The MIT Sounding concert MITSO MOVIES MACHOVER is the MIT Symphony Orchestra’s tribute to the art of film music, from classic Hollywood soundtracks to new works. This performance is the US premiere of Harry Manfredini’s Friday the 13th Suite, a revamped score for the famed horror film now celebrating its fortieth anniversary. The virtual concert on July 11, 2020 was originally scheduled to be performed in MIT Kresge Auditorium as part of the MIT Sounding series under the title MITSO MOVIES MACHOVER, on March 13, 2020, i.e, the date MIT closed its campus in response to the COVID-19 crisis. That decision having come only a few days earlier, and with the students rushing to pack their things and make travel arrangements, the members of the orchestra chose to use what would have been their final rehearsal to video record the program in the empty auditorium. The performance was shared in the MIT virtual concert series with the title MITSO: The Night Before in which Manfredini’s piece was broadcast, along with film music by John Williams and Angelo Badalamenti.
This concert produced by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) brought together the music of film soundtracks with 2016 Composer of the Year and Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media Tod Machover’s A Toronto Symphony, which was broadcast during the virtual concert series on May 9.
Audiences were treated to John Williams’s “Devil’s Dance” from The Witches of Eastwick, Angelo Badalamenti’s brooding overture to Twin Peaks, the US premiere of Harry Manfredini’s Friday the 13th Suite, a revamped score for the famed horror film now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, and the world premiere of Three Pieces from the Saul Bass Project by Don Byron, a new work commissioned by MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology. “You’re writing for people who don’t know anything about music,” Manfredini says, who began writing for film while completing his doctorate in music composition and has since scored over 200 films. Today, film music is the primary way many people experience orchestral music, Ziporyn notes, calling it “a wellspring of creativity and inspiration” for composers.
MITSO MOVIES MACHOVER, in its broad and all-embracing approach, demonstrates that the sound of the symphony orchestra is alive and well. In exploring a variety of ways to pair sound with the moving image, the concert celebrates the music-from film soundtracks to the everyday sounds of a city-woven into our common experience.
Learn more about the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST): arts.mit.edu/cast
4 авг 2020
