John Rowe

The most important, previously unreleased, John Williams score finally comes to CD, and it only took 34 years! Here it is … John Williams' 1976 score for Alfred Hitchcock's final film - Family Plot. Only the film's spirited End Title has ever been released previously. At long last, the entire magical, mischievous and macabre score is available. Family Plot is a very important score for Williams in that it established a certain approach and tone of writing that he would further explore in such diverse later scores as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Home Alone, The Witches of Eastwick and Harry Potter, among others.

The fundamental and inescapable fact of our existence is that we are finite beings conscious of our finitude, and no more so than when someone near to us dies. This is the background to Sissel, a quietly moving performance by pianist John Tilbury, electric guitarist/electronics artist Keith Rowe, and Norwegian video artist Kjell Bjørgeengen, who collaborated with Tilbury and Rowe in the capacity of producer. The single piece that makes up the album was recorded as part of the Moving Sound concert series in Stavanger, Norway, in 2016, shortly after the death of Bjørgeengen’s wife Sissel, to whom the album is dedicated.