On Saturday Sept. 21 at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall the BG Philharmonic will be hosting their first concert of the 2019 season, and they aim to make it cinematic. The concert is movie themed and will feature pieces made famous by a number of different films.
The pieces featured include “William Tell Overture,” “Adagio for Strings” and Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21.” The concert will also feature more modern pieces like an arrangement of the Danny Elfman “Spiderman” score and a suite of John Williams’ music for the “Star Wars” films.
“The Spiderman piece is more of a modern pop piece. As a performer I kinda look at it differently than something like the Barber Adagio. Just the tradition of how it’s performed I think makes you look at it differently,” Gene Walderon, principal bass for the show, said.
Despite the pieces feeling very different, conductor Emily Freeman Brown PhD. offers very clear direction to all the performers. Despite this being the first movie-themed performance the BG Philharmonic has performed, they are not treating it any different than any other performance.
“However I go they go with me. If they’re in the right mood,” Brown said. “We think of each piece differently because each piece is a little bit different. But on the other hand because we strive for the same goals, it is all the same.”
Though the modern scores and the more classical pieces may not seem to fit together on paper, Brown picked these pieces intentionally.
“I was looking for variety. So that there would be a lot of differences from one piece to the next. From different periods in history. The Rossini we are doing, the ‘William Tell Overture,’ not only has been used in movies but it’s been used in Saturday morning cartoons,” Brown said.
Despite not treating the performance any different, some of the performers found these pieces more fun than usual.
“The way that it fits in with the rest of the music it creates all different textures and colors, when you play it with the orchestra it’s very fun. I don’t think there’s a piece we are playing that isn’t fun,” Walderon said.
In conjunction with the cinematic music, the BG Philharmonic has taken measures to make sure the experience is more cinematic. The show will be livestreamed on the BGSU Music YouTube channel on Saturday. This stream will have clips of the films played in conjunction with the music. The BG Philharmonic is hoping the performance adds a bit more of a cinematic flavor to the experience of listening to live music.
“It is a different setting for sure, like the movie setting. The idea that you are playing pieces from movies that you have seen,” violinist Chris Hutras said. “It is classical but it adds that aspect of modernism that you’ve seen the movies and you’re hearing it live.”
The concert is $8 for non-students and free with students with their BGID.
