Latest news with #symphony
News.com.au
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Metal lords Parkway Drive deliver triumphant symphony gig at unlikely venue
Ladies in evening gowns and gentlemen in black suits is a regular occurrence at the Sydney Opera House. But it is rare to see headbanging in sync and the 'horns' being thrown by a black tie-clad audience in the hallowed concert hall. Australian metalcore heroes Parkway Drive staged their once-in-a-lifetime Home concert with a full symphony orchestra and choir on Monday to celebrate their 20th anniversary. The 'screamo meets strings' concept sounded ambitious on paper, with the band following in the footsteps of heavy metal legends Metallica who joined forces with the San Francisco Symphony for their S & M live album in 1999. How would a sold-out crowd more accustomed to moshpits and death circles cope with a seated concert where the heavy hits they had screamed along to for two decades were reimagined with swelling strings, blasts of horns and the percussive force of three drummers? The band and the audience declared it a triumph by the end of a two act concert which redefined the powerful musicality of the Byron Bay mosh masters. Expectations were high when the five Parkway members – Winston McCall, Jeff Ling, Luke Kilpatrick, Ben Gordon, and Jai O'Connor – took the stage. Many in the audience had entered the 'Best Dressed' competition in the lobby before taking their seats where the stage was set with a stunning native floral arrangement. After an orchestral Welcome to Country, the Parkway members – also suited, with McCall sporting Gucci loafers – strode onto the stage and cranked into gear with their new 'bandmates'. McCall's vocal shredding was at first lost in the wash of a 'band' even louder than his metal-riffing mates, but he soon found his voice in the mix. With the assistance of music director and arranger Joel Farland, they wisely chose songs from their extensive catalogue to present in this new form from festival setlist faves including Glitch and Carrion to darkly melodic offerings The Colour of Leaving and Darker Still. The concert sounded like the soundtrack to a horror thriller yet to be made, although it was filmed for a forthcoming documentary film Home to be released later this year. The orchestra members looked to be having as much fun as the band, with several players headbanging as vigorously as the audience during the performance. For a beaming McCall, who on occasion appeared moved to tears by the experience, the concert was a dream come true. He told the adoring crowd, some of whom had travelled from America and Europe for the concert, it was a lofty ambition the metal frontman didn't dare to hope a band like Parkway Drive could realise. 'This is a dream come true, (even though) you don't openly dream of things like this,' he told the fans to huge cheers. 'Anyone who has wanted to sing at the Opera House, this is your shot. And I've just got to say, you guys look f***ing incredible tonight, thank you!' Special guests included First Nations artists Matthew Doyle, Brock Tutt, Josh Sly and rapper Nooky and punk vocalist Hevenshe (Jenna McDougall of Tonight Alive).
News.com.au
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Metal lords Parkway Drive perform with an orchestra at Sydney Opera House
Global metal lords Parkway Drive return home to perform once-in-a-lifetime concert with a symphony orchestra and choir at Sydney Opera House on June 9, 2025.
CBC
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Vancouver show hopes to bridge the worlds of symphony and video games
An upcoming Vancouver concert will feature a symphony orchestra performing music from some of the world's most popular video games — and the orchestra's conductor wants to make new fans of symphonic music in the process. Game On! will see the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra take on music from megahit games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Civilization, Assassin's Creed and more at the Orpheum Theatre on June 11. Conductor Andy Brick says that back when he first started working with symphony orchestras to perform music from video games in 2003, the idea was a novelty. Brick says he was the first to conduct such a concert in the West, with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany — and admits many of his musicians, at first, expressed skepticism over being asked to play music from video games. "The minute we started — you know, the hall is sold out, was packed — the audience went crazy. It was almost like being at a rock concert," he told CBC News. "I think that's one of the really special things about video games, is that the audience connection to the music is quite different than what I think orchestras typically experience with their audiences." Brick says he hopes his Vancouver show can serve as a bridge to the world of symphonic music, especially for younger people. The composer also hopes to convince regular symphony listeners of the value of video game music, which one academic says has deep emotional resonance for gamers. "You're connecting to the music on the musical level, but you're also connecting to it on a physical, interactive level," Brick said. "When you get into the concert hall, when you hear this music, you're having a connection not just with the music, but you're having this visceral connection again," he added. "So I think there's a lot of physicality." 