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What if it’s not that simple. What if people stopped attending because of the price, so the producers needed to find a way to cut cost. Either drop the show entirely and pay no one, or limit/drop the live band?

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If the movie heavily relies on rock music, then they can just have a rock band play the live music instead of an orchestra. Or maybe it could be some members of the orchestra may also be rock players, if both types of music are in the movie.

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Baraka would be quite awesome performed by live orchestra and choir.

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I have been exactly once. It wasn't a band, just one musician with an accordion. Fitting for the Buster Keaton silent movie I guess. It was a fun experience.

There was a similar feeling in the late 70s/early 80s when synthesizers became popular inexpensive replacements for live musicians during concert tours. It is easier to use a keyboard player instead of a set of strings or horns. The musicians unions were upset about that. Neil Young wrote a song called "Union Man" about that which included the line: "Live music is better / bumper stickers should be issued."

It kind of shifts back and forth even now. McCartney has toured in recent years with a live brass section whereas he had mainly used synths during the 80s-2010ish. Every now and then Brian Wilson would travel with entire string and horn sections, but sometimes not and just use synths. I think there are plenty of other examples from that era of music, too.

I'm bummed those folks are about at the end of their career... Getting to see them (especially Wilson) with all those instruments on stage was pretty incredible.

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thanks

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I can’t remember every movie I’ve done, but I’ve done Star Wars IV, V, VI, Harry Potter 2, 3, 4, Home Alone, Amadeus, and some other random things like nature documentaries, etc. I might be forgetting a couple, but I’d say I’ve done 10-12 movies since they started getting popular as orchestra concerts.

As you can see, it skews heavily towards things like John Williams, probably because those are the most “involved” orchestra scores which will give the audience something to appreciate over just seeing a movie in a standard format.

You need the movie to have a largely orchestral score able to be reproduced by a standard orchestra. If a score relies a lot on electronic music, or rock music then it’s pointless to have the whole orchestra there if they barely play. So that already limits which movies will get done.

The Star Wars movies were definitely the hardest, both in terms of actually difficult notes, and also the endurance to make it through from start to finish.

Some are easier. Amadeus was easy because it’s all Mozart, which isn’t super heavy. The documentaries were mostly pretty easy, but not as fun or rewarding for the musicians because it’s more “background music” as opposed to something like John Williams where often the music feels like it’s an integral part of the story, or even a character in its own right.

If it’s by John Williams it’s probably pretty difficult.

to me its a good thing to see this sort of thing coming back.  

i think people are hungry for real authentic experiences. live performance. i recently saw the radio city music hall christmas spectactular and hated it. it was basically canned music with a bunch of people lip syncing. i don't like the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade for the same reason.

One interesting thing is that this argument continues today but regarding live music on Broadway.

Producers are constantly looking to shrink the amount of musicians in the pits of Broadway shows preferring to use recordings presumably to save money. But the quality of the show with live musicians is so much better.

Actually, that's just how movies used to be.

We figured out how to record and play film long before we figured out how to record and play music/dialogue in sync with the movie. In the age of silent cinemas, it used to be that theatres would have an orchestra playing live music to accompany the film.

thank you. I had wondered about that... how many different movies have you done? are they all as challenging as star wars or are some of them easier? i attended one which was the Princess Bride. That was really fun.

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Okay mr. Hetfield /s

As someone who plays in an orchestra professionally, these concerts are getting very popular and most orchestras are doing several per year now.

The thing people don’t realize is that these scores were meant to be recorded over the course of a week or so, and done in small chunks at a time.

If you’re recording a Star Wars movie you don’t just play the soundtrack front to back with the movie. You record a few minutes, they take second to listen, you might go back and hit a few bars again, then move on to a new section. Then they piece everything together at the end with editing. Recording the score to a 2 hour movie takes dozens of hours of recording time spread over several days.

To actually sit and play the score to a Star Wars movie from beginning to end with no breaks is incredibly difficult. The music was not designed to be played all at once like that.

So the next time you attend one of these concerts you can maybe have a different perspective on what the musicians are doing up there.