The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ is the soundtrack, on the Sony label, of the 2004 Academy Award-nominated film The Passion of the Christ starring James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern and Monica Bellucci. The original score was composed by John Debney and conducted by Nick Ingman, with additional music by Jack Lenz. The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Mel Gibson, the director for The Passion of the Christ, has sung in part of the soundtrack. Various other artists worked on the score, such as, Ron Allen (instruments), Shannon Kingsbury (vocals), Tanya Tsarouska (vocal solos), Aaron Martin (vocals and synth programmer), Lisbeth Scott (lyrics and vocal coaching), Chris Bleth (instruments), Ahmed El-Eshmer (vocals), Pedro Eustache (instruments), Lakshminarayana Shankar (vocals and instruments) and Gingger Shankar (vocals and instruments). Development Rejected composers James Horner and Rachel Portman were rumored to compose the film's score. Mel Gibson first chose Canadian composer Jack Lenz to write the film's score, who began working on the project from September 2002. Lenz described the procedure as "completely uncommon" because "[composers are] usually the last people they call". While the film was in production, Lenz toured the Middle East to gather field recordings from different musicians in search of the "organic" sound that Gibson desired. Lenz scored eight CDs of original music, where he handed Gibson an additional 20 CDs of field recordings. Gibson was happy with Lenz's musical selection, though he struggled to express what he was looking for specifically. Furthermore, Gibson had also brought in Australian musician Lisa Gerrard to score the film, although her music was not used in the film.