Photograph by Derek Elley.
by Warren M. Sherk
Peering over music spread out on stands, this musician’s eye view by photographer Derek Elley, captioned “Tiomkin Sessions” on back, perfectly captures the recording of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age in May 1978 at the Olympic Studios in England. Conductor Elmer Bernstein, framed by a steel bordered plate glass separation panel, leads the tightly packed musicians, one in the foreground with a Dixie cup at hand for sips between takes. The vertical wood paneling, pleasing to the eye, serves an acoustic purpose when sound is generated in the room. The wood boards allow sound to reflect and reverberate while the space between panels absorbs some sound. Sectional microphones on boom arms are supplemented by a single upturned mic in the center of the ensemble, visible above the second harp, that captures the ensemble’s blended sound and room tone. The music paper reflects the light from the discrete black lamps hanging from the unseen ceiling; those spotlights shine down on the most important element in this photograph, the musicians.
The ghost-like off-kilter reflections from the glass panels create an unusual depth of field, not only is this a behind-the-scenes shot, it’s one that looks both forward and through the reflected images, behind (a behind, behind-the-scenes photo?), creating an old-school double exposure effect, purposeful here rather than by accident. The saxophone-like curves of the harps provide a visual lilt and beg for attention in a room filled with vertical and horizontal lines. The headphone-less musicians hark back to an earlier era; Bernstein once told me he preferred to not use click tracks because, “I want the music to breath.” With bows up, one senses that we are between notes as the string section prepares for a downbow and we can only imagine the glorious music. While the musician’s attention is focused on their part or the conductor, Bernstein’s own gaze cleverly draws the viewer out of the frame.
The historic building housing Olympic Studios at 117 Church Road in Barnes began life at the turn of the 20th-century as a theater for a repertory company but moving images soon pushed out the stage performers in favor of the flickers. Olympic Sound Studios moved into the building in the mid-1960s and the recording studio attracted the Rolling Stones and many others with its state-of-the-art facilities. The building has come full circle, today, it houses a cinema along with a small recording studio. Of the surrounding area in the 1970s, orchestrator Patrick Russ wrote, “now an expensive area, not so much then.”
A decade after this photograph was taken, Derek Elley was called on to write Dimitri Tiomkin: The Man and His Music in conjunction with screenings at the National Film Theatre in London in 1986. Elley went on to a lengthy and notable career as a film critic.
In retrospect, the occasion for this recording was quite remarkable. By this time Elmer Bernstein was established as a leading American film composer and was searching for ways to give back to the profession that had treated him so well. The result, “Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection,” followed in the footsteps of Charles Gerhardt, who beginning in 1972 conducted the “Classic Film Score” series for RCA Records that would include music by Dimitri Tiomkin. Through his Film Music Collection, Bernstein sought to produce LPs that would faithfully reproduce original scores by recording those cues that would best represent a film and could stand on their own. Those guidelines and that effort influenced the next generation of recordings. Bernstein showcased Tiomkin by recording four of the composer’s classic scores from the 1950s; Bernstein subsequently issued the music on two LPs in 1978 and 1979.
The Film Music Collection recordings were self-financed by Bernstein and set up a model for making film music directly accessible to the fan base via mail order in the days before Varese Sarabande, Film Score Monthly, and other soundtrack specialty labels.
READ: Tiomkin disc in Film Music Collection
Ray Sumby, co-executor of the estate of Christopher Palmer, sent the above photo to Olivia Tiomkin. While Elmer Bernstein selected the music and the scores for the recordings he conducted, the music was reconstructed by Christopher Palmer, who also wrote the original liner notes. Here’s another picture from Sumby, below, of a young, vibrant, and photogenic Christopher Palmer.
Christopher Palmer
A image from an earlier Bernstein recording session featuring Dimitri Tiomkin can be seen here.
(Fourteenth in an occasional series featuring rare or unusual photographs.)