London Star Wars Concert

And where,actually?I understand it's London,but which place?

You have to take the train from Platform 9-3/4 at King's Cross which will take you to the concert hall which is situated about a 10 minute ride away.

James Horner

:pawel:

My tickets finally came today. Has anyone else received theirs?

Got mine a couple of weeks ago!

Has anybody seen that Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) will appear at the concerts as narrator? Pretty cool, but I just don't hope that he will be talking during the music...
http://www.starwars.com/fans/events/news20090321.html

Nice, that promotional flyer has got me excited, cant wait for the concert!

I'm going to opening night tomorrow!

What? That wasn't part of the deal!

I'm off to London...!

Just got back in and I'm glad to say it was a very good concert! The Royal Philharmonic under command of Dirk Brosse is a great combination. Full review tomorrow, but I'll write out the pieces performed or I'll have forgotten it by morning (there was no way I was shelling out £15 for a program after I spent £17 on parking!)

20th Century Fox Fanfare
Main Title - Rebel Blockade Runner - End Title
Duel Of The Fates
Anakin's Theme
Dune Sea Of Tatooine - Jawa Sandcrawler
The Flag Parade
Across The Stars
Battle Of The Heroes
The Imperial March

Interval

Another version of The Imperial March (not sure which cue)
The Asteroid Field (HELL. YES.)
Leia's Theme
Binary Sunset
Cantina Band 1
Yoda's Theme
Luke And Leia
The Forest Battle
Light Side Of The Force
Extended Throne Room - End Titles

Sounds great!

Right, yes, the O2 - the most expensive place on earth. £40 a ticket (and that was the cheapest available), £17 to park (there's even a VIP BMW owner car park where you can pay £5 more and park 50ft closer ) and £15 or more for any of the crappy merchandise they were selling. Surprisingly, they weren't even selling the soundtracks!

I was armed with my binoculars so I could perv on the hot...no wait, the entire place was full on Star Wars geeks! (no offense to any of you ) The guy dressed as Bobba Fett who was carrying a tray of beers gave me quite a good laugh though.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you want to hear about the music. I can hardly see how "John Williams painstakingly re-wrote the music" as per the original press release, as it was just a collection of all the concert suites with a tiny bit of arranging so it fit their video compilations a bit more. Not that that was a bad thing by any means, and the Royal Philharmonic gave an incredibly good performance.

The only thing I was upset about is that they weren't amplifying the music at all. Granted doing that with an orchestra would be near impossible, but I was sitting so far away it didn't seem loud enough.

But anyway - an awesome opening with the THX logo sound and the 20th Century Fox fanfare as the curtains opened (that got a HUGE cheer!). Into the main title cue from the original Star Wars which eventually merged into the end title from the same film. A good opening which gave me a lot of confidence in the orchestra but I needed more than the ever-so-played main title cue.

Duel Of The Fates confirmed my thoughts we were in for a good night as they even had a choir (for all of two cues I think!). Anakin's Theme was played nicely, but didn't receive a particularly warm reception. The same also happened to Dune Sea Of Tatooine - Jawa Sandcrawler. Even I was wondering why this was performed as it's not a particularly interesting or epic cue.

The Flag Parade got a massive applause and while the performance was very good it didn't feel perfected. Across The Stars was one of the highlights of the evening. I'm really not a fan of this theme, but my God it sounded good live! As did Battle Of The Heroes which seemed to contain a long timpani segment I wasn't aware of before!

And just before the interval, The Imperial March. I didn't think this would live up to expectation and unfortunately it didn't. No performance other than the original recording has lived up to the force (no pun intended) and aggression of the first. Still, at this point I was still hoping for The Asteroid Field and as I didn't have a program I had no idea what was coming.

The second half was even stronger than the first (it had lasers!!), starting again with a better performance of The Imperial March, but I'm not sure what cue it was. Then, as Anthony Daniels mentioned the words "Asteroid" and "Field" I wet myself. What was one of the best performances of the night the audience seemed to knock off as "another piece of action music". Oh well, screw them, I LOVED it!

The strongest performance of the night had to be Leia's Theme, which even surprised me as it sounded better than the original!

Then onto a quick version of Binary Sunset which suddenly switched to the Cantina Band. I've never considered that this could or was ever played by a standard orchestra, but clearly it can! This was the biggest crowd pleaser as people even cheered when it started.

A nice version of Yoda's Theme and Luke And Leia then proceeded. I've never been able to put these themes up there with The Force, Leia's or The Imperial March, so I patiently awaited to hear Tie Fighter Attack and then Battle In The Forest.

Then...TIE FIGHTER ATTACK AND BATTLE IN THE FOREST! My evening was nearly complete (although the second tends to sound a bit gay whenever it's not the Gerdhart re-recording. Sadly it fell to the same crappy-percussion fate here too.) Anyway, that was expected, so the problem was overlooked.

Lastly the orchestra played Light Side Of The Force which rounded everything off nicely, and then an extended (why?!) version of The Throne Room. It had the great build up, DIDN'T lead into the main Star Wars theme and then built up again and then did it....weird. It was a little odd the opening and closing performances were the same, but the last one definitely came across stronger and ended the evening nicely. Plus, I got chatting to this cute redhead on the long trek out of the O2.

Evening complete.

I'm glad to hear it was an amazing evening, and I'm glad Dirk Brossé was there to give you a bit of Belgium magic