Films that have been screened in London with a live score

There are a variety of types of film-music concert (see latter part of this post for a list of the different varieties) and a particularly immersive and surprising one is when an orchestra performs the entire musical score of the movie live to the picture. The musical component of the soundtrack on the film can be switched off so all other sound effects and speaking parts are audible (and in all the ones I've been to they also use subtitles so you won't miss anything anyway) and replaced by the live orchestra and sometimes choir too. It's fantastic.

I don't know the history of these but they suddenly appeared as events a few years ago. I've been to small-scale ones (65 Days of Static doing their alternative live score for Silent Running, Notting Hill's Electric Cinema house band featuring a guest visit from Bond, Stargate and Independence Day composer David Arnold doing the score for short silent films) and massively large scale things at the Royal Albert Hall with Titanic and Star Trek Into Darkness.

The large scale ones aren't cheap, prices generally start at just under £30 for a fairly distant view from the screen and if you're in the main arena it's about £50/60 per seat (plus attendant travel and feeding costs) but it's not a cheap thing to put on and it's a fantastic experience. One of the most magical and surprising things for me was actually happened just before one of the films began, when the orchestra played the music for the studio logo ident for 20th Century Fox, amazing - I'd just not expected it. One of my favourite studio idents is Universal and one of my favourite films is Jurassic Park, however seeing that live you'd not get the ident music as the film begins with the opening sounds and music of the film (literally just given myself goosepimples typing that). Jurassic Park is available as a film that can be screened with a live score I'm just not aware of any listings in London as yet but it looks like it's going to happen somewhere in November 2016.



Before the film screenings at the Royal Albert Hall the composers are usually interviewed in the Elgar Room (upstairs) by Tommy Pearson, so it's always worth looking out for that as RAH don't always add it to the same page.

Anyway enough blether from me - here's a list of films that are to be performed in London in 2016 and a list of films that have previously been performed in London (and might be performed again). An excellent site where you can get information about new concerts is Movies in Concert (I set up an RSS to Twitter feed for it, @moviesinconcert).

If you know of a concert I've missed please let me know (this list is just for London, where I live, but I'm only too happy to link to a list of these in other cities or countries).

2016
Silent films with live music: beggars of life - 7 March 2016, Royal Albert Hall (Elgar Room)
 - this one features Neil Brand and the Dodge Brothers
Raiders of the Lost Ark - 9-12 March 2016, Royal Albert Hall
Western music in concert - 11 March 2016, Royal Albert Hall
Gladiator - 25-26 May 2016, Royal Albert Hall
Amadeus - 14 October 2016, Royal Albert Hall
ET The Extra-Terrestrial - 28 December 2016, Royal Albert Hall

Vertigo - [date to be confirmed], Southbank Centre
"A new year­-long series, Film Scores Live, culminates in a weekend dedicated to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, including the London premiere of the live score to Vertigo."

Read more at http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/latest-news/philharmonia-orchestra-virtual-reality

2015
Titanic - 27 April 2015, Royal Albert Hall
Not so silent movies - 7 June 2015, Electric Cinema. David Arnold was the special guest with the house band, creating a live score for some silent films - it was pretty funny :)
There Will Be Blood - 19 August 2015, Southbank Centre
Planet of the Apes - 28 August 2015, Southbank Centre
Ratatouille - 28 October 2015, Royal Albert Hall
Frozen - 29 October 2015, Royal Albert Hall
Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage - 1 November 2015, Royal Albert Hall
The Godfather - 2 November 2015, Royal Albert Hall
Alice in Wonderland - 12 December 2015, Royal Albert Hall
Casablanca - 14 December 2015, Southbank Centre

2014
Silent Running - 27 April 2014, Village Underground - with 65 Days of Static providing their alternative score
Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness - 29-31 May 2014, Royal Albert Hall

My first film music concert, in 1993 - Space Spectacular at Wembley Stadium

For ages I have been trying to find information about my first film music concert (in London, some time in the 1990s) by searching (in vain) for Wembley and orrery (the event took place at Wembley Stadium and the promo material in the papers of the time made a bit of fanfare about a specially built 'thing' (not technically an orrery but a nice display piece). The orrery was a suspended curved bar with lights in it which rotated up and down over the stage adding lighting effects.

