On Friday and Saturday, Greaves Concert Hall at Northern Kentucky University will play home to a live orchestra screening of the Academy Award-winning film Amadeus. The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra’s presentation will be only the second symphonic screening of the film in the United States, after Eugene, Ore. It premiered in London last October. After this screening, it moves to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Led by music director James Cassidy, the KSO will play the movie’s music onstage during a high-definition screening of the film, accompanied by pianist Sophie Wang and members of the Voices of the Commonwealth and Collegium Cincinnati’s Summer-Sing chorus.
Directed by Miloš Forman and written by Peter Shaffer, 1984’s Amadeus tells a tale about the alleged rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) and composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham).
Live musical accompaniment is not new to the film industry. When silent movies were first shown, pianists or organists often played along to muffle the mechanical din of the projector. Once sound was added to film, musical scores became an integral part of storytelling — sometimes articulating action, other times haunting a suspenseful scene.
In 1987, John Goberman, creator of Live from Lincoln Center, invented yet another way to hear movie music: He stripped the soundtrack from a print of the film Alexander Nevsky for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to incorporate into a concert. Symphonic cinema was born.
The process was crude in its early days. When the KSO performed a concert screening of Ben-Hur in 2001, the movie was shown on reel film. “We had to use a tachometer to change film speed as we performed,” music director Cassidy says.
Today, digital wizardry makes it easier to mesh music and movie. On Friday and Saturday, Cassidy will use a click track — a digital metronome — and visual cues on his conductor’s screen to sync the score with the screen to within a millisecond.
Amadeus was more difficult than most titles to produce. “We had to combine two versions of the film to arrive at our show,” says Maggie O’Herlihy, head of European and American operations for Avex Classics International, the London-based company that produced the print the KSO will use.
“We were determined to use the 1984 release, but it was not available in high definition,” she says. “We had to go to the 2002 director’s cut, which was released in HD, and re-cut it back into the original film.”
While the KSO will use a print of Amadeus with all its music removed, there is one exception. “In the opera scenes, we keep the singer soloists on tape and the live orchestra and choir accompany them,” says O’Herlihy.
“It would be a nightmare to lip-sync opera singers,” Cassidy adds.
The Amadeus print will travel to Northern Kentucky with an engineer who will bring the technical pieces of the show — the projection, sound, monitor and lights — and help balance the film’s dialogue and sound effects during the performance.
“The live music always must be at the service of the story, even when it’s Mozart,” O’Herlihy says.
This means that orchestras often have a very short window to rehearse. “We won’t get the film until Thursday,” Cassidy says. “But we’re all pros. The music of Amadeus is very familiar to all of us.”
What is the allure of symphonic cinema?
For Chris Pinelo, vice president of communications for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Pops, it’s the way the two separate experiences — a film and a concert — add up to something new.
“Audiences are always drawn to their favorite movies,” he says. “Combining that with a live concert is something to behold.”
Film scores also have become more recognizable in recent years, thanks in part to John Williams, the composer whose Stars Wars and Indiana Jones themes have become concert-hall staples. That popularity helps the draw for a symphonic screenings.
“Great orchestral music has been written for the silver screen,” Pinelo says. “Many of the millions of recordings the Pops have sold around the world feature film music.”
The Pops has been playing to films since the 1980s, Pinelo says. Later this year, it will perform to a screening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at Music Hall. And next year, to honor Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, the Pops will show West Side Story with a live orchestra score.
In addition to the blockbuster scores and the appeal of combining two art forms, the rise of symphonic cinema reflects broader social changes in orchestras and audiences.
“There’s a trend toward more interactivity in the concert hall and films are part of that,” observes Dave Bukvic, chief marketing officer of the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, which includes the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. “But there’s also a need to preserve what’s great about art from the standpoint of mindfulness. The concert hall can be a safe cocoon for people who want to disconnect as well as a stage for expanded experience.”
The DPO’s experience with The Wizard of Oz — which by far attracts the widest audience in Dayton — illustrates the unique possibilities of this hybrid art.
“In one version of The Wizard of Oz we screened, the ‘Winkie Chant’ track — the ‘O-Ee-Yah’ — was completely lost,” Bukvic says. “Our music director Neal Gittleman had the audience sing that part, conducting the orchestra with one hand and the crowd — people of all ages and generations — with the other. The acoustics of our performance hall let the audience be heard as beautifully as the orchestra. It was phenomenal.”
Friday’s and Saturday’s Amadeus Live celebrates the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Northern Kentucky-based KSO. Twenty-five years later, music director Cassidy still hews to his original mission: to make music attractive, affordable and accessible.
“Great music is a gift that needs to be shared with as many people as possible,” he says. “If there’s any movie that orchestras should play to, it’s Amadeus.”
The 7:30 p.m. Saturday performance of AMADEUS LIVE has sold out, but the orchestra and producers have added a 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 7 show at Northern Kentucky University’s Greaves Concert Hall in Highland Heights. Tickets/more info: 859-431-6216 or kyso.org.
This article appears in Apr 5-12, 2017.