Above : Cast of the 2018 film ‘Black Panther’ . Featured: The late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa. Images supplied by Marvel Studios.
Wakanda- that glorious fantasy oasis in the original Black Panther movie was the setting for a thoughtful Marvel Studios offering in 2018. In this place tradition met technology and the challenges of moving through to the future with tolerance were bravely overcome.
This mystical, enviable place has been fabulously brought to life at the Opera House Concert Hall this week by Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the visiting conductor from the USA was film score specialist Anthony Parnther.
Another sold-out sequence of ‘Live In Concert To Film’’ score recreations with subtitled movie playing at the rear of the stage, this event celebrated the power of inventive soundtrack gesturing to accompany screen action.
By putting the SSO front and centre onstage and outside the screen for these events, the composer’s skill and great quantity of sound needed to furnish a feature length film is soberingly demonstrated.
Such events also reach out to a broader Sydney audience, showing the skill of the SSO’s classically trained musicians, and the contribution of gifted composers to the tapestry of blockbuster film artistry and success.
A magical addition to the orchestra and emotion of Black Panther In Concert is taba (‘talking drum’) virtuoso from Senegal, Massamba Diop. Diop was heard on the original Black Panther soundtrack, and to stunning effect in this version. Charisma, integrity, bright costume, jaw-dropping acoustic range and dexterity was a consistently impressive beacon throughout the performance with huge orchestra.
This traditional African musician was an exemplary package of hope, collaboration and racial crossover. These ideals were a perfect blend with the movie’s themes of advancement, futurism and defending what is good or right with ceremony, visual display and tribal plus global co-operation for the survival of good.
This high-calibre guest augmented the power of the movie and this movie-behind-the-onstage-music event. The tama’s role in Ludwig Göransson’s music was championed by Diop from his sound-shelled oasis beside the conductor.
In front of the capable performance by an amplified Sydney Symphony Orchestra, his introduction to this instrument and the passion of African music was magnetic and profound.
There were physical fireworks and instant highlighting of emotional journeying each and every time this tama player touched the instrument’s expressive skin. His was a dynamic layer with an incredible range of nuance with split-second synergy with the orchestral outbursts as well as on-screen action and feeling.
Above : The Dora Milage. Image supplied by Marvel Studios.
Typically in these events, the audio for dialogue can be a little diminished in clarity or volume due to the large forces of live musicians realising the soundtrack’s complexities closer to the audience than the movie playback.
The subtitles helped in moments of speech when music was building beneath. This is not a true disadvantage, as the score was adequately championed and celebrated by the conductor and orchestra.
The contrast between African-inspired music and traditional movie soundtrack writing to drag viewers into the swoop of story and sentiment is fierce in this composer’s constructs. The reiterated motifs in sections of less estatic energy were drawn with beautiful subtlety and attention to the delicate lines as they were sustained by SSO strings and Parnther’s assured direction.
These concise and powerful leitmotifs linked to features of family, pride, effort and flashback. Being in the more Western Music vein sans talking drum, these moments emphasised this film music composer’s skill in his art, his compositional style’s contrast to giants such as Hans Zimmer and his virtuosity in cultural and musicological crossover.
Parnther’s opening spiel as a charismatic, experienced film score interpreter alluded to Ludwig Goränsson’s contribution to the drama of the movie Oppenheimer, currently enjoying compelling box office. This film, like each successful SSO film-live-in-concert event is the talk of our town at the moment.
There is no substitute for quality music to accompany artistic and creative endeavours, especially for major cinematic releases. There will be no end to the popularity and box office of SSO continuing to include live soundtrack and movie moments in their busy programming each year.
We await the conclusion to SSO’s live rendering of the Harry Potter franchise with The Deathly Hallows Part 2, which can be heard this year from Dec 7. More magical humanity meeting music is yet again guaranteed in that concert series.