I've also been wondering, particularly after recently returning from an excellent film music concert from David Arnold, if I might have heard his music performed at the concert. He wrote the score for the films Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996) but I couldn't remember them being on the programme (music from Superman and Star Trek was played). 

Yesterday I suddenly remembered that I can search old newspapers at work and plugged my terms in, and eventually discovered that the concert had been in 1993 (so too early for David Arnold's music).

The concert was called Space Spectacular and I went with my friends Simon and Valerie and some other friends of theirs. We were all really into Star Trek: The Next Generation (enthusiasm remains undiminished) and I remember us spending an evening trying to play one of those murder mystery games which was based around the series. Of course, no-one actually got murdered by anyone from the noble and non-murdering crew (I think I might have been Guinan and I remember helping a friend make a fairly amazing Worf costume). The game involved some sort of mysterious object that made people behave oddly. There was a lot of wine, which is another object that can make people behave oddly, and I don't remember the outcome as I think we all fell asleep before it had concluded.

Simon discovered the existence of Space Spectacular and we all thought how amazing it would be to hear the music of Star Trek performed live (yup) and went along. From reading the 1993 Sunday Times review ('Lost in space') by Cosmo Landesman it turns out that the event included music from space-themed films but the larger section was actually Gustav Holst's The Planets. A quote in the article from one of the producers, Harvey Goldsmith, highlighted the idea behind it of getting new audiences in to hear classical music and perhaps, at 23, I was one of those new audiences though I grew up with and enjoyed classical music at home, school or at concerts - but I don't remember film music featuring in them.

Amazing, to me, to think how ridiculously popular film music concerts are now on their own terms. I have also been enjoying Jon Burlingame's 2013 article on their popularity -

Score One for Movie Maestros: Audiences Grow for Film-Music Concerts
Screenings of classic films accompanied by a live orchestra also selling more

- which highlights audience enthusiasm for film music concerts, and particularly orchestra enthusiasm for them

"[Conductor John] Mauceri finds the reason some musicians love playing movie music is that it’s what they grew up with. “They’re actually playing the real notes of the first orchestral music they ever heard as kids,” he says. Older musicians have come around more slowly, he adds, because many “were trained in conservatories to hate this music.”"

How could anyone hate this music! I'm glad that people are recognising and cherishing it as a distinct art form which has inherent musical 'value' even when separated from the screened images for which it was originally created.

Details of the 1993 Space Spectacular
Or at least the details that I can uncover from that one review (Sun 10 October 1993 in the Sunday Times 'Lost in space' by Cosmo Landesman). It took place in Wembley Stadium, was produced by Harvey Goldsmith and Raymond Gubbay (orchestra: The Philharmonia, conductor: Adrian Leaper, lighting designer: Patrick Woodroffe) and billed as 'where Hollywood meets Holst' with The Planets forming the major part of the event, covering the second half. The first half included music from 2001 (Blue Danube Waltz), Star Trek, Superman (Symphonic Suite) and Thunderbirds Are Go!

Film music concerts
If you want to keep an eye on future film music concerts I recommend two websites in particular -
• Movies in Concert: http://moviesinconcert.nl/ - if you know of a concert you can add it here yourself (I've nothing to do with the website but I did set up the RSS > Twitter @moviesinconcert)
• FilmConcertsLive: http://filmconcertslive.com/ - a commercial organisation which puts on these concerts

There are several kinds of film music concert, and related entertainments, and this isn't an exhaustive list

• an orchestra plays music from several different composers - an example is Mark Kermode's 50th birthday celebration concerts which included some of his favourite scores from a variety of films
• an orchestra plays music from one composer and the composer is usually present - last year I went to hear concerts with music from Clint Mansell, David Arnold and Alexandre Desplat (who also conducted if memory serves) playing their own music and talking a little bit about the pieces and the films for which they were written
• playing live-to-projection (aka live-to-picture) in which an orchestra performs the original score live while the film plays on a massive screen - you can hear the dialogue fine though they do usually include subtitles, just in case, and the special effects soundtrack is usually preserved too (ie it's not a 'silent film' plus orchestral music, the orchestra performs live all the bits that would normally be on the 'score' soundtrack. Utterly incredible, totally immersive though sometimes it's difficult to decide which bit to look at - the orchestra or the screen! Examples include Titanic Live and Star Trek Into Darkness at the Royal Albert Hall.
• orchestra playing clips from a variety of movies live to picture - I've not come across one of these in the wild, but I would definitely enjoy this
• interviews with film music / screen composers who show clips of their films with the music (sometimes at various stages) and talk about the processes involved - the 'Art of the Score' panels at the Sundance Film Festival in London were particularly good for showcasing the development of a film score at different stages and I enjoyed hearing Harry Gregson Williams show successive stages of picture, special effects and soundtrack building up to the final result for the film Unstoppable and the following year David Arnold taking us through a similar process for his 'African Rundown' section of Casino Royale.
  
