Varèse Sarabande albums discography


Varèse Sarabande is an American record label founded in 1978 and currently owned by Concord Music. The label publishes film scores, television soundtracks, and original cast recordings. In the 1980s and 1990s, the label became one of the most active soundtrack publishers, releasing hundreds of titles across LP, cassette, and CD formats. Its catalogue includes music from film, television productions, and some classical works.

VC/VX series (1978)

Starting in 1978, Varèse Sarabande released both classical works and motion picture soundtracks on vinyl. Some of the titles were reissued by Intrada Records, Kritzerland Records, and Citadel Records.

STV and CTV series (1979–1987)

In 1979, Varèse Sarabande introduced a new cataloging system to differentiate its television and film soundtrack releases from its classical music catalogue. This was achieved using a distinctive "STV" prefix to avoid confusion between the two lines. Many of these early soundtrack titles were later reissued on CD, either by Varèse Sarabande itself or by other specialty labels such as Intrada Records, Citadel Records, and Kritzerland Records. These reissues are often catalogued under the label's 47000 series or as part of its CD Club releases.
From 1984 to 1990, most soundtrack titles were issued in both LP and CD formats during a transitional period when compact discs were gradually replacing vinyl records due to their larger storage capacity—approximately 80 minutes compared to the average 45 minutes of a standard LP. Many titles were also released on cassette, identified by a "CTV" prefix, to distinguish them from their LP and CD counterparts.
In 1987, Varèse Sarabande entered into a distribution agreement with MCA Distributing. This move reflected a broader industry trend at that time, during which major record companies acquired or partnered with smaller independent labels amidst a growing stock market. Other labels involved in similar acquisitions include A&M Records, Island Records, and later GRP Records. The partnership with MCA significantly expanded Varèse Sarabande’s distributive reach and led to a notable increase in its soundtrack release output.

704/1000 digital LP series (1979–1988)

In the late 1970s, the label attempted to distinguish its digital LP releases from their standard edition LPs by featuring a unique codex starting with either 1000 or 704 in their later issues. Most of these applied to their earlier classical releases, with the label later pivoting to focus on their digital soundtrack recordings, which were becoming standard during the mid-1980s. This series lasted until mid-1988, when the label officially joined MCA to distribute and release their soundtracks and future Broadway, jazz, and vocal albums.
The DBX Recording Technology Showcase Series was released as part of the 1000 series, intended by the label to produce louder music with the dbx encoded LPs in conjunction with the new technology of specialized no noise systems. Chalfont, Varèse's LP offshoot, was amongst the group of record labels involved along with themselves personally. Their entry into this technology produced the album Beyond the Sound Barrier: The Spectacular Sound of Digital DBX Discs, a compilation of digitally recorded tracks from the albums Digital Space by Morton Gould and Boy With Goldfish and Lazarus and His Beloved by Lee Holdridge.
The soundtrack titles also corresponded in sequence to their CD releases also starting with the identical number or a different number than previously assigned. These were very scarce in production, unlike the LPs which were more widely available. However, a few of these LPs did not have a CD counterpart and some were cancelled, possibly due to the poor theatrical performances of the film. Examples of these are Bad Dreams and Dead Heat, in which CD counterparts were announced and then cancelled, relegating them to LP and cassette releases only. Since these vinyl albums were not released with a suffix unlike the original classical releases, VCDM has been added to avoid confusion between the 704 series CD as Varèse Sarabande Digital LP.

5200 LP series (1988–1991)

After the label completed its deal with MCA Distributing, they continued to produce LPs of their soundtracks, despite the fact that sales of vinyl were plummeting due to the successful emergence of the CD format, which allowed for a more sonic experience and could contain more music.
The label reassigned the number of their LPs to try and match their CD counterparts under the prefix of VSD. The LPs were simply assigned VS and followed by the catalogue number. All LPs featured the exact same artwork as the CDs as well as musical content. However, not all of the CD releases had an LP counterpart which was largely due to reissues from other record labels such as Arista Records, MCA, Sony and others which were not produced by the label. Their releases concentrated on everything they produced and released which included hit films such as Die Hard 2, Total Recall, Back to the Future Part III, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Ghost, which is one of the label's all-time best selling albums.
The final LPs produced by the label were in late 1991, when the label switched strictly to CDs and cassettes only. The thrilling action score, Ricochet, composed by Academy Award nominee Alan Silvestri, was the final LP release on the label.

