We’ve been talking a lot about what Mike Garson does away from Jazz, but he’s not the only performer on the Pied Piper release with versatility. Jim Walker might not be performing with hard rock bands (though he did play with Paul McCartney), but he’s also not only performing with orchestras. Jim walker has performed on over 600 movie soundtracks during his career. In fact, he might be the most widely-recorded flautist of all time!

From JimWalkerFlute.com:

A typical day in Los Angeles finds Jim heading for one of the major motion picture lots around 9:30 am, with his car trunk bulging with all of his flutes, recorders, pipes and whistles.

By 5:00 pm a double session with 40-90 musicians performing will have been completed.

Fifteen to twenty minutes of underscoring will have been recorded, most of which contains no exposed or challenging flute parts. Occassionally the score will contain a few prominent flute solos. All of the music will have been sight-read and recorded within minutes.

In general, a day of recording for soundtracks includes lots of time sitting around waiting for directors to make decisions about often very simple, unchallenging music to sight read and record.

Occasionally, however, you are given the hardest thing you can imagine playing to record on the spot – that’s the terrorizing part. And, if you consistently don’t play it well, you don’t get called back!

Need proof? Here’s a list of movies featuring Jim Walker on the soundtrack.