Concert Review: John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl (9/5/2009)

As ToastyKen said in his Depeche Mode concert review, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles is a wonderful venue that provides great acoustics in a beautiful setting.  One of the eagerly anticipated annual concerts at the Bowl is "John Williams and the Music of the Movies," two nights when the legendary film composer himself conducts the LA Philharmonic Orchestra.

If John Williams' name doesn't ring a bell, think about the theme song to Jaws.  Yup, that's his.  Indiana Jones?  That's his music too.  All six Star Wars films?  You betcha.  Unless you've been living under a rock (without wifi access and a laptop, mind you) for more than 30 years, Williams' music is part of the soundtrack of your life.

With a vast number of instantly recognizable pieces of music at his fingertips, the composer could easily coast along and lead the LA Phil through the same "greatest hits" performance of his work every year.  The delight—and potential frustration—of his Hollywood Bowl concerts is that Williams never opts for this easy route.  Audience members know they'll get to enjoy some of these "greatest hits" and that at least one of them will be a selection from Star Wars.  They also know that part of the evening will be a salute to at least one other notable movie composer.  Other than that, what they'll hear that night is up for grabs until they arrive at the venue and receive the concert program.
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This year's "Music of the Movies" concerts were unique in that the entire first hour was devoted to Williams' music from a single franchise—Harry Potter.  Since I was attending with a group of family and friends (a situation akin to herding lots and lots and lots of cats), we arrived just in time to catch the last two pieces, "The Chamber of Secrets" and one of my favorite Williams' compositions "Harry's Wondrous World."  As a Potter fan, I wasn't happy to have missed so much of the performance, but what I did get to hear was excellent and well-paired with the movie clips they show on the large screens for the audience.  An additional treat came in the form of special guest Vanessa Redgrave, who served as the narrator between clips, tying the different Potter compositions togeher.

After intermission came a tribute to Williams' fellow film composers through an arrangement of well-known movie themes.  While I've usually seen Williams' educate the audience on a single composer during his Bowl concerts (his tribute to Alfred Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann a couple of years ago was especially memorable), this year's approach made evident the power music has to evoke memories and emotions.  The orchestra played only 10 to 15 seconds of the well-known theme songs to films like The Magnificent Seven, Gone with the Wind, Cinema Paradiso and Titanic, but even those short snippets of music would evoke audible reactions from the audience.

Instead of delving into some of his well-known music, Williams then talked for a bit about his 36-year working relationship with Steven Spielberg and the music he did for an atypical Spielberg film, Catch Me If You Can.  The jazz stylings from the film score featured the vibraphone, sax and upright bass and were very enjoyable, but you could also feel that the audience was getting restless.

Personally, I couldn't complain about the next selection, an orchestral version of "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca featuring the LA Phil's lead violinist and concert mistress.  It was another tasteful nod to the composers who came before Williams and simply a treat to hear this lovely piece of music performed live.

The evening's official program finished strong with pieces from The Witches of Eastwick, the original Dracula and the main theme to the original Christopher Reeve Superman movies.  The Superman theme is always uplifting, but this year the Superman movie clips were mixed with Batman movie snippets as part of a superheroes tribute, which considerably weakened the visual component.  The feel of both the older Batman movies and the Christian Bale reboot films is so different from the optimistic, inspiring Superman music that the mixed clips were a distraction from the excellent music.

As is often the case, many of the biggest crowd-pleasing pieces were saved for the two encores.  One of my favorite and fantastically geeky parts of these annual concerts is the fan reaction as soon as a Star Wars theme starts to play.  As soon as Williams announced the start of "Yoda's Theme," Warsies in the audience whipped out hundreds of lightsabers of every color, waving them enthusiastically.  The start of the unmistakable main theme from Star Wars only made them happier, although the fans were more subdued this year.  Usually, some fans leap up and have lightsaber duels up and down the aisles but I didn't see any of that happen this time around.

The second encore started with the theme to E.T., which was a nice flashback to some of Williams' earlier work.  Williams and the orchestra played right into the fans' hands, closing out the night with nothing less than the "Imperial March" from Star Wars.  While some audience members were heard to voice their disappointment that nothing from Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park or Schindler's List had been played, not knowing what favorites you'll hear or not hear is actually part of the draw of these concerts.  It's also a testament to the skill and immense talent of John Williams that he has created such a successful body of work that he can pick and chose which of his famous pieces he wants to share each year.

"John Williams and the Music of the Movies" 2009 setlist:
Harry Potter—"Hedwig's Theme," "Aunt Marge's Waltz," "Diagon Alley and The Gringotts Vault," "The Knight Bus," "The Quidditch Match," "Fawkes The Phoenix," "A Window to the Past," "The Chamber of Secrets" and "Harry's Wondrous World"

Intermission

A Tribute to Film Composers (including music from The Bridge on the River Kwai, Patton, The Godfather, Cinema Paradiso, The Magnificent Seven, Titanic, Gone with the Wind, E..T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Star Wars)
Suite from Catch Me If You Can
"As Time Goes By" from Casablanca
"Devil's Dance" from The Witches of Eastwick
"End Titles" from Dracula
"Superman - Main Theme" from Superman

First Encore
Star Wars—"Yoda's Theme" and "Star Wars - Main Titles"

Second Encore
Suite from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
"Imperial March" from Star Wars

Don't forget to visit our Pop Wenches YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/popwenches to see additional clips from this concert!

