Over Labor Day weekend we got to go to the John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl! We were all so excited!
This is a pretty cool concert. John Williams leads the LA Philharmonic in selections from his works while clips of the movies play around the stage. Thanks to Pandora, our kids are huge John Williams fans. They can name almost every movie he has scored (even though they haven't seen half of them).
Brian and I got to attend the same concert years ago. That first time we went, we thought it was so funny that some people had brought along lightsabers and when the orchestra started playing music from star wars, they lit up their lightsabers and waved them around in the outdoor theater. This time we went, the audience was FULL of lightsabers! It was so cool!
So Ty dressed up as Indiana Jones - and brought his lightsaber! (We forgot the Harry Potter wand...)
It was so neat to hear John Williams talk about many of the pieces before they played them. He talked about as a kid how he loved going to the movies and listening to the music and watching the action movies, especially the sword fighting. He said he was excited to collaborate with Steven Spielberg on a new piece that had sword fighting in it, The adventures of Tin Tin. As he was discussing with Steven (name dropping) about which clips from the movie he should show during the song, Steven suggested using sword fighting clips from many different hollywood movies, as well as Tin Tin. So they did. And it was cool. Errol Flynn, Pirates of the Carribean, Tin Tin, Tom and Jerry, The Princess Bride (the audience gasped and cheered at that part!) Star Wars (the audience went NUTS at that part!) It was really cool.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of ET, John was once again discussing with Steven which clips he could use during the concert. Steven offered to give him the last 2 reels of the film, updated into HD with the voice overs and sound effects so that the orchestra could play the music along with the film. Which was awesome! We watched the last part of the movie, which started when they steal the van with ET in it, the police chase on the bikes, flying to the forest, then saying goodbye to ET as his spaceship flies off. Briggs was a little tired that night, but when I pointed out to him how cool it was that the music we were hearing in the movie was actually coming from the stage and the orchestra, he smiled real big at that! At the beginning of the concert Ty asked, "Mom, are they playing real music, then those guys on the stage are just playing some of it?" He had never really thought about where real music comes from. It was a neat experience to show them how "real" music is made.
This is a video of music from Superman. The fans were very respectful and only waved the lightsabers during Star Wars music, but Superman got them a little excited and they couldn't help waving them around a bit.
If you watch any of the video clips, this is the best one, taken by Larry. The Darth Vader theme. The audience just couldn't get enough and he ended up doing 3 encores. We explained to the children what that meant, and after the third encore when people kept standing up and cheering, the kids started whining because they were tired and done, and as much as they love John Williams, they didn't want any more encores.
The whole thing was such an amazing experience.. I was surprised that the theater allowed so many people to bring in distracting projectile weapons and wave them around during the performance (especially since I was accosted by the security because I tried to take in my DSLR camera - one lady told me no, two people told me yes, brian and my ticket were leaving me in a sea of thousands of people, i kept going and the armed security guy had to chase me down. seriously?). But when John Williams and the first chair violinist pulled out their own lightsabers at the end of the concert, I figured he must think this tradition is pretty cool. Thanks for a great night, Larry!
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