CONCERT: James Newton Howard: 3 Decades of Music for Hollywood (Antwerp, November 2017)

[bollemanneke 3,342]

Well… I don’t really know how best to review this entire concert, so I’ll just start with an introduction and see where things go from there.

 

The last few days have been rather exhausting. It looks like I’ll finally get a job after an entire year and I’ve been doing sample translations for the first time in twelve months this week, so I was a bit too tired to enjoy this evening profoundly. Most of the pieces didn’t blow me away, but that might also be because I’ve become a spoiled little brat when it comes to film music: things I loved three years ago are sort of all right now. Also, I am mostly completely unfamiliar with Howard’s career and recently discovered that I need to know the story of a film to really appreciate its music, but decided that it would be sensible to go anyway as the man might never ever return to my city and I am already angry with myself for not going to Danny Elfman after realising they might just have played Alice’s theme with our very fine Fine Fleur Choir.

 

The bus ride was mostly uneventful, except for some people complaining that all these concerts (minus ET) are happening in Antwerp (knock on wood). One of these people was a woman who then lamented the fact that our city was way too multicultural. Nobody was bothering anyone at first, of course, but, you know, if the migrants keep to themselves, they don’t integrate and if they mix with the locals and behave, they’re a burden to society. So proud to be Belgian…

 

This concert took place at the Queen Elisabeth Hall again, so the sound was largely perfect, although the balance could have been somewhat better (most of the sound came from the right) and only bass clarinets and low strings stood out. The college students in charge still didn’t know anything about the seating arrangements, so we first spent 15 minutes listening to “Is this seat 36?”, but at least there was some nice piano music going on in the background. The concert was also not sold out. There were an awful lot of empty seats (at least 70, I was told) and that kind of made me feel sorry for James Newton Howard. Zimmer receives a lot of undeserved attention while this infinitely superior composer, attracts not even half of such crowds. There was also merchandising including JNH T-shirts. I would only consider such purchases if it was John Williams.

 

Then, we got a little clip in which a British person welcomed us to the concert (why not JNH in person, a Belgian or an American?) and he also asked us to turn off our phones before stating that recording was prohibited – does this mean a commercial release is in the pipeline…? The clarinet players had a lot of fun during the tuning and somehow played the first notes of Happy Birthday at the end.

 

We first got an extended Fantastic Beasts Main Title: the beginning was fleshed out and the cheerful ending cut, and of course no Hedwig’s Theme. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that decision, but I suppose it’s understandable for a JNH concert. Somewhere in this piece, JNH entered and the people who had turned up gave him a warm applause. Well, correction: it was rather lukewarm at first, but as the concert unfolded, people got more and more into it and at the end of the evening, you wouldn’t even have noticed that so many seats were unoccupied, but more about the audience later.

 

Fantastic Beasts segued into Snow White and the Seven Huntsman, a really impressive piece. This was the first of many instances where it struck me how smoothly JNH managed to go from one film score to another, completely unrelated to the first one. He was recently interviewed on a Belgian TV show and whatever he told Van Gils & Gasten (Van Gils & Guests), he clearly knows an awful lot about his body of work and, what’s more, he’s incredibly good at presenting it in concert.

 

The next piece illustrated that fact even more. I’ve always found the Hunger Games rather boring scores with a few outstanding highlights, but this suite worked so well: Katniss’ theme, some frantic action music from Mockingjay 1 and then an extended ‘ode’ to the Capitol that ended with Snow saying, “Happy Hunger Games, everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favour”. BUT: the solo soprano was just bad.

 

This is a good moment to highlight one of the very few things I disliked about this concert. Around 50% of the music was accompanied by fragments (sometimes just credits) of the films (do I detect licensing rubbish complicating matters?). Now, that’s fine: I’m willing to accept the fact that the masses can’t listen to interesting music without images while being perfectly able to tolerate 30 minutes of someone’s 36^th piano concerto that repeats itself more than it does interesting things. I guess they’ll only appreciate scores in 50 years. But why did they include little excerpts of random dialogue as well? JNH’s music is perfectly capable of standing on its own. It was downright obnoxious in the lovely Peter Pan suite and in the Sixth Sense, we were suddenly told that “No, dinner is not ready!” I don’t care, I’ve just had mine. I only want dialogue when the music in question is too boring to be remotely entertaining (Man of Steel, The Joker).