47000 series (1983–1987)

Varèse Sarabande first began producing compact discs roughly around 1983, almost at the dawn of the compact disc, which also included labels such as GRP Records, Telarc, Mobile Fidelity and Polydor. Their initial releases in this series are often held in high regard by collectors, especially those without a barcode which all discs were printed and produced in Japan by the Japan Victor Company. These discs feature exceptional sound quality and in particular, the classical releases feature exceptional artwork which have made these titles extremely valuable. Their first run of CDs pressed in Japan by JVC for US market began with the best selling Star Wars Trilogy CD and went up until Peggy Sue Got Married. At that point the label switched over to Laser Video for its releases, starting with Tai-Pan in late 1986 until its final distributed release for that company with No Way Out in 1987. After that, the label's releases were exclusively pressed by JVC America.
This series was started and supervised by Tom Null, who oversaw the classical releases and the soundtracks along with co-producer Chris Kuchler. Richard Kraft came on board around 1986 and co-ran the label with Null until the end of 1988 to ease the label's transition after they reached a deal with MCA Distributing in 1987, which didn't take full effect until mid-1988. Null would remain with the label until 1993 where he would eventually reactivate Citadel Records, formerly a subsidiary, and reissued many of Varèse's LP and out-of-print Varèse CDs. Under new producer Robert Townson, they released three titles during this period, including The Final Conflict, which was his first ever release as producer in 1986, as well as Lionheart, a little-seen adventure film which was released by the label in two separate volumes in 1987. Townson would take over and oversee the label in early 1989 after Kraft's departure.
This series was notorious for many catalog number gaps especially during late 1986 and the entirety of 1987, which many speculate were titles that were released as LPs and cassettes during this period. One such title, King Kong Lives, was actually produced by the label but acquired by MCA Records in late 1986 as the film was figured to be a big holiday release late that year and was released through them instead. Some titles that were released theatrically during this period, did receive a CD counterpart to go along with the LP and cassette formats and others that were either slated to be released as a CD and were cancelled would be reissued later on by the label through the Varèse Sarabande Club or in some cases as part of the regular catalog.
Townson with the help of Kraft and Null would go on to start a Limited Edition Club of mail order only releases that would finally come to fruition during the spring of 1989 after being promoted in late 1987 and throughout 1988 after long delays. The club was intended for titles for new or older scores for past films that were released that did not receive a soundtrack release or a score album while the film was released theatrically and would later include many titles from the many gaps in their CD discography decades later. Townson's label, Masters Film Music, would get the first releases which included reissues which included Obsession, Bernard Herrmann Concert Suites, an elaborate four-disc reissue set of the original Decca LPs featuring artwork and a full-fledged production, and Jerry Goldsmith Suites and Themes, the first live concert performance on CD by the famed Oscar winning composer which also featured artwork by Bob Peak. The official club titles started by Kraft and Null would soon be released not long after with Cherry 2000 by Basil Poledouris, which at one point was the most valuable soundtrack on the market, going for as much as $2500 at a hotly contested auction. Null would leave Varèse in 1993 and start his own label Citadel Records and reissued a lot of Varèse's older out-of-print soundtrack LPs, as well as some of the classical releases he put out during his time with the label. Also during this period, Varèse reached an agreement with Columbia House under the Columbia Record Club to release a handful classical releases that included Scheherazade, The Four Seasons, and Dvořák Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, amongst others. The album covers had different color fonts and on the back insert and CD had the Columbia Record Club moniker "CRC" on it to distinguish itself from the original Varèse produced editions.
The Star Wars Trilogy, The Man from Snowy River, Halloween and Witness are amongst the label's all-time top ten best selling releases from this period along with other titles such as The Emerald Forest, Escape from New York, Aliens, The Fly, The Right Stuff/North and South, Pee-wee's Big Adventure / Back to School, Starman and The Road Warrior. Many of these titles stayed in print for at least two decades or more and others quickly went out of print.
The final title produced by the label for this run, The Serpent and the Rainbow, was one of the rarest titles in the series due to its low print run of an estimated 400 copies. For this reason, this title was very valuable for a long period of time and was recently reissued as part of Varèse's Little Box of Horrors 12-CD collection in 2016 in an LP replica styled slipcase featuring the same artwork as the original CD. This also goes for the label's strange handling of reissues of Phantasm, Liquid Sky, and Dawn of the Dead which also were supposed to be released during or after the MCA transition and received very limited runs and also became collector's items as a result of this.

