eJazzNews Archive

New Woody Allen Film Soundtrack: Melinda & Melinda

Originally published on eJazzNews · · CD Releases

On December 17, 2004, eJazzNews ran a short reader post, signed only “Anonymous,” about the soundtrack of Woody Allen’s film Melinda and Melinda, which the writer said they had heard before its release. The film had opened in Spain in October 2004 and reached American theaters on March 18, 2005. The 12-track soundtrack album issued in 2005 matches the post’s description closely: Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner and Dick Hyman alongside Stravinsky and Bartók.

What the 2004 post said

The writer called the soundtrack a strong compilation with at least three tracks by Duke Ellington, some up-tempo pieces by Erroll Garner and several by Dick Hyman, who, the post noted, had worked on Allen’s films before. It named “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Moonglow” among the standards and said they sat well next to two 20th-century classical works, Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for string orchestra and Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4. The post ended by asking whether anyone else had heard anything about the album.

Two details need adjusting. “Moonglow” appears on the album only as part of a Dick Hyman piano medley, not as a separate track. The post also called the Stravinsky and Bartók pieces “contemporary,” but they were written in 1946 and 1928.

What is on the soundtrack

  • Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” and “In a Mellow Tone.”
  • Erroll Garner: “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” “Somebody Stole My Gal” and “Will You Still Be Mine?”
  • Dick Hyman: a medley of “Memories of You,” “Moonglow,” “No Moon at All” and “Darn That Dream,” a Bach prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, “Love Me” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
  • Classical: the Arioso movement of Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, and Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 played by the Shanghai Quartet.

The mix follows the film’s design. Melinda and Melinda tells one story twice, once as tragedy and once as comedy, with Radha Mitchell playing Melinda in both. In remarks reported by a French film site and quoted on the Jahsonic site in January 2005, Allen said he had aimed for distinct moods without overdoing it, Stravinsky for the dark moments and Ellington for the lighter scenes, and that after a while he mixed everything together.

The music behind the film

Stravinsky wrote his Concerto in D, sometimes called the “Basle” Concerto, in Hollywood in 1946 for Paul Sacher’s Basel Chamber Orchestra. Bartók composed his String Quartet No. 4 in Budapest in 1928. Dick Hyman, who plays four of the album’s tracks, has been composer, arranger or pianist on more than a dozen Woody Allen films, among them Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days and Sweet and Lowdown, and was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2017.

What happened next

Fox Searchlight opened Melinda and Melinda in a single New York theater on March 18, 2005, where it took $74,238 in its first weekend. It earned $3.8 million in North America and about $20.1 million worldwide, most of it abroad, and drew mixed reviews. Hyman, born in 1927, is still living. For more on the Ellington pieces used in the film, see our list of the best Duke Ellington songs and our guide to jazz standards.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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