Kevin Kiner- Expert Impressionist

I love what Kevin Kiner has done with the soundtrack. My wife and I have been watching the Clone War series (middle of season 2) every night and she keeps asking me, "Who's the composer for that episode?" — one of our favorite things to do after a movie, is see who composed the soundtrack.

 

Yes, from what I've seen of the Rebels clips it is almost a flawless transition.

Undoubtedly, Kiner is being groomed to take over for the movies soundtracks -- most likely will be tapped for the first spinoff. At least I'd be surprised if he wasn't.

Fitting that as we enter a new era of SW we have a new composer as well post ST.

 

I love Giacchino from his LOST days. I find his music from time to time in other things and while I think he'd also be a good fit, I think Kiner has the experience and, as you said, the adaptability to honor what came before while making something new. And many of his TCW themes were pretty great on their own.

 

Now that's an interesting idea, Kiner doing the music for the spin-offs. I would enjoy that!

 

The score got my attention pretty early on in the show! I love his treatments of classic OT themes and his new compositions aren't simple extensions of JW work. He made it his own!!!

 

Three of my favorite TCW moments are mostly him:

The abreviated force theme he did for Mortis told the viewer straightup that this planet is the force. The scene in Assassin when he uses Leia's theme for Padme's landing on Alderaan; it's pretty true to the Williams theme but that choice is so undeniably perfect to tell a larger story than what you see in the episode. I rewound it a lot when I saw that episode for the first time. The closest point on Netflix to the beginning of that scene is Ahsoka jumping Padme's bed so it also inadvertently emphasized her shame in my head. I'm wondering now if that's why it's the first episode where I started to like her...

The third piece is the one at the end of season 5. It wasn't particularly musically interesting or Williams-inspired and beyond the force theme again popping up as she's walking to the steps, I'm not familiar with the larger tone-poem theme use but it was hyper-appropriate.

As a college drop-out in music composition who liked eclectic post-modernism, I really appreciate his stylistic and instrumental variety and I admire his smooth transitions and occasional subtlety. Dude really loves his force theme, too.

edit: To balance it out, I'm not sure I'm convinced with the jarring use of the rebel theme in the very beginning the theme to the show Rebels; the way it sort of starts in the middle of the theme and comes back as a weird abrupt hemiola. The stuff in the middle I'm totally cool with but the way the rebel theme just sort of butts in still weirds me out.

 

I always thought that Kiner did a pretty good job with the TCW music, but I have to admit to not being particularly impressed by his work on Rebels so far. I definitely appreciate what he's trying to do in blending snippets of OT soundtrack themes into the new material, but overall I've found the Rebels soundtrack to be rather bland. This is in sharp contrast to the TCW soundtrack which, while I rarely felt that it had that epic, sweeping quality that Williams' film soundtracks have always had, certainly created the right atmosphere and often drove the action as a good SW soundtrack should. The Rebels soundtrack, though... it just hasn't come alive for me the way it ought to.

 

I really enjoy the TCW soundtrack and Kiner's work, as said above, does a great job of making a Star Wars soundtrack whilst also creating something entirely new. At no point do I find myself feeling like it's overly recycled, but I also don't feel like it's too far from the mark of JW's work.

However, I feel like Kiner's work is best kept to the animated series. I feel he would do a great job of the spin offs, but I really like the idea of a thematic separation between the trilogies, series and spinoffs through separate composers for each.

 

I concede your main point here; to keep Kiner working on the animated series. That's probably what they'll do anyway. But as far as separating the trilogies, that has not been done. John Williams has been the composer for both of the two earlier trilogies and is now, as I'm sure you know, composing for the first episode of this next trilogy. I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to offer. I will not leave the theater until the last note has finished playing—yes, I'll sit through the credits.

 

By the trilogies, I meant JW scoring all three of the trilogies and getting different composers in for both the animated series and the spin offs (so Kiner for the series and, to serve as an example, Giacchino for the spin offs). The day we have one of the core films without JW will be a sad day indeed!

Been watching through TCW again recently and I'm picking up on a lot more of the subtleties of Kiner's work. Really cleverly placed to remain familiar whilst also not too in-your-face. I think Rebels loses that subtlety. I think it's a conscious change though - they want the familiar fanfares and themes to let fans know that Star Wars is back and the OT is in focus. I think by series 2 we should see a change.