Photos courtesy of the Manila Symphony Orchestra
AMERICAN orchestra conductor Angel Velez was in Manila to hold workshops on conducting. With him were seven participants, all accomplished musicians and composers who want to learn the craft of leading an orchestra. The workshops concluded with a concert of the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO), with Velez as guest conductor. The show, A Night in Hollywood, was held at Aliw Theater last June 28. It showcased the memorable melodies that helped shape many classic films.
Based in Los Angeles, Velez is co-founder of the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive (LAFCI). In an interview with TheDiarist.ph, he said LAFCI is dedicated to advancing the art of conducting. It organizes workshops “and provides access to online resources to help music composers polish their conducting skills at the podium.”
“We hold our workshops at the Warner Brothers Studio in Los Angeles, where we help those who want to learn how to be composers and conductors. But unfortunately, after they’ve studied with us for only one week, they don’t have a chance to continue practicing their skills,” he said.
“And so every year we collaborate with a different orchestra in different parts of the world. Here, we’ve been given a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with the Manila Symphony Orchestra. Last year it was the National Symphony of Costa Rica.”
Manila Symphony Orchestra performing at Aliw Theater packed with music and movie fans
The collaboration gives the students a chance to actually conduct an orchestra. The students come from different parts of the world, including New York, Singapore, China, and Argentina. Two of the participants were Filipino. The Manila workshops in Manila were held for a week in a hotel. Culminating activity was the concert with the MSO.
The first act of the concert had each student conducting the orchestra playing his own composition. As MSO’s executive director Jeffrey Solares said, the first act served as their thesis defense and graduation.
Four of the students were women. Among them was assistant professor of music, Jennifer Jolley. Based in New York, she’s an accomplished composer. She also wants to be an orchestra conductor, so she joined LAFCI’s workshops. I got to talk to her two days before the concert, when the orchestra was set to play her music, titled Theme from Stolen Realm. It was written to accompany a video game, she said.
Since there aren’t that many female conductors, I asked if there was a dress code for women when it was time to hit the podium. She said, “Male or female, black or white are the only colors a conductor should wear. What we wear shouldn’t distract the audience and the musicians. We also shouldn’t wear anything that could affect our performance as conductor. No bracelets and rings. I’ll be to taking off my wedding ring when my turn comes.”
‘Male or female, black or white are the only colors a conductor should wear. What we wear shouldn’t distract the audience and the musicians’
During the actual concert, Jolley looked elegant in a long black skirt and a white top. She set her own hair in an updo, because loose hair can get intrusive and affect her concentration, she said. She gave the spotlight to her music, not herself.
The second act starred the mentor himself, Angel Velez, as guest conductor. The popular music from beloved movies dominated the program; Star Wars, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and several others. It was more or less a John Williams festival. We weren’t complaining. This was our chance to see a live orchestra play the music we grew up with. They also played music by other composers, though musical arrangements were also done by Williams. As Velez said, “We’re here to spread the gospel of John Williams.”
Looking youthful and exuberant, Velez doesn’t look like your typical orchestra conductor. He wore a white tux and was less formal in the way he addressed the crowd. He didn’t enter the stage; he seized it like a star crooner would, like a Paul Anka about to sing My Way. What he said foreshadowed an enthralling evening that promised not to be stiff. There’s going to be audience interaction, he said. Interaction started right after he directed the MSO to play the popular fanfare music of 20th Century Studios. He asked us to hum the rest of the tune, which we all gamely did.
As a movie fan, I was already on Cloud 9. We’ve been hearing the Fox fanfare played for decades at the start of every Fox production. Velez said the music was composed by the great Alfred Newman, father of LAFCI co-founder and film composer David Newman (he scored Ice Age and the animated version of Anastasia). Alfred wrote the fanfare about a hundred years ago for Samuel Goldwyn’s film company, but it was rejected! Later, he submitted a longer version to Hollywood mogul Daryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox. To this day, it’s still being used.
