Mystic River (soundtrack)

Mystic River (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album to the 2003 film Mystic River. The film is directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, who also served as the music composer. Mystic River marked Eastwood's scoring debut after his previous stint on assembling soundtracks, writing themes and composing his own jazz studio albums and songs. The score was recorded at the Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, and performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lennie Niehaus. The score was released through Malpaso Records and Warner Bros. Records on October 21, 2003.

Development

Mystic River marked Clint Eastwood's film scoring debut; he had previously composed his own jazz albums and songs during the late 1970s, written individual themes for his own films, which included "Claudia's Theme" from Unforgiven (1992) and "Big Fran's Baby" from A Perfect World (1993), amongst others and assembled his film soundtracks. Clint who initially denied scoring his own films, felt that the process came naturally. He denied on a jazz-based score due to the tone of the film but went with the three protagonists who were haunted by their past and their problems faced in their present, and inspired by that, he wrote a triad on his piano.

The score was written and played in his friend's computer after which he mocked up some synthesized instruments. Lennie Niehaus, who had composed for most of Eastwood's films, had conducted the score performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Clint's son Kyle and Michael Stevens wrote few jazz instrumentals which were used as source music in the bar scene.