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Original Score Music Composed by Danny Elfman
Conducted by Steve Bartek
Orchestrated by Steve Bartek and Bruce Fowler
Recorded & Mixed by Dennis Sands
Recorded at Warner Bros., Eastwood Scoring Stage
Music Editor: Ellen Segal
Midi Supervision & Preperation by Marc Mann
Produced by Danny Elfman
After a successful year scoring three high-grossing pictures, including 2002s highest-grosser, Spider-Man, Danny Elfman finished things off with a small but important contribution to Miramax's major Academy-Award  contender, Chicago. With music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb based on the original Bob Fosse musical, Elfman's somewhat last minute involvement was a welcome surprise. Credited with "original score music", Elfman apparently wrote around fifteen minutes of score (see below for more details). About seven and a half minutes of that is on Epic / Sony Music Soundtrax's album, "After Midnight" and "Roxie's Suite", two smouldering '20s flavored tracks reminiscent of a slower-tempo "Crime Spree" from Elfman's Dick Tracy score.
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01. Overture / And All That Jazz
02. Funny Honey
03. When You're Good To Mama
04. Cell Block Tango
05. All I Care About
06. We Both Reached For The Gun
07. Roxie
08. I Can't Do It Alone
09. Mister Cellophane
10. Razzle Dazzle
11. Class
12. Nowadays (Roxie)
13. Nowadays / Hot Honey Rag
14. I Move On
15. After Midnight (3'24)
 Danny Elfman (score)
16. Roxie's Suite (3'58)
Danny Elfman (score)
17. Cell Block Tango
(He Had It Comin')
18. Love Is A Crime
Total Playing Time: 70'06
Epic / Sony Music Soundtrax
(EK 87018)
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 In an interview with Film Score Monthly's Jeff Bond (October, 2002), Elfman spoke a bit about Chicago. "They need[ed] about fifteen minutes of score, a few scenes and moments in between musical numbers and a montage and an ending. I never saw the stage play so I don't have a clue what it was, but from what I understand [the film] is a little edgier and not qite as much of a romp as the stage play was. I know that they came to me because of my background in late-'20s and early-'30s music, which was a specialty of mine and something I did for about eight years. Once they found that out I was nailed. I used to play Duke Ellington piano solos, and that's one of the ways I learned to write music. I do write one source cue for it that comes out of a phonograph during a murder. It's very amusing and -- due to the time period and the nature of it -- was a natural thing for me to slip into".
A prestige picture like Chicago might net Elfman an Oscar nomination, but probably due to the Academy's tendency to mistake songs and score. The few precious minutes on this soundtrack album aren't really enough to give you an accurate idea of it's quality. Sure to be categorized a minor effort (most likely due to the small amount of score written) by the composer, hard core fanatics should still add this album to their collection.
Danny Elfman's latest albums on elfman.filmmusic.com:
     
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