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Concert Review: Depeche Mode at the Hollywood Bowl, 8/16/09

Along with 7 of my friends, I decided earlier this year to trek down from San Francisco to Los Angeles to see Depeche Mode at the Hollywood Bowl. Why? Because their SF stop was due to be at Shoreline Amphitheatre, and we don't like the acoustics there. We are picky folk! (Okay, so it was also an excuse for a weekend vacation!) Turns out we were lucky to decide on LA, because the band canceled the Shoreline show on doctor's orders at the last minute to rest David Gahan's voice. That was only a week before the LA show. And then, a couple of days before our show, they canceled their San Diego gig, too! Plane tickets in hand, we didn't know whether our LA trip would be in vain...

Luckily, not only did they show up to their Hollywood Bowl engagement on Sunday, no signs of vocal stress were in evidence. This was my first trip to the Bowl, and I was happy to find that its acoustics lived up to the Bowl's reputation, too. It was an all-around fun show, full of energy and creative visuals.[bxA]

The show was scheduled to start at 7pm, and I missed the opener, Peter Bjorn and John. Depeche Mode started earlier than I expected, coming on stage just after I arrived, around 8:20. They opened with their new song "In Chains". The audience stood up right away and kept its enthusiasm as the band played two more new songs, "Wrong" and "Hole to Feed", before launching into some of their many classics. David Gahan was full of energy. He seemed to especially enjoy grabbing the mic stand and twirling around and around until he got visibly dizzy, but he also wasn't above a little booty-shaking during "It's No Good". It wasn't until the slower Martin Gore-sung tune "Jezebel" that people finally took a rest and sat down. They didn't stay seated for long. After a couple more slow songs, the band launched into "Policy of Truth", and everyone was back on their feet, nodding and bopping for the rest of the night.

Visually, the key gimmick was a large hemispherical disco ball-like bulge on the main screen behind the performers. It sometimes just displayed a fish-eye view of the middle of the screen, but other times displayed something uniquely designed for it. One of the first memorable uses was when the screen showed a standing crow while the heimsphere became a giant eyeball, looking around and occasionally blinking. So creepy. Even for songs that didn't have pre-designed images, they didn't take the easy road with the displays. Every shot used carefully framed camera angles, black and white, high-contrast processing, and other live video effects, making for some arresting real-time art.

My favorite visual was for "Enjoy the Silence". On the screen were Gahan, Gore, and Andrew Fletcher in space suits. As each verse began, a different one of them would slowly walk to the center of the screen, where his head would be magnified by the ball. All three of them would then just stand there, staring wistfully off into the ether. I commented to my friend, "I supposed that in space... you can truly enjoy the silence."

They played for a good hour and a half before encore tease #1. Then Martin Gore came back on stage and began singing "Somebody" for the first time this tour. It's one of Depeche Mode's most unique yet ironically defining songs. (One of my cousins even used it for the first dance at his wedding!) You could hear the hush come over the audience.

This was followed up by "Stripped", and then "Strangelove", which featured the most.. lecherous visuals yet. One woman in a burlesque outfit lies on a couch while another woman in leather lingerie sucks on her feet. Strangelove indeed. It's more strange than pornographic, but the first woman does eventually take her top off. Quite edgy for a nearly 30-year-old synthpop band! On a related note, the visuals for "Personal Jesus" during encore #2 featured dancers in silhouette against primary color backgrounds; it was like a sleazier version of an iPod commercial. I wonder if that was intentional commentary about the apotheosis of Apple?

The band closed off their 2-hour set with a quiet duet, with Gahan and Gore singing "Waiting for the Night" together. It was nearly ruined for me by the guy next to me who insisted on singing along. I cupped my ears toward the stage and was able to mostly block him out.

I got into music pretty late. I only started really listening to popular music in late high school, and the first band I really got into in college was Depeche Mode. I'm not quite as obsessed with them as I used to be, but it was still great to have a chance to finally see them live for the first time, and in a venue with great sound that was clear and undistorted even though I was seated pretty far back.

Depeche Mode played the Hollywood Bowl again on Monday. They were in Anaheim last night and will be in Santa Barbara tonight before moving on to Vegas and further east. You can see their remaining tour dates and full set lists of past shows on their website. If you have a chance to see them, know that this here is a band from the 80s that's still relevant and interesting. They might not belt out quite as many hits as they used to, but there's no denying that they have at least one great song on their latest album. If you haven't seen it, take a look at the supremely disturbing yet supremely awesome video for "Wrong". Here's wishing David Gahan the best of health.

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