Courtesy of the St. Louis Symphony
Grab your capes and your wizard wands: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is coming to Powell Hall.
In this unique movie-going experience, the St. Louis Symphony will play the score in sync with the film. Conductor Justin Freer launched CineConcerts in 2013 and has been bringing film and live music together in concert ever since.
Freer grew up studying all types of music, from composers like Beethoven and Mahler to jazz artists such as Mile Davis and John Coltrane, but his passion lies in film music. He’s loved it since childhood. “There’s so much drama and storytelling in film music,” he says, “I think it is one of the most significant, more important art forms in our music history.”
Courtesy of the St. Louis Symphony
Justin Freer
This combination of watching a film while listening to a live, 90-piece orchestra showcases the importance of film music. “When well-written music is married to a well-made movie, the result is oftentimes magical,” says Freer.
Music is so much a part of a film-viewing experience that we often don’t even realize it, but Freer says, “without music, a film is very naked.”
Below are 5 things you might not know about the Harry Potter film events:
1. Part of what makes the Harry Potter concerts exciting for Freer is the fact that there’s a lot of music throughout the film, and that it’s such a dynamic score. “John Williams is, of course, one of the great geniuses in the music field. I think we’re very lucky to have him still composing music well over 50 years into his career, and he still composes such amazing work,” Freer says.
2. Harry Potter has become a pop culture phenomenon, which creates a level of expectation. Audiences know the movies and the score, so there’s a certain amount of responsibility that comes in each performance. “We hope to play at a quality level that’s high enough that John Williams and J.K. Rowling would be happy with," Freer says.
3. The musicians work on the score individually before coming together for rehearsals at Powell Hall. They will only have two rehearsals before the show. “We’re putting together a great deal of music in a limited amount of time, so that comes with a certain amount of pressure for everyone involved in the project.”
4. “I think one of the primary challenges of these events is the synchronization from beginning to end,” says Freer. “That certainly is one of the great challenges that makes it so rewarding because it’s a challenge for everybody on stage.”
5. The film concerts attract newcomers to the symphony, and if you can believe it, they also bring in audience members who are viewing the movie for the first time. “If we’ve done our job at the end of the day, hopefully one or two people will leave inspired by music. I hope that audiences continue the adventure with the orchestra,” says Freer.
Chambers of Secrets is the second in an eight-show series, so if you didn’t get your tickets to this sold-out show, there’s always next year.
