Nine Months

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Tracks

Milan Records (01/01/1970)

Booklet and Album Artwork Add Recording to my Collection

Liner Notes

In Nine Months, Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer follows the humorous road that a confirmed bachelor (Hugh Grant) takes to unexpected fatherhood. No movie could better reflect Zimmer’s own emotional passage during the birth of his daughter, Zoe, nine months of anguish and exuberance that have moved Zimmer to write his most deeply felt score. Breaking new ground in his use of warm orchestral colors, Hans Zimmer’s poignant soundtrack to Nine Months continues to show the versatility that’s made him one of Hollywood’s top composers.

Hans Zimmer was a pioneering synthesist in England before work as a jingle writer gave him an entry into film composing. Though he had no formal musical training, Zimmer’s orchestral voice would be nurtured in England by Stanley Myers (The Deer Hunter), a veteran composer with whom Zimmer would co-compose My Beautiful Laundrette. Striking out on his own with A World Apart, Paperhouse and Diamond Skulls, Zimmer showed a distinctive melodic voice. Though his soundtracks were mostly electronic, Zimmer’s music fused rock and roll’s energy with the cinema’s high drama, creating an original sound that was caught between the symphonic and synthesized worlds.

It was his tribal score for A World Apart that finally led him to Hollywood with Rain Man. Taking his percussive music on a road trip across America, Hans Zimmer’s unique approach was nominated for an Academy Award. The studio quickly responded to Zimmer, and among the many, and oft-limited scores to follow were Black Rain, Days of Thunder, Pacific Heights, Bird on a Wire, A League of Their Own, and Thelma & Louise. With the help of such orchestrators as Shirley Walker and Bruce Fowler, Zimmer also continued to explore African rhythms with The Power of One and Millennium, his use of electronics, ethnic music and the symphony coming together to win the composer an Oscar for The Lion King’s epic music.

Hans Zimmer doesn’t like to stay with one emotion for too long, jumping from the Asian instruments of Beyond Rangoon to the undersea suspense of Crimson Tide and now to the human comedy of Nine Months. Like the other heartfelt scores for Driving Miss Daisy, Green Card and Regarding Henry, Nine Months offers a number of warm orchestral motifs for Hugh Grant’s distraught bachelor, his love theme often falling apart with the uncertainty of most relationships. Though Hans Zimmer had written Nine Months’ main theme before the film even started production, the composer avoided the climactic delivery scene for as long as possible, remembering the craziness surrounding his daughter’s birth. Yet Nine Months’ score resolves itself with a magical theme… the film’s reluctant playboy turning into a loving father with the arrival of his son.

With his moving score for Nine Months, Hans Zimmer continues to confirm his unique gift for melody and understanding the emotional needs of any story. Nine Months is another soundtrack that enchants listeners well after the theater lights have gone up.

– Daniel Schweiger

Chris Columbus (director), was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania and grew up outside Youngstown, Ohio. As a youngster, he aspired to draw cartoons for Marvel Comics and eventually discovered that comic books resemble the storyboards directors sketch for their movies. In high school, he began making 8mm films, drawing his own storyboards for them (which he continues to do for his films today). After high school, he enrolled in the Director’s Program at New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts.

It was as a screenwriter that Chris Columbus first attained success. While still in college, he sold his first script, Jocks, a semi-autobiographical comedy about a Catholic schoolboy who tries out for the football team.

After graduating from N.Y.U., Columbus wrote a steeltown drama called Reckless based on his experiences as a factory worker in Ohio. The film starred Daryl Hannah and Aidan Quinn and was directed by James Foley.

Columbus grained prominence on Hollywood with a trio of original scripts for Steven Spielberg – the 1984 comedy thriller Gremlins, the 1985 adventure The Goonies and the fantasy Young Sherlock Holmes which was directed by Barry Levinson.

Columbus’ screenwriting achievements led to his first two directional efforts. Adventures in Babysitting and Heartbreak Hotel.

He continued his affiliation with Spielberg by contributing to the script for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade before a chance meeting with John Hughes led to his directing assignment on Home Alone. The Twentieth Century Fox film became the most successful comedy and the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time. Following Home Alone, Columbus directed the poignant comedy Only the Lonely from his own screenplay. Most recently he directed two worldwide blockbuster hits, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams and Sally Field.