  For interviews with composers where clips are shown from the film (ie the final result) and discussed, before or after showing the clip, I recommend the Royal Albert Hall's 'Conversations with Screen Composers' series with Tommy Pearson (who also produced Mark Kermode's concerts mentioned above).

My review of David Arnold's utterly amazing concert in Lucerne

Enchanting and beautiful Lucerne

 Up Mount Pilatus, bit of a climb, fortunately they have a cogwheel railway train to take you

Lucerne, in German-speaking (technically Swiss German-speaking) Switzerland, is GORGEOUS. I walked around it in the mild-weather twilight on arrival and swooned at the buildings, the bridge, the delightful electrified buses (they have those pantograph things that trains have, but on poles in the road).

Buses have two poles on top which connect with the wires and form an electrical circuit

The next day I gawped at the lake and mountainous terrain on a 20m train journey from Lucerne to Alpnachstad in order to take the 45 degree red cogwheel 'Pilatusbahn' train (it uses a Locher rack and pinion mechanism to grip tightly onto a rather slender-looking track and haul itself up mountain steepnesses the likes of which I'd never seen or really believed before) up Mount Pilatus.

The lovely Pilatusbahn rack railway, using the Locher system which appears to be a horizontal version of the Strub system (I am not an expert!).

We climed the 2,000m in about half an hour and it was absolutely breathtaking. I'd gone along more interested in the train mechanism and experience of going up a mountain at an odd angle and hadn't really clocked that the scenery was going to be as stunning as it was. There was some general touristy chatter and a bit of oohing and aahing as we went up and up and up, and then stunned silence as we noticed just how massive and awe-inspiring the vista opening before us was. There was a particularly magical bit where we went through clouds (I'd just done this in an aircraft the day previously, that's always fun) but the clouds were an eerie magical blue (just the sky above them, the clouds were quite thin) but the effect was of a misty blue wispy smoke curling round a forest of fir trees. It was like something out of Tolkien and I tweeted that I was 100% convinced that he'd shimmied up Mt Pilatus on the cogwheel train (it was built in 1889 so timing would work). It turns out I wasn't too far off as apparently he was inspired by a different bit of Switzerland (including the Lauterbrunnen Valley) which is every bit as ridiculously beautiful.

   

  

 
The blue sky peeps through the cloudy mist as we ascend Mount Pilatus. Oooh!

Anyway I was in Lucerne specifically for 'The Music of David Arnold' which was an evening of music composed by David for film, television and the Olympics 2012 closing ceremony. Despite loving the music for Stargate for years I didn't actually know who he was, or that he'd written that, until I went along to hear a composer talk about their work at the Sundance Film Festival in London a couple of years ago and it turned out to be him. And he does film music concerts! My favourite thing ever! It was an amazing concert and I heartily recommend that if you get a chance to go to one of his concerts that you should take it. There are other wonderful film music concerts too of course (plenty at the Royal Albert Hall) and for worldwide readers the best sites to find out more are Movies in Concert (I've nothing to do with that film site but took the RSS updates and turned it into this Twitter feed - @moviesinconcert) and FilmConcertsLive.

I wrote the following review on Songkick and decided to pinch it and put it here too.

David Arnold's magical and friendly film music concert - twinkly music & amiable chatter
This was a spectacular evening with a full orchestra and choir (the 21st Century Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Ludwig Wicki) performing a range of film and television music composed by David Arnold, who performed along with them in the beautiful KKL Luzern.

Of course he wrote all of the music in the first place but he also played keyboard (sometimes playing a tune, sometimes cueing a sound effect), guitar and sang a few of his songs on the night. He has a great voice and did a fantastic rendition of Bjork's Play Dead and an absolutely astounding one of kd lang's Surrender (which are songs that he wrote for, respectively, The Young Americans and Tomorrow Never Dies) - he's a talented chap!