 

But I digress. Peter Pan could have used a tiny little more energy, but the segue from Signs into the Sixth Sense was, again, perfect and the Last Airbender suite was as pleasant as everything else so far, though it didn’t contain my favourite Earthbenders moment.

 

The first half ended with Wyatt Earp (gorgeous) and seamlessly dissolved into the Hanging Tree. But then, things went wrong. For some reason, they had asked people on social media in every city around the world to enter a competition and submit videos of themselves singing that song. I just hate such things. The winner would be allowed to perform it live in concert. When JNH was on Van Gils & Gasten, the singer was Blanche, some French-speaking person who was reportedly successful in Eurovision. In other words: she sang a song for Belgium there, which now makes her our national saviour regardless of its quality. This time… it was Blanche too. So, in my opinion, there are only two possibilities: no women had submitted any videos, or the submitted material was ghastly. Can someone please tell me why it is so difficult for a French-speaking person to teach themselves how to pronounce ‘strange things did happen’ when they’ve got loads of time to practice? JNH was very polite to her, of course, and said it was obvious she had stood out from all the other entries, but I’m just not buying it.

 

Then came the break. Nothing spectacular happened there, so this might be an appropriate moment to talk a bit about JNH himself. Throughout the concert, he told us many stories about himself, his children and about the pieces they were about to play. This happened in Signs, King Kong, the romantic comedy suite, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Village and The Dark Knight. I’ve only heard a few composers live so far. Alan Silvestri always sounds nervous, I have yet to find a live Patrick Doyle appearance in which he doesn’t tell the ‘He’s got plans for this song’ story and Hans Zimmer is too fond of Hans Zimmer. Other than that, Alexandre Desplat doesn’t sound too interesting either while John Williams is the personification of modesty. Danny Elfman just sounds weird and Howard Shore might have written three masterpieces, but bores me to death in two seconds. JNH is so different. He might not be the best speaker in the world, but his voice is quite enjoyable and he told us one interesting anecdote after the other. I even found myself looking forward to his next little speech. Not only did they provide a perfect balance between music and talking, they were also instructive: he discussed topics such as re-writing music, what music can do to a finished scene, his friendship with Hans Zimmer (including a decent impression of a German accent and Zimmer’s name only got mild applause)… I don’t want to write any more here, but if anyone is having doubts about going, I can safely say that you should go for his stories alone. This is a man who takes his job very seriously (which, he says, Zimmer disapproves of), is passionate about the art he creates, who has clearly had lots of interesting experiences and who, above all, does not take things for granted. I even daresay he was taken aback by the storm of applause he got before the encores. In his masterclass, Zimmer said he’s not a composer, but a performer. Howard is the performer. The flow of this entire concert was simply perfect. He knows what works and what doesn’t, he understands you can’t play Rue’s Farewell in concert (as beautiful as the ending might be), he shares intimate and entertaining thoughts and even went the extra mile and said, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentleman’ and ‘thank you’ in Dutch a few times. Unlike Zimmer, this last bit didn’t feel like an obligatory gimmick to please the populace, it was a personal token of appreciation. He isn’t doing this for financial gain, he’s doing it because he’s proud of his achievements and eager to share it with the few cultured people who are prepared to listen. We even clapped after five of his six stories because it just felt like the natural thing to do. And to top it all off, he kept things extremely varied. I’ll never say that I liked all of the music I heard tonight and the first half might have contained a tiny little bit too much choral music, but even the things I didn’t really appreciate were worth listening to simply because they always provided a breath of fresh air. Not a single note in this concert was a waste of time.

 

The second half opened with Dinosaur (quite impressive) and King Kong (not really my cup of tea). Then, we got a suite from Dave (JNH is a very decent piano player), Pretty Woman and My Best Friend’s Wedding. It ended with a flighty little thing that should have lasted longer and I can’t remember which of these three movies it came from, only that Julia Roberts (I think) shouted, “You’re never careful!” Snow Falling on Cedars was one of the pieces that actually deeply moved me, though the ending was a bit awkward.

