Aleph Records is proud to release the ENTER THE DRAGON: EXTENDED EDITION soundtrack on CD November 11, 2014. The album features 56 minutes of Lalo Schifrin’s original score, much of it previously unavailable in any format.
“It was a challenge to take music from the Orient – not the stereotypical Fu Manchu ideas that Hollywood had about Chinese music, but something more authentic – and do it bigger than life, as Ennio Morricone had in the spaghetti westerns,” said Schifrin.
ENTER THE DRAGON was the first martial arts film produced by Americans and would be actor Bruce Lee’s final film. Both the film and Schifrin’s score have earned cult followings in the 40 years since the initial release. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2004.
But to a certain generation, it is Schifrin’s score for ENTER THE DRAGON that set the standard. Director Brett Ratner (who would go on to hire Schifrin to score his RUSH HOUR trilogy) said “ENTER THE DRAGON is one of my favorite movies, but its one of my favorite movies for one main reason: that it’s the best score I have ever heard in any movie,” (KCRW interview, October 26, 2011).
Kung Fu culture has proven to be a major influence on the development of hiphop culture, movies and music – and both the film and Lalo’s score are still recognized as major influencers. Even as recently as 2013, the group Blue Scholars released a song called “Lalo Schifrin”, boasting the lyric “I compose fight music like Lalo Schifrin/Me and Bruce Lee, not so different.”
Recruited by an intelligence agency, outstanding martial arts student Bruce Lee participates in a brutal karate tournament hosted by the evil Han (Kien Shih). Along with champions Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly), he uncovers Han’s white slavery and drug trafficking ring located on a secret island fortress. In the exciting climax, hundreds of freed prisoners fight in an epic battle with Lee and Han locked in a deadly duel.
“Lee told me that there was a 2,000-year tradition in martial arts,” Schifrin described his first meeting with the film’s star Bruce Lee. “He had to learn all of the rules in order to break them. Right away, I found we had that in common: I studied classical music, centuries of European classical tradition, rules and regulations, things that you can and cannot do. And then we break all the rules.”
ABOUT LALO SCHIFRIN
Lalo Schifrin is a true Renaissance man. As a pianist, composer and conductor, he is equally at home conducting a symphony orchestra, performing at an international jazz festival, scoring a film or television show, or creating works for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and even The Sultan of Oman.
As a young man in his native Argentina, Lalo Schifrin received classical training in music, and also studied law. He came from a musical family, and his father, Luis Schifrin, was the concertmaster of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colon. Lalo Schifrin continued his formal music education at the Paris Conservatory during the early 1950’s. Simultaneously, he became a professional jazz pianist, composer and arranger, playing and recording in Europe.
When Schifrin returned to Buenos Aires in the mid 1950’s, he formed his own big concert band. It was during a performance of this band that Dizzy Gillespie heard Schifrin play and asked him to become his pianist and arranger. In 1958, Schifrin moved to the United States and thus began a remarkable career.
To date, Lalo Schifrin has written over 100 film and television scores including Mission Impossible, Mannix, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, The Cincinnati Kid, Amityville Horror, four of the Dirty Harry films, and more recently Abominable and the Rush Hour trilogy. Lalo Schifrin has now won five Grammys® (twenty-two nominations), one Cable ACE Award, and six Academy Award® nominations. His longtime involvement in both the jazz and symphonic worlds came together in 1993 as pianist and conductor for his on-going series of “Jazz Meets the Symphony” recordings.
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