Bringing other media to the live stage--with orchestra

[Steve Marcus]

Disney has brought some of its classic films to the live stage and with them, scores for musicians to play for every performance (some with good tuba books!).

More orchestras are now programming the playing of original soundtracks as the audience watches the film on a big screen. While some might point out that they'd rather have the orchestra schedule a conventional classical music concert, these presentations are helping the symphony orchestras reach new audiences and serve a viable function in musical and entertainment choices for the public. There is some very high quality music in this genre. (MANY film scores have substantial tuba parts, regardless of whether the player must sync to a click track.)

Marvel Universe Live has been receiving much publicity lately. Does it use a live orchestra? If it does, who has been playing tuba? If it uses a studio recording, one would hope that at least THAT was not completely digitally generated.

[Tom]

Marvel Universe Live has been receiving much publicity lately. Does it use a live orchestra? If it does, who has been playing tuba? If it uses a studio recording, one would hope that at least THAT was not completely digitally generated.

The Marvel show uses a combination on computer generated music and live orchestra. All of the music has been pre-recorded and is played back during the shows, they do not use a live orchestra at each tour stop. It is an arena level touring show, so this is not surprising.

Yes, there are many programs available to orchestras now that are film-with-live-orchestra projects. Many of them come from these sources, though there are quite a few others available:

http://imgartists.com/artists/film_with_orchestra
http://www.cami.com/?cat=1150

Disney has some neat new stuff in the works, FYI.

[tbn.al]

We could always ask the powers that be to put a screen on the back wall like at church. You do have it memorized don't you?

[rodgeman]

My community college group uses sound effects from a soundboard to augment our music. Especially if we are playing something from a movie - we use sound clips. No prerecorded music. We had a piece called Vodoo (by Daniel Bukvich http://bukvichmusic.com/comp/voodoo/index.php) that called for jungle sounds and flashlights. We played a Hobit medley with Gollum sounds from the movies. We do not used film clips yet.