Prepare for the ultimate “surround sound” experience when the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (PSO) presents its first-ever concert dedicated to film music at Showplace Performance Centre at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 3rd.
“Popcorn, Please!” will see the orchestra perform scores from popular films including Star Wars, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Mission: Impossible, the James Bond and Lord of the Rings franchises, and more.
“We at the PSO are very excited to do this concert, since it will be the first one dedicated to film music that we have ever done,” Michael Newnham, the PSO’s music director and conductor, tells kawarthaNOW. “It’s important to us, because the music by these composers, such as John Williams, John Barry, Elmer Bernstein, and Ennio Morricone, is full of excitement and colour, along with beautiful and inspiring melodies.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard the work of American composer and conductor John Williams, who is responsible for some of the most popular and recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history, including 1977’s Star Wars, which the American Film Institute has selected as the greatest film score of all time.
In a career spanning seven decades, Williams — who will turn 92 on February 8 — has composed music for the 1960s television series Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants, the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls, 1969’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 1975’s Jaws, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1978’s Superman, 1982’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1993’s Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, the first three Harry Potter films, and many more.
“John Williams tends to be the composer that most people think of when they think film music,” Newnham says. “His scores to Star Wars and E.T. combine all the best elements of symphonic music, with obvious influences from composers such as Prokofiev, Holst, Richard Strauss and many others, which we orchestral musicians love so much.”
VIDEO: John Williams conducts “Imperial March” from Star Wars
Williams has won 25 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Emmy Awards. With 53 nominations, he is the second-most nominated person for the Academy Awards (and the oldest-ever nominee) and he has won the statue five times.
“John Williams is also a great arranger of other people’s music,” Newnham points out. “When entrusted with making arrangements of Jerry’s Bock’s music to Fiddler on the Roof for the Norman Jewison film, Williams decided to add violin solos and a killer candenza for the virtuoso Isaac Stern, which you hear in the movie. Our concertmaster, Jennifer Burford, will certainly wow the audience with her rendition of that iconic solo.”
Williams took home his first Oscar for the score to 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof, and received four more best score Academy Awards for Jaws, Star Wars, E.T, and Schindler’s List. His work has influenced generations of composers of film, popular, and contemporary classical music.
People will also be familiar with the work of the late British composer and conductor John Barry, who composed the scores for 11 James Bond films between 1963 and 1987, including arranging and performing Monty Norman’s iconic “James Bond Theme” for the first film in the series, 1962’s Dr. No. It was with 1964’s Goldfinger that Barry perfected what become known as the “Bond sound” — brass-heavy jazz elements and lyrical strings that reflected Barry’s love for Russian romantic composers.
“Everyone recognizes Monty Norman’s theme to the original James Bond 007 films, but John Barry brought the James Bond music of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s to a completely different level with his big band mentality and lush orchestrations,” says Newnham.
In addition to Barry’s work on the Bond films, he also wrote the scores for 1966’s Born Free, 1968’s The Lion in Winter, 1969’s Midnight Cowboy, 1976’s King Kong, 1980’s Somewhere in Time, 1985’s Out of Africa, and 1990’s Dances with Wolves, winning four Grammy Awards and five Academy Awards during his career.
VIDEO: “The James Bond Theme” – BBC Proms 2011
“And we can’t forget our own great Canadian film composers,” Newnham adds. “The most prominent has certainly been Howard Shore, with his dark and brilliantly written scores to the Lord of the Rings films.”
The Toronto-born Shore has composed the scores for more than 80 films, including Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies — for which he won three Academy Awards — as well as 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, 1993’s M. Butterfly, Philadelphia, and Mrs. Doubtfire, and 2006’s The Departed.
He has also scored almost all of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg’s films since 1979, and was the original musical director for Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980 (he composed the original theme song).
“If I had a favourite film composer, though, I would have to mention Ennio Morricone,” Newnham says. “To me, he is the absolute master of melody and beauty. His music to Cinema Paradiso has always been on my list of go-to movie scores.”
The Italian composer and conductor, who died in 2020 at the age of 91, is considered one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time. He has more than 400 scores for cinema and television to his credit, as well as more than 100 classical works, and has written the scores for more than 70 award-winning films.
He is perhaps best known for his scores to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western films, including the iconic theme from 1966’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, whose soundtrack was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. He would later work with American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who was greatly influenced by Leone, scoring Tarantino’s 2015 Western The Hateful Eight — which won Morricone a best original score Academy Award in 2016.
Along with his work with Leone, Morricone has scored all of Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore’s films since 1988’s Cinema Paradiso, which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film, 1978’s La Cage aux Folles and Days of Heaven, 1981’s Le Professionnel, 1982’s The Thing, 1987’s The Untouchables, and many more.
VIDEO: Love theme from “Cinema Paradiso” conducted by Ennio Morricone
Sponsored by Grant Thornton, “Popcorn, Please!” begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 3rd at Showplace Performance Centre at 290 George Street North in downtown Peterborough. A pre-concert “Meet the Maestro” talk takes place at 6:45 p.m., where Newnham takes the Showplace stage for an intimate chat about the evening’s program.
Tickets for the concert, which are selling fast, are $33, $48, or $55, depending on the seat you choose, with student tickets costing $12 for all seats. Tickets are available in person at the Showplace Box Office from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, and one hour before the concert, or online anytime at showplace.org.
For more information about the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-24 season, visit thepso.org.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-24 season.
