Amazon.comJohn Barry's Academy Award-winning score for actor/director Kevin Costner's nouveau western, Dances with Wolves, is nothing short of a modern classic by a film scoring master. Utilizing Wagnerian structure, Barry's three main themes recur in magisterial symphonic form. The memorable "John Dunbar" theme alone has become an almost subconscious part of modern life, utilized as Muzak and underscore for public events great and small. Barry's skills as an arranger color his themes in subtly shifting orchestral hues, giving even the most repeated melodic passages new emotional weight. Barry's rich music is living proof that the art of orchestral film scoring is still alive and surprisingly vital in the '90s. --Jerry McCulley