Joel McNeely/Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus - Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Review

In the summer of 1996, several months before Lucasfilm Limited and 20th Century Fox released the 20th Anniversary Special Edition of the Star Wars Trilogy, Bantam Spectra published Steve Perry's novel Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, a noir-ish tale of revenge and intrigue pitting Lord Darth Vader against a powerful rival, Prince Xizor, who seeks to displace the man once known as Anakin Skywalker from his position as the Emperor's top servant. A reptilian Falleen who plans his every move carefully and seemingly without passion, Xizor is motivated not just by ambition or lust for power, but by revenge; a decade earlier, years before the Battle of Yavin, Vader had been running a bio-weapons lab on Xizor's home world of Falleen. Something went wrong, and Vader was forced to sterilize the area around the lab by bombarding it from orbit with a Star Destroyer's turbolasers. Most of the planet survived...but among the thousands killed during the "sterilization" were Xizor's family.

Set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Shadows of the Empire was the centerpiece of a large marketing campaign by Lucasfilm that included the creation of not just the novel, but a Dark Horse Comics adaptation, a Nintendo 64 game, a set of Kenner action figures, and a soundtrack album with music composed and conducted by Joel McNeely. (According to Perry's introduction to the comic book adaptation, Lucasfilm's marketing slogan was Everything but the movie!)

The young McNeely, who had worked for Lucasfilm as one of the composers for the wonderful but short-lived "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," had a big job to do and mighty big shoes to fill. He was, after all, only one of three composers/songwriters to get a Star Wars commision - the others being John Williams, who composed all six of the film scores, and Jerry Hay, who was writing "Jedi Rocks" for the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi.

Nevertheless, as this 1996 album, which features the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus under McNeely's baton, proves that the then-37-year-old composer could - and did - add an eerily atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing score to the Star Wars musical repertoire.

McNeely's approach to this "literary soundtrack" isn't so much to match the musical themes to specific scenes from Perry's novel. Rather, the score tries to reflect the spirit of the book without leaning too much on Williams' familiar leitmotivs. Of course, he can't ignore Williams' major themes altogether; the album begins with the familiar Main Theme from Star Wars and borrows material from The Empire Strikes Back's "Carbon Freeze" sequence, but once having taken listeners to that familiar galaxy far, far away, McNeely veers off on a different course as listeners of this album will discover when they hear "The Battle of Gall" (track 2), "Beggar's Canyon Chase" (track 4), "Xizor's Theme" (track 6), or "The Seduction of Princess Leia" (track 7), a lovely, lush piece that starts out, as the title implies, with sensual undertones in a waltz-like movement with romantic phrasings that end abruptly with a shift to dark thematic material.

For the Varese Sarabande Digital recording of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, McNeely teamed up with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus, an acclaimed ensemble of over 150 musicians. Acclaimed record producer Robert Townson, a fan of film scores and John Williams' Star Wars music, oversaw the project.

Final Thoughts: Although perhaps this album will always be, pardon the pun, overshadowed by the "official" scores composed by Academy Award-winner Williams, McNeely's musical contribution to the Star Wars ouvre is still pleasing to the ear and true to the mythology of George Lucas' classic space fantasy. Dark and brooding at times, exciting and brassy at others, Shadows of the Empire is one of the best albums in the "film music" genre, even if the film only exists in Star Wars' readers' minds.

Track List: