Soundtrack Release of Shirley Walker's Music From "Batman: The Animated Series"

My fellow petitioners and I would very much like to see some kind of release of Shirley Walker's music from BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES.

During the series' combined eight-year run, Shirley Walker has composed many hours of exceptional orchestral music for each episode, creating music week after week that was and still is unlike anything else ever heard in an animated series. Her music has always been a staple of the various animated Batman shows, as everyone from film score enthusiasts to casual Batman fans to critics have pointed out time and time again. It's bad enough that a lot of her other film work has not been made available on CD, but it's even worse that none of her work for BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (arguably her best work ever), and THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES, has never been released.

What we would like to see is a sort of "best of" album containing some of the highlights from her B:TAS/TNBA scores, with tracks arranged into suites that are well-representative of the episodes being covered. Among discussions with fellow film score fans, I've learned of their interest to see included on such a disc (among others) selections from the B:TAS episodes "On Leather Wings," "Beware the Gray Ghost," "The Forgotten," "Avatar" and "Second Chance," as well as TNBA episodes "Showdown" and "Over the Edge." There are many hours of music to choose from, and these are just a handful from a larger canvas of music that deserves to be released. We feel an album of this kind would be a good starting point to prove this music will sell, and thus possibly paving the way for future releases of more music from the series.

The purpose of this petition is for Kids Rhino and Rhino Records to recognize this fantastic music that has been unfairly overlooked for far too long, and to produce what is sure to be a very good-selling album.