Jack Reacher soundtrack released

Composer Joe Kraemer has reteamed with Oscar winning director Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) for the highly anticipated Paramount Pictures’ action-thriller Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise. Kraemer first garnered critical-acclaim with his score for McQuarrie’s The Way of the Gun, which The Washington Post referred to as “one of the best [scores] in recent memory, rich in classic film noir atmospherics.” Jack Reacher opens in theatres December 21, 2012. The score album is available today on La-La Land Records.

Jack Reacher tells the story of a renegade homicide investigator tasked with unraveling five seemingly random murders. Reacher, played by Tom Cruise, goes about the job in his own unorthodox and violent way. The film is based on the bestselling Lee Child Novel “One Shot,” and costars Rosamund Pike (Surrogates), Oscar winner Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), and Oscar-nominated director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn).

Joe Kraemer has a vast musical palette that yields a score that best services the vision of a director regardless of the style, genre or tone of the film. When Kraemer collaborates with McQuarrie, the result is a score that is somewhat reminiscent of the orchestral scores of the 1970’s. For Joe Kraemer’s original score, which the composer also conducted, he incorporated a 90-piece orchestra heavy with brass and low strings, in a score that is packed with motifs. “The sounds we gravitated towards tended to be a little more ‘70s, that is an era that Chris relates to filmicly; similar to the 80’s feel Spielberg gave his film Super 8,” explained Kraemer. “I was looking for a score that could stand on its own- orchestral, melodic, moving- not typical of the genre,” said McQuarrie. “We made the right choice with Joe Kraemer.”

Kraemer’s relationship with McQuarrie began when Kraemer was only 12 years old and living with his family in upstate New York. While a seventh grader, Kraemer befriended a neighbor- high school senior Scott Storm- an aspiring filmmaker who went on to the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Storm and his new classmates Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie would return to Albany on weekends to shoot movies; they enlisted Kraemer first as an actor. When the film score-loving kid asked Storm what he used for music, he then became the composer.

After graduating from Berklee College of Music, Kraemer moved to Hollywood, and found work as a sound editor (an early credit was editing the dialogue in Dumb and Dumber).

In 1997, his early relationships would begin to pay off. Kraemer reunited with Christopher McQuarrie, who had recently won an Oscar for his The Usual Suspectsscript. Kraemer scored the NBC pilot The Underworld, which McQuarrie wrote and produced. That in turn led to Kraemer scoring the indie film Burn, produced by Bryan Singer. Two years later, McQuarrie made his directorial debut with The Way of the Gun. Kraemer and orchestra delivered a delightfully mysterious, castanet-salted score- influenced by the classic film scores he loved but with an approach all his own. Since 1997, Joe Kraemer has composed music for more than 50 films and television projects.