ORCHESTRA PERFORMS LIVE MOVIE SCORES IN FRONT OF FILMS

Music composed by Danny Elfman for the movies Milk, Alice in Wonderland, Spiderman, Big Fish, and Oz the Great and Powerful was spotlighted Sunday night at UCLA when it was performed live by the American Youth Symphony as clips from the films were projected behind the 106-member training orchestra for musicians 15-27. The AYS was conducted by David Newman, himself an Oscar-nominated composer and the son of the late Alfred Newman, the acclaimed conductor of the 20th Century Fox orchestra during the studio’s heyday. “The best film music works on its own, as a listening experience,” USC Professor Jon Burlingame, who presented a preconcert symposium, told the USC newspaper, the Daily Trojan, which observed that watching film clips with a live orchestra “is an experience that few movie aficionados have the opportunity to experience.” Newman told the student newspaper that being able to work with the AYS gave him more to time to fine-tune the music to match the film clips, allowing him to make minor adaptations, resulting in an “almost transcendent” symphonic performance.