Columbia's 1997 movie The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, starring Esai Morales, Edward James Olmos and Andy Garcia, concerns the investigation for famed Spanish poet Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War.  Naturally, this offered a great opportunity for a composer, with action intermingling with the passion inherent in the character and the setting.  The director made the wise choice to hire Mark McKenzie, whose full-blooded, emotional music is probably his best effort.

McKenzie has a talent for writing superb themes and he doesn't disappoint here, offering several.  His music is arranged in such a way that many of them get extensive treatments and each is a joy to hear.  The opening "For Love of a Poet" is certainly a highlight, but there's plenty more to come; the surprising use of a flamenco singer, Manolo Segura, adds flavour and works very well; "Ricardo's Theme", for guitar, is truly beautiful; and there's even time for some action music, such as the exciting "A Thunderstorm is Brewing".  This is immediately followed by "Elegy for Jorge", which is passionate and moving; and this, by "Blood of a Poet", utterly full of emotion and a great musical portrait of human desperation.  Arguably, the highlight is saved for the end, with the "Federico Garcia Lorca Orchestral Suite", running over ten minutes, offering a grand, sweeping, moving conclusion to the album with a reprise of various themes.

This is the kind of score that comes along all-too-rarely.  I freely admit that I'm a sucker for hispanic-flavoured orchestral music, but rarely have I heard it done so well in a film score as this.  (If "A Coffin of Wheels was his Bed" doesn't break your heart, you have a harder heart than I.)  McKenzie writes in the liner notes that "the music came from my heard and soul and I hope that it speaks to yours in some meaningful way."  Well, it does - this is an absolutely magical score.  One word above all others that could be used in association with it is "passion" - McKenzie has crafted a work of true beauty that can wring all sorts of emotions from the listener.  If you like scores like Jerry Goldsmith's Under Fire or Michael Kamen's Don Juan de Marco, you're in for a treat.

It's painful to see the likes of Trevor Rabin and Graeme Revell earning fortunes and working on massive movies all the time when they don't have a fraction of the talent of Mark McKenzie.  The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca is an essential ingredient in any film music collection.

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