Merrill Jenson: Emma Smith: My Story (2008) / Orchestra at Temple Square & the Jane Fjeldsted Choir

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ABOUT THE SCORE: Underrated Utah-based composer Merrill Jenson has written some terrific scores over the years for large-format IMAX films, features and documentaries. While his 1980 effort "Windwalker" remains a personal favorite, it is his much later effort from 2008, "Emma Smith: My Story", that is perhaps his most traditionally beautiful effort among the many he has been commissioned to wrote for LDS-produced films over the years. Combining lush pastoralism with deeply soulful choral elements, Jenson has crafted an absolutely lovely score that more tenured film music enthusiasts might interpret as a synthesis of, say, Christopher Young's "Murder in the First" with the reflective bucolic lyricism of Ralph Vaughn Williams. There is a little bit of temp-track bleed at times (see the rolling violin solos a la James Newton Howard's "The Village", ergo Vaughn Williams) and most of the melodies found herein are not original, but rather based on traditional hymns used in he LDS church and elsewhere, but the beauty of the arrangements, playing by the Utah-based session musicians, and heartfelt nature of the whole package cannot be discounted. A rare animal even for 2008, this emotional, lush, soaring music is of the variety rarely allowed in 21st century film scoring. Terrific recording quality to boot!