Hearing his music from the film Stargate performed right in front of me was pretty magical and it closed the first half of the concert (we'd also heard themes from The Stepford Wives, Godzilla and Paul, which is one of the Simon Pegg & Nick Frost films David has scored (the other one is Hot Fuzz)).

The second half showed off his work on the James Bond franchise - he's written scores for five of the films, most recently Quantum of Solace from which the orchestra played 'A Night at the Opera'. Lovely stuff. We also heard music from the BBC's Sherlock, which he co-composed with Michael Price. Given we were in Switzerland I'm not certain how many in the room would have heard of or seen Sherlock before (I suppose it will depend on their television channel package!) but I'm quite convinced everyone enjoyed hearing the music.

And then we had the finale (though David explained in entertaining detail how concerts always pretend it's the finale but it's not really, and everyone laughed) the end titles to Independence Day. Seriously awesome and quite a visceral experience to be in the presence of all that wonderful noise, brass, organ, all the other bits. Amazing.

Not surprisingly we all leapt to our feet to clap and cheer as David and Ludwig (the conductor) left the stage only to be clapped back in for another couple of finale pieces. Things finally ended with David on guitar playing that James Bond theme followed by several minutes of clapping. It was all rather wonderful.

 

The packed auditorium (behind me) - the capacity of the sold-out venue is over 1,800 seats!

There's a 30s clip of the audience clapping embedded in this tweet (assuming it works on the platform you're using to read this blog)

The Music of #DavidArnold @DGAunofficial @DavidGArnold @kklluzern #LudwigWicki StandingOvation pic.twitter.com/e7URYVVRZx

— Stefan Schuler (@schulerst) October 23, 2015

David Arnold thanking everyone for attending and supporting live music. The 21st Century Symphony Orchestra is behind him (conductor Ludwig Wicki's just left the stage) and the 21st Century Chorus are in the balcony behind the orchestra. They were all fantastic.

As I'm sure you can guess I'm a big fan of David Arnold's work but I think even if you're not particularly familiar with his music (you might not know his name but I'm sure you'd know some of the films he's scored) you'd enjoy one of his concerts as he's also very entertaining. One of my favourite tweeted comments about one of his earlier concerts said, of the first half:

"Really enjoying the music of @DavidGArnold this evening - and we've not even heard any pieces I know yet! #amazing"

Which is spot on, really :)

Alexandre Desplat is film music concert-ing next Thursday at Barbican

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com - cross-posted to the Sound stuff blog

Press play to enjoy a 11min sonic overview of the music of Alexandre Desplat including a short interview, by Tim Burden, then scroll down :)



Well now this is a good name for a film music concert! I might rethink the titles I give to my talks on diabetes research ;)

LSO on Film: The Magic and Majesty of Alexandre Desplat (link on LSO page)
with the London Symphony Orchestra
Thursday 11 December 2014 / 19:30
Hall, Barbican

Before the concert, at 6pm, there's also a free Q&A with the composer, hosted by the flautist / flutist / flute-player (LSO Principal Flute Gareth Davies).

Alexandre Desplat, whose name I can almost pronounce, is doing a concert of his film music next Thursday. He's done the scores for some very well-known films like Harry Potter, and The King's Speech (I felt that needed a comma given the style of naming films within the Harry Potter franchise) as well as some as yet unknown to me.

Two of my favourites from his work include Birth which also happens to be directed by Jonathan Glazer (I think he's amazing) who's just been announced as the Wellcome Trust's new Screenwriting Fellow, and Painted Veil.

It seems that Birth will be included among the concert pieces, woohoo - see the YouTube video at the end.
Programme to include music from:

• The Imitation Game
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• The King's Speech
• The Queen
• Philomena
• Twilight: New Moon
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Girl with a Pearl Earring
• Godzilla
• The Ghost Writer
• Birth
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Coco avant Chanel

I am a bit excited about David Arnold's film music concert next week

David Arnold's next concerts will be in 2015, so far Liverpool, Manchester and London mentioned, in this tweet (and replies).