Alfred Newman was perhaps the John Williams of Hollywood’s golden age. He earned several Oscar nominations and won a bunch of them. In 1968, he won his final Oscar for adapting and scoring the music for the film version of Camelot. He wrote his last original score in 1970, for the first all-star disaster movie, Airport. He died shortly after. For this movie, he posthumously received his 45th Oscar nomination. At that time, John Williams was already making headway in Hollywood. Not long after, Alfred’s son David Newman started his career in music with Williams.
The second act started with an overture of sort—a medley of some of the most famous movie music in history. Some of them were composed by Williams, the others by Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther), John Barry (Out of Africa), Bernard Hermann (Psycho), Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind), Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso), Bill Conti (Rocky), and so many more. Arranged by Williams, the medley was initially performed at the 2003 Oscar show, where he conducted the orchestra.
The second act started with a medley of some of the most famous movie music in history by John Williams (‘Star Wars’), Henry Mancini (‘The Pink Panther’), John Barry (‘Out of Africa’), Ennio Morricone (‘Cinema Paradiso’), Bill Conti (‘Rocky’), and more
Velez faced the audience again and teasingly asked how many of us could identify more than 15 of the tunes in the medley. I raised my hand, but he didn’t see me. Listening to it could make anyone familiar with those movies feel somewhat emotional and nostalgic. It was the soundtrack of our movie-going lives.
The show veered away from the original program when a tribute to movie music composer Lalo Schifrin followed. Schifrin was already the recipient of several encomiums from around the world when he celebrated his 93rd birthday on June 21. Then the Argentine-born composer died five days later. It’s ironic that he passed away at the time the final Mission: Impossible movie of Tom Cruise was released.
Velez squeezed in a performance of Schifrin’s sensational theme for Mission: Impossible. It wasn’t in the program originally. The MSO was up to the challenge to take on a last-minute addition to the concert. I ate up this performance. Seeing the orchestra do justice to Schifrin’s monumental work was a transcendental experience.
Violinist Jeanne Rafaella Marquez brought the house down with her fiery rendition of ‘Por Una Cabeza.’
Other highlights include a bravura performance by violin soloist Jeanne Rafaella Marquez. She played Por Una Caveza by Argentine composer Carlos Gardel. The version she played was arranged by John Williams, who made it sound more like flamenco. The music was used in the memorable tango scene with Al Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar in Scent of a Woman. A year later, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tia Carrere danced to it in True Lies. Ms. Marquez played it with fiery passion. If the tango dancers made the song look sexy, Ms. Marquez made it sound intensely sexy. An incoming fourth year student at the Juilliard School of Music, she’s won a number of music competitions abroad. Watch out for her. What Cecile Licad is to piano, Jeanne Rafaela Marquez should soon be to the violin.
Hungarian cellist Zoltan Onczay played the music from ‘Seven Years in Tibet.’
Hungarian cellist Zoltan Onczay was on hand to perform the final credit music from Seven Years in Tibet. According to Velez, that was the first time the music, also written by John Williams, was played in a live concert. For me, the piece de resistance was the music from Superman: The Movie. Seeing it and listening to it live gave me a fix that that was more spectacular than any sordid vice could.
The budding conductors who took part in the workshops (from left): Noah N. Zubia-Sanchez, Jennifer Jolley, Robin Raisch, Yuxuan Liu, Julia Sanchez, Sophia Bass, and Mohammad Rasull
After the show, somebody told me the concert might have been more interesting had they shown clips of the films on a screen. It’s an innovative concept, but it’s better used for the Academy Awards (which it did when John Williams played the medley in 2003). I was happy to watch each of the talented musicians of the MSO bring all that glorious Hollywood music to life. What they gave the audience sounded as authentic as the original soundtracks of those films. When called upon, the MSO can be more Hollywood than Hollywood itself.
