PR: Details of the Symphonic Concert at the IV Ubeda Conference

Fantastic line-up!

It is a good line up, not that I'm likely to be there though

....and Erik's right, too many threads on the same subject.

So, how was it for the people who went?

Jordi? Marselus?

No need for Zimmer (to perform what? "The Dark Crap"?), Powell was there last year, for God Sake, Horner will never be in a Congress and Giacchino, well, a little bird of the organisation told me something about him....we´ll see.

Anyway,
After a tiresome trip by car to Ubeda and another back to Barcelona it´s time for balance. And it can´t be more positive.
Probably the better congress so far. All the mistakes of last year (access to the saturday night concert and lenght of the concert) were corrected. The conferences were interesting overall; as always, the Roque Baños one was the more interesting, giving good information about the process of creation of a score and how he deals with directors, temp tracks (he is totally against them by the way) and producers. Also interesting what he said about why did he left Brad Anderson´s "Transsiberian".
John Scott proved again what an extraordinary warm and nice human being he is and the rest of composers, as usual in Úbeda, were kind and accessible during all the congress. It was great friday night having some drinks with Patrick Doyle, Roque Baños, Fernando Velázquez, Alberto Iglesias, etc. and the rest of the score geeks. I even gave some feedback(!) (while drinking a beer) to Velázquez about his "The Orphanage" suite, as I attended the final rehearsal of the suite in the afternoon.

The saturday night was probably the most interesting event, as is not usual to listen non film music of film music composers.
Bruce Broughton at the piano and extraordinary violinist David Quiggle performed "Gold Rush Songs" (musical arrangements of traditional american songs).
Broughton (piano) and Joel McNeely (flute) performed "Variations for flute and Piano".
Broughton (piano) and Quiggley (violin) performed "Sonata for Violin and Piano".
Then it was tine for Christopher Slaski, who performed a selection of themes of his scores with his cellist.
After Slaski, it was the turn for Fernando Velázquez (cello), Marc Vaíllo (piano) and David Quiggle (violin); they performed Velázquez´s "Holes in the Sky".
Marc Vaíllo´s "Animus: Hope, Triumph, Sadness and Final" was performed by Vaíllo at the piano, Velázquez (cello) and Quiggle (violin).
Finally, Carles Cases showed his virtuosity with the piano with a selection of his music.

Now, the main concert (sarurday night).
Bruce Broughton started it all with a suite of "Tombstone" and another one of "Rescuers Down Under". "Tombstone" was specially brilliant, and set the mood for the rest of the concert.

Then Roque Baños took the stage. Still echoing in the place´s walls his magnificent "Alatriste" suite of Úbeda 2007, he delivered "The Oxford Murders" suite, specially arranged for the occasion, adding a full choir and new orchestral arrangements to the piece. As always, Baños conducted with energy, authority and not even looking at the score sheets. Specially amazing is watch him giving feedback to the percussion section and the first violin while playing. Brilliant.

After Baños, the highlight of the night IMO: John Scott. Conducting the orchestra with the spirit of a teenager, they performed a suite of "Anthony and Cleopatra" and another one of "The Final Countdown". And he did it in an original way, starting with Cleopatra, linking it with The Final Countdown and reprising Cleopatra´s suite with a big finale to finish his concert. Absolutely fantastic. The audience gifted him with three standing ovations for that.
There was an amazing moment during Scott´s concert: the music is so good and the rehearsals went so good that in the middle of the suite Scott stopped conducting for a while, watching the orchestra and enjoying the moment. Magical.

After Scott, Joel McNeely took the stage to conduct Herrmann´s "North by Northwest" (impressive execution by the orchestra), a selection of his works, and three themes of "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire". No need to say it was impressive.

Fernando Velázquez was next, and his "The Orphanage " suite was another highlight, with director J.A. Bayona introducing the composer and listening for the first time the suite with the orchestra and the choir together (due to budgetary reasons, when they recorded the score a year ago they couldn´t do it with the choir and orchestra at the same time).

Joel NcNeely returned to stage again to introduce Patrick Doyle and conduct "Much Ado About Nothing" (Overture), "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (Potter Waltz and Harry in Winter), "Frankenstein" (The Creation), "Carlito´s Way (Opening Elegy) and "Henry V" (St. Crispin´s Day and Non Nobis Domine). Here came a great surprise of the night, as Patrick Doyle went up to the stage to sing "Non Nobis Domine" while McNeely conducted the orchestra and choir.

Finally, it was time for the Basil Poledouris Homage. Pascual Osa (the director of the Orchestra) conducted Basil´s "Hymn to Red October". Mindblowing performance of the Ziryab choir. At the end of the theme all composers appeared on stage for the final standing ovation. What a great way to finish a perfect concert.

AWESOME! No more words to say, just AWESOME!

Indeed, a big and AWESOME WOW!
I´ll post some pics and vids ASAP.

A couple of the themes of the concert:

The Hunt for the Red October (Hymn to the Red October) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdL9Ku6J … re=related

Henry V (Non Nobis Domine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKFwxIDa … re=related

Good god, that must have been awesome.
It's not easy to ignore the sound quality of this video, but if I had been there I just would have died of sheer emotional overload!!

OOh, I saw that played live at one of his concerts with David Arnold by the LSO.... my god it was awesome. (But not as awesome as the ID4 theme. )

Yeah, after listening to some other clips (including the Doyle one) I think the sound quality is not even that bad.

Thanks very much for posting the link, it has been on repeat here for a while now!
And I posted it in the Poledouris topic as well.

Here we go again...


Have you heard the Doyle one I'm talking about? Then listen to the Poledouris one and compare.

Holy crap, that reminds me! Julio...I think his name was...never got back to me about the DVD of last years event. He was going to use my footage and was going to send me a copy. Marselus, did you get one?

The 2007 one.