The Austin Wind Symphony- October 24

[John Crichton 4]

This past Friday night Mark Olivarez (along with the missus) and I attended the latest concert from the Austin Wind Symphony. It was the second time I've been able to see them, Mark's fourth. I'm going to do this a little differently, instead of giving a piece by piece breakdown I'm just going to give some general impressions.

This was the first concert I've been to since March, and the improvement was extraordinary. Back then I said they played with a lot of passion but were lacking in technical proficency (they are, after all, not a professional orchestra). Well the passion is still there, but I was impressed with how much better they sounded technically- fewer mistakes, better cohesion, better tempo. They're getting good. The entire orchestra was also wearing Star Trek costumes. Most were TNG uniforms, but I also spotted some TOS short skirts (a couple looking very nice indeed), a DS9/Voyager style uniform, a couple of Andorians and another alien I didn't recognize, and a percussionist brave enough to wear the TMP space pajamas.

The most impressive part of the night, to me, was the performance of the famous cue from the TOS episode Amok Time, that kind of cheesy sounding action cue that's been used in Trek parodies for years (including Futurama and Family Guy). It must have been over 5 minutes long, and they played it in synch to the episode playing on the screen, just as if we were on the scoring stage. And they hit every mark, every beat right on time. And after that they performed the concert piece for The Motion Picture, and just knocked it out of the ballpark. Right after that was the only real disappointment- a suite from Star Trek II that was a bit of a mess both in the arrangement and performance.

Here's a list of the entire program, everything I didn't mention falls in the decent/good performance category:

Star Trek Original Series theme

Star Trek: The Animated Series theme

Amok Time

The Motion Picture

Star Trek II suite

Star Trek III prologue/main titles

Star Trek IV

First Contact

The Next Generation- Theme from The Inner Light

Voyager main titles

Generations

Afterward the conductor spoke with us for a while, praising the dedication of the orchestra. They pay dues to take part, and spend 1-2 hours every Tuesday night rehursing for these performances. He also singled out a member of the orchestra for transcribing many of the pieces that they perform by ear, which really impressed and surprised Mark and I. You'd never know that most of what they play was transcribed by ear, it's all spot on. Based on what we know about Superman Returns John Ottman could learn a thing or two from this guy.

All in all it was a great time, always good to see the Olivarezes in person. The orchestra's constant improvement really has me looking forward to what they're going to do in the future.

EDIT- I forgot to mention, you can watch the entire concert by clicking on the "live feed" link on the symphony's homepage!

[Lurker 5]

The conductor flipping out about 1 minute into the stream is great!

And what a cool concert!

Neil

[Ollie 859]

If you watch the video at the 2:20 mark as the conducter says "Live Long And Prosper" you will notice three people to the left sitting down. That would be John, myself and Mrs. Olivarez.

[John Crichton 4]

Oh God, we're in shot like the whole time.

It really was a neat concert, the AWS is always doing cool audio/visual things. Like playing Super Mario Bros. in synch with gameplay footage.