---

In 10 7 1 day's time I'm going to get to hear some much-loved film music belting out from an orchestra on the stage at the Royal Festival Hall, woohoo! I hope he enjoys it too, even though it might not be obvious :)

Quote of the evening from @DavidGArnold ,in the bar after the show: 'I am very happy, but for some reason joy does not travel to my face'.
— Mark Kermode (@KermodeMovie) July 9, 2013

That was after an orchestra had treated us to a bit of his Stargate and Sherlock music, at one of a series of concerts celebrating Mark Kermode's 50th birthday (it was fantastic!).

David Arnold: live in concert - tickets
Sunday 6 July 2014, 8pm
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre



"What do Independence Day, James Bond, Sherlock and the London 2012 Olympic Games have in common? 

Award-winning composer and songwriter David Arnold makes his London concert debut. He has been nominated for, and won, numerous Grammy, Ivor Novello, BMI, Saturn, World Soundtrack and BAFTA awards for his music.

His work has featured on the soundtracks to Independence Day, Stargate, the James Bond films, The Chronicles of Narnia, Godzilla, Hot Fuzz, Paul, The London 2012 Olympic Games and Sherlock.

David performs and sings alongside London's premier orchestral musicians and band."

David Arnold: Independence Day, Stargate, Stepford wives, Casino Royale, Quantum of solace, The world is not enough, Last of the dogmen / David Arnold (& Michael Price): Sherlock


The people who decide what films are shown on TV might have joined in the fun too as quite a few of the films that David scored are also showing in the next few days.




Download a concert flyer: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4000104/DavidArnold_A5flyer.pdf





Independence Day
Saturday 28 June, 1pm, Film4
Friday 4 July, 6.15pm, Film4




Stargate
Sunday 29 June, 2.40pm, 5*



Quantum of Solace
Wednesday 2 July, 10.45pm, ITV2
Thursday 3 July, 8pm, ITV2



"The music throughout the vid is 'Time to get out' by David Arnold. Music right at the end is 'Another Way To Die' by Jack White & Alicia Keys."

BBC Frozen Planet: Philharmonia Orchestra doing a live-score at Royal Festival Hall with George Fenton

Wow this sounds lovely - an evening of watching HD footage from the BBC's Frozen Planet series with an orchestral accompaniment, conducted by George Fenton who composed the score. Not bad at all.

I went to hear George Fenton being interviewed at the Royal Albert Hall last year, by Tommy Pearson (who will be interviewing another composer, Michael Price, this coming Monday - Michael co-composed the music for the BBC's Sherlock). 

BBC Frozen Planet in Concert

Philharmonia at the Movies, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank

Sunday 4 May 2014, 7.30pm (£15-£55, 50% concessions)

There's a nice Vimeo trailer ad to accompany it.


BBC Frozen Planet in Concert from Philharmonia Orchestra on Vimeo.

Charity concert listings that anyone can update - does this exist?

I've started noticing that there are quite a few musical events to benefit charities - I've always followed a lot of charities on Twitter but recently have started following a few musicians so am probably twice as aware as I was.

Here's an example of one I spotted a couple of days ago, from a charity:

There's a great night of classical music ahead for Amy's Sarcoma Symphony Orchestra @funkeyryhmes http://t.co/IpLltleHQo
— Sarcoma UK (@Sarcoma_UK) December 27, 2013

Each charity will promote their event to their supporters (and not just via Twitter of course!) and musicians and special guests will do likewise to their fans etc.

It occurred to me that people who aren't connected with either the charity, or the people performing at it, might still like to know about these events - and if they would, where would they look?

Is there a charity concerts listing, that visitors can update themselves ("submit your event")* - and is there even much of a need for one? There might not be.

If I want to go to see a film I can check the local listings and see where it's on. But I can also look at the overarching listings and see that a much-loved film will be showing at some location I'd never heard of - the existence of the overarching listings means that I'll hear about other stuff. That's what I imagine the benefit of a charity concert listings might be, to augment the signal a bit.

I suppose I tend to see more than one example of 'something in a particular category' (in this case charity music events' as an indication that the category itself might be curated!

Here's one I've found: "Charity Concert" | Events | The List - it looks interesting but I don't think I can auto-submit an event.

*presumably the time cost of this is that for the website to work efficiently there'd have to be someone who'd receive a notification that a new event needs approving and then approve it. Without that it will end up being filled with spam.