I am very fond of the main theme music composed by Alan Silvestri for the 2000 Film Cast Away. I imagine most of you would be familiar with this American survival drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. Cast Away contains no original musical score until Chuck escapes the island. The first cue of the score comes when Chuck finally realises he’s made it off the island. He looks back toward it – and that’s when the music begins. Then it reappears in the scene when Wilson (the Volleyball) falls off the raft and floats away. Chuck awakens and futilely attempts to rescue Wilson but is left to grieve over his loss. It’s a very moving scene especially set to this music.
It’s a minimal score but Alan Silvestre won the Grammy Award in 2002. Ironically the film is noted for its lack of score. The main sounds apart from talking are creature sound effects (such as bird song or insect sounds) while Chuck is on the island, which is intended to reinforce the feeling of isolation. You might remember Silvestre’s superb musical score for Forest Gump. The entire Cast Away soundtrack consists of 10 tracks, with performers including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Charles Brown.
Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American composer and conductor of film and television scores. He has been associated with director Robert Zemeckis since 1984, composing music for all of his feature films including the Back to the Future film series and many others. Silvestri met film director Robert Zemeckis when they worked together on Zemeckis’s film Romancing the Stone (1984) which will feature here shortly on Friday’s Finest.
Edited: 8/1/2025. I’d like to thank an astute reader, Jim, who corrected my post on two major points, both of which I’ve amended above. Here is what he wrote:
Lovely write-up, but you got two very big things wrong! Silvestri did NOT win an oscar for his score, and I was thoroughly P/SSED that he wasn’t even nominated for it (The score was too short, thus disqualifying it from even being nominated). That non-talent Hans Zimmer won the oscar that year for The Lion King.
The second thing is that the first cue of the scores when Chuck first realises that he finally made it off the island… he looks at the island, and the cue begins…. it’s a POWERFUL, BEAUTIFUL moment! This is actually my second favorite film score (The first one being Bernard Herrmann’s score for Obsession!).
Reference:
1. Cast Away – Wikipedia
2. Alan Silvestri – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
A lovely score for a remarkable film.
What a coincidence! I was just sending the song ‘Broken Dreams’ out which you wrote about and then downloaded those 3 EP songs from Art Blocks. That’s some good stuff there.