Shadows of the Empire is sometimes called an "interquel" - the events take place between those of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  Released in 1996, it is essentially a Star Wars film without the film - there was a novel, a video game, a comic book series, and all the merchandise you could shake a stick at.  There was also an all-new original score composed by Joel McNeely, who was personally recommended for the job by John Williams himself.

Never read the book, and the video game pretty much blew chow.  The score, however, is pretty darned good.  It may not seem fair to compare it to the scores for the feature films, but I still think it holds up well on its own.  Two of the cooler segments are called "The Battle of Gall" and "The Destruction of Xizor's Palace", and there just happens to be a YouTube fanvid that makes use of both of them...

...so go watch it already.

Read the Shadows of the Empire article on Wikipedia.

This is part of a week-long series on music from Star Wars.