70400 series (1988)

With this batch of a dozen titles between the 47000 series and the new mainline series starting from 5200 to 7500 - which started right after this after Varèse's newly minted distribution deal with MCA in late 1987 - the label finally instituted a barcode system which included this series of titles with a limited press run of over 500 copies or more during the label's transition with MCA into their distribution cycle. This numbering system stems from their digital LP series of titles featuring a few soundtracks and also could be seen as 470 rearranged as 704. These titles featured specific lettering and package design not unlike the 47000 series and this lettering and package design would run until the first batch of the 5200 series, which would later re-institute the font lettering they used during the 47000 series permanently until 1999.
This series features a few cancellations including one rumoured title of Dead Heat by Ernest Troost and one confirmed but announced title, Bad Dreams in which collectors were willing to pay top prices for until the label revealed and confirmed its cancellation when they finally released it on CD as part of their LP to CD Subscription Series that ran from June 2015 to May 2016.

5200–7500 series (1988–2018)

When Varèse Sarabande began its partnership with MCA Distribution in 1988, the benefits of this deal were nationwide availability of Varèse Sarabande CDs, LPs and cassettes. The label adopted the MCA catalogue numbering system with the prefix VSD and a subsequent number to denote multiple-disc sets or a video release if any as that was required for all labels in the MCA distribution system. When the MCA and PolyGram families merged in 1999, which created Universal Music, the newly merged company used PolyGram's catalogue-numbering system, which used the main six digits of the UPC barcode as the basis for the catalogue number and since the original MCA numbering was already based on part of the UPC number, the number sequence was not changed. This run starting from VSD-5200 ended during the 7500 series as Concord Records assumed control of the company during the middle of 2018 and started a new numbering system as a result. Catalogue numbers without a title are usually assigned to a release that is not ready to be officially announced by the label. In some cases, older unassigned numbers are the result of a production delay, but usually it is because they have been canceled. For collectors, the curiosity about what a number has been assigned to is part of the demand for a complete discography.
Also as Varèse Sarabande grew, it branched into other musical venues and imprints including Varèse Spotlight, which focused on original cast recordings; Varèse Jazz, which focused on jazz interpretations featuring the Trotter Trio and others; Varèse Vintage, which re-issued all genres of oldies; Water Music, which specialised in electronica; Fuel 2000, which focused on popular music; and Wildcat, which focused on rock recordings. All divisions share the same catalog numbering system, but only the Varèse Sarabande, Spotlight, and Vintage imprints share the same number sequence. There have also been some soundtracks released as digital download titles that are not currently on CD at the moment.
Colosseum Records, which is featured here as well on this listing, was the label's international division located in Nuremberg, Germany, which released all US soundtrack releases as well as European films that were able to release under their banner. Like the US versions of these soundtracks, the German pressings featured the same artwork, but instead of the black JVC design on the label side, they feature a silver label side with the JVC design in red. The artwork also featured "LC" which stood for a Colosseum version. The label released titles that were only available through imports that were not released here and many of those titles featured numbers to what were cancelled releases to movies here in the US.. They also released titles for US films that did not receive a US equivalent which included Dust Devil by Simon Boswell, The Evil Dead by Joseph LoDuca, Goodbye Bafana by Dario Marianelli and a few more. They also kept in print many of the out of print 47000 and 70400 series titles for a long period of time which included D.O.A., Poltergeist III, Cocoon: The Return, John Carpenter's The Fog, The Thief of Baghdad / The Jungle Book, and Lionheart: Volumes 1 & 2. The label would later close in 2015 and Varèse does not have a European distributor at the moment.
Robert Townson, who produced his first title which was The Final Conflict aka Omen III under his Masters Film Music label in conjunction with the label in 1986, took over in early 1989 and oversaw the label's growth into one of the greatest soundtrack labels in the world with a yearly output of approximately 50 titles from newly released films and restorations and reissues from other labels. These partnerships started with reissues of Sony LP titles in 1989, then titles from the MCA catalog starting in 1990, which lasted until 2001 along with Arista Records, the Decca catalog, and Bay Cities in 1997. It also included reissues from their LP catalog that appeared as regular releases and as Soundtrack Club releases. He also created a re-recording program which brought new audiences to older soundtrack recordings from composers who he had worked with personally on the label which included John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry, Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Alan Silvestri, Stu Phillips and James Horner as well as produced new and complete re-recording of scores by Golden Age composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman