Sunday, September 2, 2012

John Williams, Round 2

So last year Lindsay and I went to see John Williams perform with the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a great concert! He conducted several of his classic movie pieces including the Superman theme, the Star Wars theme and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was great. So when a couple we know out here invited us to go with them this year (his mom plays viola in the orchestra) of course we were in!

This year the concert was even better than last year! They had a guest violinist who was AMAZING (probably could play "Flight of the Bumblebee" without breaking a sweat) during the first act and the second act was great as well. The encores were the Star Wars and Imperial March themes again, plus he had the orchestra do the last part of E.T. with the digitally remastered version of the movie playing on the screen.

However, my absolute favorite part happened about halfway through the second act. During intermission, I noticed that there were empty choir seats behind the orchestra. My favorite Star Wars song of all time is from The Phantom Menace, called "Duel of the Fates" but it requires a choir to perform. I like that song so much, Lindsay got me the sheet music for it for Christmas last year.

Those choir seats weren't there at last year's performance, so I started to get my hopes up. There were two songs performed with the choir, then this one (which I filmed):


Made my day.

2 comments:

Grampa said...

Thanks for sharing this, Spence. John Williams has been one of my favorite film composers as well. Check the fine print on your ticket. You may be violating several intellectual property agreements by filming and distributing this video. Don't want you to get in trouble.

Grampa said...

P.S. Just kidding.