The Shawshank Redemption: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

It started back in highschool, well actually when I was in 7th grade and heard the music from the Shawshank Redemption for the first time. I simple fell in love with it. A while later, my brother bought me the soundtrack and I played it over and over and over......

A few years later, I have purchased 47 movie scores. Everything from Sling Blade to Easy Rider to Dances With Wolves. Of course, my heart has gone out to Thomas Newman, the man who first haunted me with his movie score, The Shawshank Redemption.

This score is my favorite of all of Newman's work, surpassing even the likes of How To Make An American Quilt, Meet Joe Black, and The Horse Whisperer. This, along with Fried Green Tomatoes, was the standard barer for most of Newman's current musical scores and despite some pressure from Road to Perdition and American Beauty, this one still stands as the leader of the pack when it comes to scores composed by Newman.

BUY THIS ONE. Don't think twice. If you haven't owned any...Read more

"The Shawshank Redemption" was a brilliant, brilliant film; this soundtrack proves that the score was a vital piece of that brilliance.

It is also fine music on it's own.

I am at a loss of words, trying to explain what it is about the film and the music that moves people, myself included, so deeply. There is, I suppose, something in "Suds On The Roof," and in the corresponding scene in the film, that speaks to everyone's desire to be a whole human being. Tim Robbins may play a fictional character, and perhaps one with no basis in reality, but the image of a convicted murderer taking such a risk simply to offer up to his fellow inmates a few moments of human comfort is a moving and humbling thing.

The film, and by extension the music on this CD, is a study of basic human dignity, and a brilliant salute to it.

The inclusion of "Lovesick Blues," "If I Didn't Care," and the gorgeous excerpt from "The Marriage of Figaro"...Read more

When I first watched The Shawshank Redemption, I thought, in common with a lot of people, that it was a brilliant film. What I couldn't but notice, also, was the very uplifting and at times majestic soundtrack that lay behind the pictures. Since buying the soundtrack, I have listened to it probably several hundred times now, and its power and beauty have not faded. Every time I listen to tracks such as "So Was Red" or "Sisters", I am moved by the depth of emotion that is contained in the music. The inclusion of the aria from "The Marriage of Figaro" was a masterpiece. If you like this soundtrack, try some of Thomas Newman's other works, such as "Oscar and Lucinda" and "Meet Joe Black."ÿ