OK so here are some more of my thoughts on this broadcast.
The opening credits sequence is hilarious. It begins with an extreme closeup of John Williams conducting directly into the camera over an animated ocean sunset, and a medley of Jaws, CE3K, the dawning of the age of Aquarius song, and some other stuff plays. This is just gold!
There's an announcer who introduces each piece throughout (not anything said at the actual concert, an announcer just for the broadcast I mean), and he introduces the first piece while we see John Williams take the stage, and we're right into the first piece!
But first, I must describe the outfits and look of everyone playing the music. Don't think "80s", this is late 70s aesthetic here, which makes since since we're only 4 months into the decade. Everyone is wearing these blue suits (I think every concert I've been to myself people have only worn white or black), there are afros and sideburns and perms quaffed hair galore. The occasional shots of the audience are full of different outfits too, all very different than any concert I've attended!
Another funny part was everytime they cut to a closeup of the tuba player, they never got his face! We kept laughing at that - why wouldn't they have just chosen a different shot to air?
John Williams is wearing blue as well, and he looks great; I've only been seeing him in concert since the mid 2000s when he was in his mid 70s, so to see him a spry 48 year old is quite radically different, he's just so much more expressive and full of motion than I've ever seen him. He bops along to the beat and really reaches out for what he wants someone to do. As much as I enjoyed seeing all the closeups of the musicians (since you can never see this much detail in person), just seeing him for an hour would have been pretty great too.
Anyways, onto the music
The Cowboys - Overture
This isn't the short film overture of course, but the lengthy (9 1/2 minutes in this performance) suite like you can hear on "By Request". This is a great way to start any concert, and is super fun here.
The Reivers - An Old Man Reminisces
This is a wonderful 20 minute long series of various selections from the score (and additional music JW wrote later I believe, constantly playing under and/or in between pieces of narration by Burgess Meredith. I don't normally like dialogue or narration over my music, but this whole piece really works. Fun stuff!
A Little Night Music - Selections (Night Waltz / Send in the Clowns)
Not my typical cup of tea, music wise, but at a total of about 9 minutes this didn't really outstay his welcome.
The Empire Strikes Back - Yoda's Theme
This was fascinating. This concert took place weeks before the film had opened. I don't know exactly when the LP came out, but I assume there's a good chance most people in the audience had never heard this before. I stopped and thought to myself what it must have been like to have see Star Wars in theaters and loved it, been thrilled when you heard a sequel was coming, then gone out to see a pops concert and heard this. You wouldn't even know who Yoda was, your mind would race at the possibilites of what the jolly music in the middle section is all about, or what the warm main part represents.
The Empire Strikes Back - The Imperial March
This was even cooler! This has got to be the piece of music I've heard live the most times in my life, it's seemingly performed at almost every film music concert I go to. As such, it often isn't play that spectacularly, as by the time I was going to see the pops in the 2000s, everyone playing it had probably already been playing it regularly for years themselves, and JW can easily conduct it now in his sleep. But to watch him conduct this premiere performance, for an audience that had never heard it, was fascinating. I don't think I've heard a performance quite like this one, unpolished, unsure of itself, a bit hesitant... it was great! After hearing countless flawless performances, this was really cool to hear so many little differences.
After this, JW left the stage... and C3P0 came out. What was cool is that we actually get to see JW behind the stage a bit, since that's where C3P0 is before he comes out. I have no idea who was in the suit, someone who knows how to conduct, I imagine, or who provided the voice, but it was a very close approximation of Anthony Daniels'. I just realized, this is actually the only speaking in between pieces in the whole broadcast - you never get to hear JW talk at all!
Anyways, C3P0 thanks the audience and apologizes because R2D2 was supposed to be there but had dissappeared, so he will carry on without him ("and it will probably be much better that way")... but then R2 rolls in from the side stage, to another round of applause. They have a little back and forth exchange, the C3PO goes right into conducting the main theme
Star Wars - Main Theme
This was great, because it was actually a different arrangement of the main theme I'd never heard before!! OK, that is partly because 3 times during the main title, the orchestra stopped playing and R2 provided solo beeping and booping to cover the part they would normally play, which was honestly pretty cute and not annoying (though I can't say I wouldn't have been annoyed if I had never heard Star Wars music live before). But then at the end, instead of going into the end of the crawl music and seguing to the end credits, JW actually wrote a brief little new ending that ends the piece right after the main segment of Luke's theme ends. Pretty cool!
C3P0 and R2 then leave the stage and JW comes back out
Star And Stripes Forever
This is a huge crowd favorite every time it's done in Boston, and this was no exception. Like the Imperial March, it's something all these performers can do in their sleep and is probably pretty easy to conduct - in fact JW honestly looked over it when they showed him a few times, which kind of made me wonder why they'd elect to use those shots at all! This is always nice to see with the various orchestral sections getting their mini solos, and the American flag and balloons coming down towards the end.
What a fun hour of television! I wish PBS would just air pops concerts every Friday night all year long!
Oh, and I have many more great animated GIFs of JW conducting to post tomorrow....
I hold nothing against The Post. I thoroughly enjoyed both the movie and the score, I just wish there was more music from it. that was available (other than the OST and FYC). I give it a solid 4 out of 5 stars.
I enjoy both scores but SpaceCamp won the tie-breaker due to my nostalgia factor
Looks like I won an online contest to have John Williams answer a question which Movie Weekly (Australia) selected from a few folks. Each winner gets the JOHN WILLIAMS IN VIENNA Deluxe Edition cd/blu ray.
But they can only ship the prize in Australia. Since I dont live there they can however ship to my cousin living there. So I gather myself as lucky for it.
Nah, there was an interview with Tim Burden and Matt/MV (28:40) about a bunch of incredible stuff they weren't able to release in 2012 but hoped would eventually see the light of day. They definitely weren't referring to just the bootleg of the "missing" tapes; seemed like something far more involved. I transcribed that interview recently in another thread:
LOL, that was me that asked that, I was reading the thread and happened to look at the Superman monkey avatar that's been on there for so long now, hoping for a change!
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