'Powerful resonance' Composer, percussionist and music educator Aidan Gold has written about how classical musicians respond to each other and improvise — likening it to a quasi-theatrical experience or even playing a game together. The composer from Seattle said that playing video games is often a long-form experience that's deeply personal, where a player engages with a game that responds to them in turn. "As a result, you can sort of connect very deeply with certain aspects of it, including the music, which ... forms, like, a powerful resonance" he said. "Then, whenever you hear it, especially in a new venue like the concert hall, that can often provoke a very communal reaction because you're connecting with all of these other people who may also have had that experience." Brick says audiences for his video-game-based symphony orchestra performances have tended to skew younger than usual — and as video games mature as a medium, the audience has grown up with them. He says condensing video game music into a symphonic performance can be challenging, given how music within games changes dynamically in response to the player, and composers often have to create a suite of tracks that evokes a particular game. "It's a music which ... speaks more to the atmosphere and the emotional content of the game than it does to a specific storyline," he said. "Because the specific storyline can change." Brick says he wants to convince regular symphony listeners of the value of video game music, especially given that many video game composers are classically trained. It's a feeling Gold shares, saying that having a symphony orchestra perform video game music has the potential to appeal to both new and old fans of symphonic music. "People who don't think so much about video games, or interactive structures, might see these concepts of video game music and be inspired to think more about like, 'OK, how is music like a game? How ... do these communal experiences work?'" Gold said.
New York Times
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Per Norgard, Daring Symphonic Composer, Dies at 92
Per Norgard, a prolific and daring Danish composer whose radiant experiments with sound, form and tonality earned him a reputation as one of the leading latter-day symphonists, died on May 28 in Copenhagen. He was 92. His death, at a retirement home, was announced by his publisher, Edition Wilhelm Hansen. Mr. Norgard (pronounced NOR-gurr) composed eight symphonies, 10 string quartets, six operas, numerous chamber and concertante works and multiple scores for film and television, making him the father of Danish contemporary music. Following his death, he was described as 'an artist of colossal imagination and influence' by the critic Andrew Mellor in the British music publication Gramophone. Mr. Norgard's musical evolution encompassed the mid-20th century's leading styles, including Neo-Classicism, expressionism and his own brand of serialism, and incorporated a wide range of influences, including Javanese gamelan music, Indian philosophy, astrology and the works of the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli. But he considered himself a distinctively Nordic composer, influenced by the Finnish symphonist Jean Sibelius, and that was how newcomers to his music often approached him. The infinite, brooding landscapes of Sibelius — along with the intensifying repetitions in the work of Mr. Norgard's Danish compatriot Carl Nielsen and the obsessive, short-phrase focus of the Norwegian Edvard Grieg — have echoes in Mr. Norgard's fragmented sound world. The delirious percussive expressions of Mr. Norgard's composition 'Terrains Vagues' (2000), the plinking raindrops of the two-piano, four-metronome 'Unendlicher Empfang' (1997) and the vast, discontinuous fresco of the Eighth Symphony (2011) all evoke the black-and-white northern vistas of Sibelius, with their intense play of light and shadow. As a young student at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in the early 1950s, he was immersed in the music of Sibelius, writing to the older composer and receiving encouragement in return. 'When I discovered there was a kind of unity in his music, I was obsessed with the idea of meeting him,' he said in an interview. 'And to let him know that I didn't consider him out of date.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
‘Music everyone can relate to,' Mahler's symphonies celebrated in Amsterdam festival
When Klaus Mäkelä climbed the Concertgebouw podium in Amsterdam and turned to the audience at the orchestra's third Gustav Mahler Festival in 105 years, the conductor could see the writing on the wall. Facing him was 'MAHLER' etched in gold on a cartouche and shining in a spotlight, centred in a permanent position of honour among the 17 composers enshrined across the balcony front. And sitting in the first row directly behind the sign was Marina Mahler, the composer's 81-year-old granddaughter. 'It was just as it should be. I was terribly moved and excited at the same time,' she said after the final note of Mahler's Symphony No 1. 'It affected me in the deepest possible way.' All 10 of Mahler's numbered symphonies are being presented in order along with his other major works from May 8-18, ending on the 114th anniversary of his death at age 50. Ivan Fischer conducts the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Choir in Mahler's Symphony No 2 in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Photo: AP 'This is in a way the first orchestra that really trusted in Mahler,' Mäkela said.
