Film concerts: Performing movie music live

The worst way to watch “Jaws” is without music. A good way is to watch it with John Williams’ famous score coming from your speakers. But the best way to watch “Jaws” might be with a live orchestra playing that iconic score.

The New York Philharmonic plays for four movies a year at Lincoln Center. Almost every showing is sold out.

“A live orchestra absolutely reaches people in a way that no recorded sound can even approximate,” said the Philharmonic’s former acting CEO Deborah Borda. “It’s like you’re sitting in the middle of the orchestra.”

In the silent film days, live music always accompanied movies, and movies were events.

“Over the years, theaters got smaller,” said Steve Linder. “Then, people started watching it on their television. Then they watch it on their computer. Then they watch that on their phone.”

Linder is the cofounder of Film Concerts Live, one of several companies that rent out the sheet music and equipment that orchestras need to perform one of these movies. “What we do is we bring moviegoing back to what it was originally intended to be, with live music, and in a communal experience.”

But for Borda, one of the best features of live movie scores is the way they attract new and younger audiences to the concert hall. “Almost 50% of the people who come to our film series are first-time attendees of the New York Philharmonic, and the first time in the hall,” she said.

For the conductor, these shows are tricky. You have to keep one eye on the musicians, one eye on the score, and one eye on a special monitor running the film. But how does the conductor know exactly when to bring in the orchestra in sync with the action? That’s the purpose of moving vertical bars called streamers. Those streamers and the bright dots are like countdowns to important musical moments. 

Anthony Parnther conducted the Philharmonic’s screenings of “Jaws.” But his main gig is conducting the actual Hollywood recording sessions for films, such as “Oppenheimer,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Asked if there is a feeling among his fellow conductors that such concerts are more crowd-pleasers than art, Parnther replied, “All I know is that when I turn around from my score to address the audience, every seat is filled.”

So, how flexible is conducting a score live to a film? “I have a little bit of license to phrase the orchestra around the streamers,” Parnther said. “There could be a little bit of variance. And I think that’s what makes these particularly appealing for the musicians to perform and for conductors to conduct.”

These days, there are over a thousand live-orchestra movie screenings a year. The classic blockbusters usually work best, from “Jurassic Park” and “Superman” to “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

“It has to be great music that the audience wants to hear, of course,” said Linder. “But also it has to be great music that the orchestra is interested in playing.”

Ryan Roberts is the New York Philharmonic’s English horn and oboe player. Unfortunately, during the projection concerts, he sits directly under the screen, so he never gets to see any of the movies, even when he’s not playing.

“But we have a few sneaky ways of watching the movie in the woodwind section,” Roberts said. His favorite? A rearview mirror he bought on Amazon. “We tape it right on top of our stand lights.”

And management approves of this? “I plead the fifth!” Roberts laughed.

With the New York Philharmonic performing four performances of four films a year, which all sell out, shouldn’t they do 10 performances of each film? Borda said, “This is a symphony orchestra. We play Mahler. We play Bach. We play Mozart. We have a responsibility to the canon of music. And no, we’re not a movie house; we’re a symphony orchestra.”

Well, OK. But even Borda acknowledges that live-orchestra movies have become a popular and important option for American orchestras. “We should be places that are integrated into the fabric of the community,” she said. “And so, we want the New York Philharmonic to be as popular as the New York Yankees or the Mets. And movies can help get us there.”

      
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Joseph Frandino.

     
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