There are many albums in my collection that I would carefully hide away if I thought anybody might spot them, and Free Willy 3 is one of them.  While the groovy kids listen to Linkin Park and Busted, here's me with Free Willy 3 in my collection.  (I always thought that "Free Willy" sounded like something that would be very appealing to gay men, myself.)  But there are so many fine scores that come from the most unexpected of places.  Even Basil Poledouris didn't score this, which must prove something, so the director turned instead to Cliff Eidelman, whose career hadn't quite disappeared at the time.  Like others (Bruce Broughton in particular), Eidelman is very much the Idle Man (a pun that is so good, I may have to use it on a weekly basis) when he should be scoring big films every year.

For some reason there's a real Celtic flavour to much of the music in Free Willy 3, not least the main theme and especially "Harpoon Assembly".  But more than anything, Eidelman's woodwinds really capture the spirit of the ocean that rather more famous water-bound scores (including another from 1997 that you may have heard of) didn't do nearly so well.  There's action music too - like "The Hunt" - but this remains on a rather small scale.  There's a surprising (but very appealing) use of a female vocalist which adds a certain world music quality to proceedings long before Gladiator made it so popular.

Apparently Eidelman incorporates Poledouris's theme but I've never heard it so have no idea whether that's true or not - there's certainly no credit for it on the album.  I can say that there's a wonderful, soaring theme heard towards the end of the disc that's a real pleasure to hear.

Though it was recorded in Toronto, the album is only 29 minutes long.  In this instance I think it could easily have been longer - the music is interesting and varied enough to support a longer album - but in all likelihood, there simply wasn't any more music in the film.  A little trivia: this was the last score that was orchestrated by Jack Hayes, who also worked on The Magnificent Seven, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Natural and countless other classic scores.  

Eidelman really should get more work.

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