The TSO Special Events series is packed with concerts that present unique challenges and require special skills from conductors. For instance, have you ever wondered how the conductor manages to perfectly time the score to what is happening on screen in a movie concert like Frozen? What about timing a silent film with no dialogue to follow like The Gold Rush. Or what about conducting for the troupe of dancers in Ballet Tucson’s The Nutcracker while in the orchestra pit? We recently sat down with conductors Evan Roider, Lawrence Golan and Julian Pellicano to find out more about the art of conducting these unique concerts.
Maestro Roider on conducting Disney’s Frozen in Concert
When conducting a film like Frozen there’s an added aspect of timing which you don’t necessarily have in a concert. You’re having to make sure musical cues line up very specifically. There are so many moments when the musical cues are really coordinated with the things that the characters do. Plus, the extra element you have with Frozen is now we have to play exactly with the singer to create a seamless experience for the audience. Creating that experience is extra important because some of the audience may be hearing an orchestra up close for the first time through this medium. People who perhaps won’t come to a concert of Beethoven or Brahms or Mozart, come to a film concert and still get to hear the orchestra play very complex, difficult music.
The score by Christoph Beck is surprisingly beautiful. It has Scandinavian aspects to it and there are these sort of epic chase moments, adventure moments where the orchestra just comes to life and these soft, beautiful moments. One of the great things about it is you’re going to hear every part of the orchestra featured, everyone is playing 110%, this is just really a chance for people to come and hear the orchestra working together as a whole in a way that’s different from a lot of other concerts. The longest break for the orchestra in this film is 50 seconds. People are really going to hear wall to wall playing from the beginning to the end of the film.
Visit the concert page for tickets and more information.
Maestro Golan on conducting Ballet Tucson’s The Nutcracker
There are two things that make experiencing Ballet Tucson’s The Nutcracker with the music performed live by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra so special. First and foremost is the music. It is simply great music that is very memorable. Almost anybody in the world can whistle or hum some of the tunes from The Nutcracker. In general, live music is a much more exciting experience than recorded music. The second aspect has to do with the interactions between the orchestra and the conductor and the dancers on stage. When the dancers are dancing to recorded music, it is fixed, it doesn’t change and there’s no back and forth, no human interaction. For each performance there are different dancers and each dancer is different. They have different tempos that they prefer, and in fact different length legs. For example, somebody with longer legs needs a little more time in a leap than somebody with shorter legs. Adapting to each dancer is a unique challenge, but the interactions between the orchestra, the conductor and the dancers on stage make it a much more satisfying artistic experience than performing to recorded audio.
Over the past 30 years I have conducted The Nutcracker multiple times each year and I’ve always considered it to be one of my primary responsibilities to bring energy to every performance, whether it’s performance number 1 or number 27. Because while it might be number 27 for the performers for the orchestra and for the dancers, it’s performance number one for that little 4-year-old girl who is coming to the performance for the first time. And it may very well be their first performance of any type, and I want to make sure that that first concert ever is fantastic for every person that comes.
Visit the ballettucson.org for tickets and more information.
Maestro Pellicano on conducting Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush
Coming to see The Gold Rush with live symphony orchestra is as if you’re back in 1925, at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, seeing it in the same way that audiences would have seen it at the film’s premiere. Charlie Chaplin was a genius, and he was the biggest star of his time. He was the writer, the director and the lead actor in all his films. The comedy is just so good that modern audiences can pick up where audiences of the past left off. The music is like a snapshot of the 1920s. There are lush, romantic themes and there’s also a lot of 1920s dance music in the score. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the music of that time by conducting several Charlie Chaplin films
The challenge that comes with conducting a silent film is that there’s absolutely nothing to hang on to, to synchronize the film. On top of knowing the music well, you really have to know the visual aspects of the film in far more detail than if you have any kind of technological aid to help synchronize the movie with the music. More modern films have a variety of different technologies that are available to the conductor for synchronizing the music to the film. I have various tricks up my sleeve that I use in silent films. I’ve done a number of them, but doing a silent film is definitely one of the most difficult things that you have to do as a conductor of live films.
