling piece.  The big game music (which you knew was coming!) arrives in "The Field", another rousing effort.  Then, things are brought to a conclusion in the stirring "Boone and Yoast".

Sadly, the soundtrack album released in stores only featured one minute (one minute!) of Rabin's score, being filled up with irrelevant songs, this despite the fact that the entire score could have fitted on the album along with the songs.  Rabin's agency released this promotional CD which was sent out to Oscar voters and the like - copies are regularly available from Ebay etc - it's just such a great pity that the score which shows Rabin off at his best is unavailable to the majority.  This is a score which very much follows the grand traditions established in such great scores as The Natural and Hoosiers and Rabin's music is certainly not out of place when put alongside such distinguished predecessors.

Tracks

  1. Remember the Titans (2:18)
  2. Gettysburg (1:18)
  3. The Game (4:46)
  4. Integration (1:16)
  5. TC Williams (2:29)
  6. Virginia (1:37)
  7. The Hospital (1:52)
  8. Titans Spirit (1:24)
  9. Black and White (1:15)
  10. On the Bus (1:56)
  11. The Field (2:39)
  12. Boone and Yoast (2:25)
    13.