Craig Armstrong - Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Craig Armstrong's collaboration with A.R. Rahman proved fruitful for the soundtrack of this historical epic.

In a rather unconventional move, the soundtrack for the sequel to the 1998 film Elizabeth, 2007's Elizabeth: The Golden Age, was the product of collaboration not only between two composers, but two styles of music. Though it's Craig Armstrong's name above the door, credit must also go to A.R. Rahman for providing an exoticism and a different approach than that of Armstrong, who had cut his teeth on Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Love Actually. The two composers hunkered down in Armstrong's Glasgow studio to thrash out the soundtrack, and the spirit of collaboration runs all the way through it.

Since the film's success, Armstrong's piece 'Storm' from the soundtrack has gone on to find a new home in a variety of different places, including in several trailers for other movies - one of which being the Superman re-boot Man Of Steel. But ultimately it succeeds on its own alchemical merits, the product of two diverse minds working on a strikingly different project.