The Jacobs School of Music’s annual “Jacobs Live at the Movies” concert is returning Nov. 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., respectively. This year, the IU Symphony Orchestra, made up of students from the Jacobs School of Music, will be playing the accompanying score to “The Wizard of Oz.”
For the first time since the event began in 2022, the performance will take place at IU Auditorium with tickets starting at $20 and available to purchase online through the IU Auditorium website or at the box office.
The orchestra will be conducted by Constantine Kitsopoulos, who has conducted all the past “Jacobs Live at the Movies” performances. He has previously worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony, as well as several operas and Broadway musicals.
The live-to-film performance is part of Jacobs students’ course work and provides them with real-life orchestra experience. Kitsopoulos said it’s an important part of training to become a professional musician, especially in getting to practice different types of orchestral work ranging from operas to live-to-film concerts.
“I’m here not just as a conductor, but also as an educator,” Kitsopoulos said. “I treat the orchestra as if they are professionals already.”
Kitsopoulos said playing live-to-film concerts can be difficult since the performance they are accompanying is fixed, so students must accommodate to the film, not the other way around.
Despite these challenges, he also said accompanying films has distinct advantages, like the opportunity it provides to perform with different mediums and in different contexts.
“The one thing I told the students the other day, I said: ‘You know, the cool thing about this is now you can say you’ve worked with Judy Garland,’” Kitsopoulos said.
Another distinctive feature of a film score is that the music can also double as sound effects.
Ivy Kan, a master’s student who is playing violin in the orchestra, said typical symphonies include lyrical, expressive melodies. However, in a film score, both main theme songs as well as gestures and sound effects are brought to life through the music.
She said that, when playing the score on its own, there were some very chromatic notes, which are notes that do not belong within the key of the song, that she was unsure the purpose of. However, once paired with the film, she could see that these chromatic notes were really sound effects that related to specific moments and gestures within a scene.
“To actually make those effects make sense is also a unique skill because normally you wouldn’t have those effects when you play a symphony,” Kan said. “So, you have to make those effects sound legit instead of just a bunch of random notes. So, I think that’s a challenging part, but it was good to have the skill.”
Being able to hear the intricacies of this score and moments of sound effects makes up part of the experience of seeing “The Wizard of Oz” with a live score. Kan said the music and its role within the film becomes moreapparent and provides the opportunity for audiences to really appreciate it.
Kan said audiences can expect lively and energetic music that will bring the film to life. Richard Zhang, a junior in the Jacobs School of Music who is playing the flute in the performance, said this show gives the music from the film a crisper and slightly more modern sound since the quality of the audio is clearer than in the original film.
“It would be a really great first concert for people who have never experienced classical music before,” Kan said. “By adding live music to the movie, hopefully, we would be able to attract more people into joining us in the concert hall and give them an experience in classical music which is not intimidating or stereotypical.”
Zhang said he thinks the most important thing that comes out of music is the ability to evoke emotions. He thinks seeing “The Wizard of Oz” with a live musical accompaniment could unleash a lot of nostalgia in the audience and hopefully brighten people’s day.
“Music is such a universal language,” Zhang said. “What I’m hoping to do as part of this production is just help people, you know, be happier or unlock memories that they might have forgotten or just, you know, have fun and forget about a lot of the things that are going on in this crazy world right now.”
