As you may have noted if you follow K’s twitter feed, she and I went to a Syracuse Symphony Pops concert last night (Friday). This was not just any concert, but the Syracuse premiere of “Bugs Bunny on Broadway” conducted by George Daugherty. Essentially, there was a movie screen over the orchestra where the famous musical Warner Brothers cartoons were projected with the musicians playing the score.
I have to say that it was a challenge to decide whether to watch the cartoons or the percussionists keeping up with the pseudo-sound effects. The voice acting and true sound effects were piped in from the original animated shorts.
Although this was no high-culture event, it was great fun to see (and listen) to young and old appreciating the wacky stylings of Bugs and cohorts while listening to those now famous arrangements of classical pieces.
To open the concert, the “Flight of the Valkyries” was played to set the mood, and later the conductor asked the audience how many people thought “Vagner” vs “Kill da wabbit!” (the far and away winner of course).
To hear the live performance of the “Rabbit of Seville” and “What’s Opera Doc?” was worth the price of admission, even if several cartoons were essentially played in their original form with the orchestra only opening and closing the cartoons.
One interesting piece of trivia: The famous opening chord that modulates into the Merrie Melodies (or Looney Tunes) theme is produced by an electric slide guitar. According to the conductor, they tried many different effects to reproduce this live before the original guitar was found in the Warner Brothers studios. When matched with an antique and temperamental amplifier… the magical sound is produced. I always guessed that this effect was produced by simply turning on a record player with the needle down. In any case the critical instrument was there, and the sound was richer than any TV reproduction can achieve.
In all, great fun and a memorable night out.
