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Stewart Copeland's 'BEN-HUR, A Tale of the Christ - MGM's classic silent film'

11th October 2016

Stewart Copeland's 'BEN-HUR, A Tale of the Christ - MGM's classic silent film'
© Warner Bros.
Fred Niblo's 1925 film, 'Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ,' was the most expensive silent film ever made, with an enormous cast and crew and a visual scope that is breathtaking to this day. In 2010, legendary drummer and film score composer Stewart Copeland edited Niblo's classic film and created an original score for symphonic orchestra. As a film composer, Copeland has worked with many of the greatest film directors of our generation, including Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone. His score for 'Ben-Hur' is dramatic, tuneful, and complements the film beautifully. The film, now at eighty-five minutes and an intermission, features Stewart Copeland on drum set and percussion as well as full symphony orchestra. This is a project that for the first time combines Copeland's many talents in composition, orchestration, film scoring, film editing, and of course, his remarkable virtuosity behind the drums.

'The music — performed by full orchestra and Copeland on drum set and a battery of percussion that would make Neil Peart green with envy — is eastern modalities meeting blaxploitation fun, which, in meticulous build of tension, melds with the visuals of the Copeland-trimmed-and-edited film and achieves a powerful and surprisingly affecting, epiphany-filled ninety minutes.'
— Listen Magazine

Recipient of the Hollywood Film Festival's first Outstanding Music in Film Visionary Award, a Grammy nominee for his 2005 CD 'Orchestralli,' and a 2003 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Stewart Copeland — the former drummer and founder of The Police — has been responsible for some of the film world's most innovative and groundbreaking scores. His career includes the sale of more than 60 million records worldwide, and numerous awards, including five Grammy awards.

Learn More
    - Schirmer Theatrical
    - Watch on Vimeo

Online Scores
    - Act I
    - Act II

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