and Miklós Rózsa. His first re-recording of a film score was a historic event in that it was for Alex North's rejected score for Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey which the famed director completely threw out. Conducting the event was North's best friend and Oscar-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith with his favourite orchestra, the National Philharmonic of London with North's wife, Abby, present during the recording. Before this event took place, no one outside of North or Goldsmith had heard this seemingly lost score until North's passing in late 1991 and this project came to light. His most important release was Spartacus by his favourite composer Alex North, for whom he was finally able to release his epic score in 2010 to commemorate the film's 50th anniversary with an elaborate six-CD set. Coming in a close second and surprisingly one of the best-selling soundtracks of all-time in 1990 was the Oscar winning film, Ghost, which featured a score by Oscar winner Maurice Jarre and the hit song "Unchained Melody" sung by the Righteous Brothers which Alex North co-wrote and which featured in North's full orchestral composition. The album sold over one million copies. Townson left the label in late 2018 after Concord Music bought the label to concentrate on live concerts throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Bruce Kimmel, who was asked to be a part of the label when it started in 1978, released two soundtracks to films he had personally worked on, The First Nudie Musical and Stages. He joined the label in 1993 after a successful run at the then defunct Bay Cities soundtrack label and much like Robert Townson for soundtracks, was given the full responsibility of the Broadway Musical, Spotlight and Jazz imprints of the label. These divisions were dedicated to releasing or reissuing soundtracks to musicals that were performing on and off Broadway, which was a huge success for the label throughout the 1990s as they dominated the marketplace with stellar releases with many being best sellers and featured favourable reviews. Kimmel also showcased performers from these shows on the Varèse Spotlight banner, which included Michelle Nicastro, Christiane Noll, Judy Kaye, Paige O'Hara, Mary Cleere Haran, Liz Callaway and many others. Kimmel also produced a few compilations dedicated to film music as well such as the Ennio Morricone jazz ensemble album Once Upon a Time in Cinema, Toonful and its sequel, Toonful Too dedicated to popular Disney songs performed by Nicastro, and also dedicated himself to jazz as well with the label's Varèse Jazz imprint which featured wonderful recordings by the Terry Trotter Trio producing albums inspired by movies, artists and Broadway shows by Stephen Sondheim. These include The Star Wars Album, The Michel Legrand Album, Follies, Passion... in Jazz and many others. He also produced two of accomplished jazz pianist Fred Hersch's albums, I Never Told You: Fred Hersch Plays the Music of Johnny Mandel and a popular collaboration between Hersch and jazz singer Janis Siegel entitled Slow Hot Wind. Sadly, his divisions were closed down by 2001 by the label as the company was no longer interested in producing or releasing Broadway or jazz releases at that point in time. He would leave to work with Fynsworth Alley, a label dedicated to Broadway and off-Broadway theatre shows as well as vocals just as they had been doing at Varèse Sarabande in 2000, which ended abruptly in late 2001 as he and the label had completely different visions. Kimmel would later form his own label, Kritzerland Records, which is dedicated to movie soundtracks, musicals and some jazz albums, in the late 2000s.
The biggest curiosity of this series is the aborted release of the score album to that 1993 Bound By Honor which was originally titled Blood In Blood Out. This soundtrack which was publicly announced at the time of the films' release, and abruptly cancelled because of Disney's last-minute decision to change the films' title due to a test screening that led to violence at a time of turmoil in Los Angeles at time. The label was part way through the run when the change was made. Proving it would be too costly to reprint and produce another run of CDs under the films' new title, the CD was never officially released despite its announcements in the film, the film's advertising and subsequent video releases along with the song laden soundtrack album released by Hollywood Records at the same time. This was an officially produced album that was never released but a number of copies of it have surfaced around Hollywood insiders and throughout the soundtrack community and has been dubbed The Caine Mutiny of soundtrack CDs due to its rarity. This title has recently appeared on eBay as a counterfeit which features the same contents. However, the disc itself was not officially pressed by JVC America as the official Varèse release and the inner ring features more silver in the centre which is not on the original JVC pressing. The artwork is a colour copy of the original with the exception of the lettering on the bottom in reference to the VSD-5396 catalog number which the font is incorrect on the booklet and it also omits liner notes by the films' writer Jimmy Santiago Baca and the films' director Taylor Hackford which is featured inside the booklet. The original release also featured a butterfly silver foiled holographic sticker on the jewel case like all Varèse Sarabande titles as well as all Universal Music Group distributed titles during this period of time.
The very last "official" title released under the old Varèse numerical system that had started in mid to late 1988 was Jeff Beal's score to the Rob Reiner film "Shock And Awe".