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On June 19th, 2014 I found myself at the NAC for yet another themed Pops concert presented by the wonderful National Arts Centre Orchestra. As usual the pair of tickets came courtesy of my part-time employment at the NAC and while I’ve found these Pops concerts a little hit and miss (more a comment on my musical sensibilities than a slur against the orchestra) I figured an evening of the music of John Williams couldn’t miss.
And I was right.
John Williams has written some of the most well-known classical music of this generation, and of course all of it connected to his extensive film-scoring work. By setting the musical tone of such astounding Hollywood blockbusters as JAWS, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones, E. T. the Extraterrestrial, Harry Potter, and perhaps most famously: the whole Star Wars thing, William’s music is as ingrained in popular consciousness as Beethoven’s 5th or Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.
Never mind that he’s a notorious theme-stealer (or, as a higher-up at the NAC once joked to me, “So many great composers seem to have stolen music from the man”), he nicks from all the right places to paint an aural picture that becomes inseparable from the movies they augment. As I sat there listening to the orchestra play the music from Harry Potter (or was it Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals?) and the Imperial March Theme (or maybe Mars from Holst’s The Planets?) I couldn’t help but to be projected back to that movie projector flashing magical, unforgettable images onto the big screen.
Best of all, of course, was the Star Wars Theme. Aside from the obvious nostalgic bump I sat there flicking between two great memories. First, one of the first-run Star Wars trading cards showed John Williams recording the original film music. The image was of him conducting an orchestra in front of a screen that had a giant X-wing fighter on it. I used to linger over that card imagining how cool it would be to hear that music played by a real orchestra, and now here I was.
Secondly, the very first piece of music I ever ‘worked’ in my now long-standing role of video director for the NAC’s Family Adventure’s Series was – you guessed it – the Star Wars Theme. It being my first time I was franticly calling out shots to the camera operators and video switcher but I still managed to find a moment or two to be overwhelmingly nostalgic about that old trading card. Even being so nervous and busy for those inaugural three minutes I found myself giddy to be sitting in my control booth hearing the orchestra playing that astounding theme music live in the next room.
So at this concert I sat there alternatively feeling nostalgic about the trading card and being nostalgic about being nostalgic about the trading card back when I did my first NAC camera gig. It was like looking in a nostalgic mirror that was facing another mirror of nostalgia.
Final summary: chalk up another ‘hit’ for the NACO Pops series.
Todd Man Out 