 

But they had yet to play the Village. Oh, my goodness. The violin solo was played by the concert master of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and, to quote JNH, it was a truly stunning performance. It was even the violinist’s birthday today, which earned her an extra round of clapping afterwards. JNH had some difficulty pronouncing her last name, for which he apologised and got more applause. I’m only wondering how he ended up with a Czech Orchestra (not a negative remark, they were great). Speaking of the performers, the Cinematic Art Choir was good as well, but to JNH’s apparent displeasure, they wouldn’t be joining him for the tour from this concert on because they had ‘other fish to fry’ -- James even taught me some English too.

 

For Blood Diamond, he had brought a black woman with a rather amazing voice and at the end, she gave the phrase ‘to leave with a bang’ new meaning. Quite amusing.

 

The second half also had a bit of an ‘interlude’ in which JNH talked about how he had once met Elton John and which was accompanied by funny drawings. JNH then played a solo piece of his solo album, which, again, is music I’ll never turn on myself, but the sheer difference between that piece and the score material made it interesting already.

 

What mostly amazed me about the Harvey Dent suite was that, first of all, it didn’t contain the dramatic ‘father to the rescue’ ending, but the Batman theme references actually worked. This music, flawed as it is, does sound nice if you play it with an actual orchestra instead of sampled horns and 1000000 guitars.

 

Finally, we got a fantastic Fantastic Beasts suite (sorry, couldn’t resist using that pun). The ‘Inside the Suitcase’ intro sounded glorious, the heroic trial music was especially magical and, well, Newt Releases the Thunderbird needs no further adjectives. I’m only a bit disappointed that that playful magic theme wasn’t performed.

 

As an encore, they played a Maleficent suite (rather slow beginning, but an amazing middle and ending) and the Prince of Tides, which I sadly missed because we would apparently miss our bus if we stayed any longer. It only left after 10 minutes, but not before the obligatory elderly ‘We’re on the bus now!’ lady had entered.

 

I’m very happy that I went to this concert, even though I didn’t know half of the music that was performed. Apart from the dialogue issue, this was a truly proper film concert. No crowd-pleasing (I daresay he was more pleased with us), no spectacle, no lame jokes, just the result of 30 years of diligent work by a talented composer who doesn’t feel the need to maim his own music to please louts who want everything loud and electronic. May the odds be ever in his favour.

[cmh90790 16]

[bollemanneke 3,342]

Yes, but it didn't look as though they would play anything else and our public transport is a mess.

[toothless 963]

Well you summed up everything, therefore I won't make a review of the paris concert. I pretty much agree with everything you said ! 

[toothless 963]

I did not want to create a thread specifically for this I hope you won't mind if I share a few videos from the Paris concert here. (These are not my video BTW):

 

 

 

 

 

[cmh90790 16]

[Omen II 1,235]

36 minutes ago, Bajak said:

Question to all, who attended any of the concerts: have they played Prince of Tides at you concert?

 

It was played as the second encore at the Royal Albert Hall concert in London.  And I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the highlights of the evening.

[cmh90790 16]

[bollemanneke 3,342]

They played it as the second encore in Antwerp too, and I missed it.

[cmh90790 16]

[bollemanneke 3,342]

If it was performed in both Antwerp and London, what makes you think it was not performed in Prague?

[Caliburn 72]

I know they played it in Antwerp and did not play it in Krakow (Poland) and Amsterdam.

[toothless 963]

Well, in France, it was the 2nd encore so I guess if people stop clapping they don't do it ? I don't know… In france some people were leaving after maleficent and missed the piece.

[cmh90790 16]

[Caliburn 72]

Warsaw did not have Prince of Tides either last night. I have a lot of friends all over Europe. ;-) In Poland the concerts were apparently also too expensive, from what I have heard. The venues were all very empty..  The concerts were very enjoyable nonetheless.

[bollemanneke 3,342]

The fact that so many seats are empty says a lot about society...

[Caliburn 72]

What I have heard from my Polish friends is that the price was too steep for them. To give an impression: below a clip of the same sports arena in Krakow, it is completely packed. Polish people LOVE film music! The Krakow film music festival tickets for several concerts were cheaper than the prices for the James Newton Howard concert. 

 

 

[bollemanneke 3,342]

Ah, here tickets were rather cheap.

[Caliburn 72]

.. also no Prince of Tides in Hamburg. So the audience who received the second encore was very lucky!