15 – 17 AUGUST SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENTATION LICENSED BY PRESENTATION LICENSED BY DISNEY CONCERTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH 20TH CENTURY FOX, LUCASFILM, AND WARNER / CHAPPELL MUSIC. © 2019 & TM LUCASFILM LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © DISNEY SYDNEY SYMPHONY PRESENTS THURSDAY 15 AUGUST 2019, 8PM FRIDAY 16 AUGUST 2019, 8PM SATURDAY 17 AUGUST 2019, 2PM & 8PM SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE CONCERT HALL The Lowy Chair of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Star Wars: Return of the Jedi IN CONCERT Nicholas Buc conductor Sydney Symphony Orchestra Live on stage and screen with John Williams’ score Performed with one interval of 20 minutes, and concluding at approximately 10.45pm (4.45pm for matinee performance) Star Wars Film Concert Series Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Anthony Daniels as C-3PO Co-Starring David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew and Frank Oz Directed by Richard Marquand Produced by Howard Kazanjian Story by George Lucas Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas Executive Producer George Lucas Music by John Williams This film is classified PG. Original Motion Picture Disneymusicemporium.com Star Wars Film Concert Series Production Credits President, Disney Music Group Kent Bunt SVP/GM, Disney Concerts Chip McLean Supervising Technical Director Alex Levy (Epilogue Media) Film Preparation Ramiro Belgardt Music Preparation Mark Graham, Matthew Voogt, Joann Kane Music Service Disney Music Library Operations, Disney Concerts Mae Crosby, Royd Haston Non-Theatrical Sales, Twentieth Century Fox Julian Levin Business Affairs, Disney Concerts Darryl Franklin, Meg Ross, Jesenia Gallegos Business Affairs, Lucasfilm Rhonda Hjort, Chris Holm Business Affairs, Warner-Chappell Scott McDowell Presentation licensed by Disney Concerts in association with Lucasfilm Ltd., and Warner/Chappell Music. All rights reserved. About the Music Return of the Jedi John Williams composer Williams raised the heat for the third film in the original trilogy with a In a career spanning more than five decades, score full of gravity, personified evil, and a climactic battle for Luke’s John Williams has become one of America’s — and his father’s — soul. Vader’s theme is still mighty in this score, most accomplished and successful but it evolves in sophisticated and emotionally complicated ways. In composers for film and for the concert stage, the film’s final moments, a tune that once struck fear into the hearts and he remains one of the world’s most of the galaxy ultimately becomes surprisingly, vulnerably beautiful. distinguished and contributive musical voices. The composer conjured pure evil with his theme for Emperor Palpatine He has composed the music and served as — a dark, almost Gregorian chant for low, wordless male choir. The music director for more than one hundred melody bears some relation to Vader’s theme with its leaping minor films, including all eight Star Wars films, intervals, but where the Imperial March is often about military might, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, the Emperor’s theme is guttural, spiritual, embodying the hate he JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The attempts to seduce Luke with and the moral rot at his core. The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone and The Book Thief. His 45-year artistic film’s initial villain, Jabba the Hutt, has a misterioso theme that is partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of appropriately fat and slimy — rising and falling in the low register of a Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s tuba, at turns comic and sinister. The Rebel Alliance’s new allies, the List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters Ewoks, are given a theme that reflects their own quirky personality, of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, accompanied by jungle percussion and often performed on pan The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, Lincoln, The BFG and The Post. He flute and high woodwinds. Cute and cuddly at the outset, it reveals also composed themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic a resourcefulness and bravery that goes into action with militarised Games, the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He has received five Academy variations. The Battle of Endor navigates between spirited pranks Awards® and fifty-one Oscar® nominations, making him the Academy’s against the Empire and tragic Ewok casualties, and Williams eulogises most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person the latter with a pained string motif. He introduced a brand-new theme in the history of the Oscars. He has received seven British Academy for Luke and Leia, brother and sister — a warm, lyrical melody with an Awards (BAFTA), twenty-four Grammys®, four Golden Globes®, five undercurrent of sadness acknowledging the darkness in their family Emmys®, and numerous gold and platinum records. He received the line. Other new themes include a monster motif for the giant Rancor, prestigious Kennedy Center Honors in December of 2004. In 2009, Mr. an ominous death march when Jabba sentences Han and Luke to the Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Sarlacc Pit, and a jubilant motif that erupts when they escape the and he received the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given exploding sail barge — which later reprises as the Rebel fleet fires out to artists by the U.S. Government. In 2016, he received the 44th Life from the exploding Death Star. Finally, chorus and orchestra celebrate Achievement Award from the American Film Institute – the first time in the Empire’s downfall with a new song, which Williams composed their history that this honour was bestowed upon a composer. for the 1997 Special Edition (replacing the Ewokese song “Yub Nub”), In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named nineteenth music director reflecting the hard-won victory in a jubilant melody with a trace of the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding the legendary Arthur of loss. The oldest themes, for Luke and the Force, are a constant Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor presence, in variations of heroism and sadness and the constant call which he assumed following his retirement in December, 1993, after to virtue. Yoda’s theme returns in a sadder, weaker form to match the fourteen highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of Artist-in- ancient Jedi’s dying state. Williams sends Yoda off with “Taps”-like Residence at Tanglewood. Mr. Williams has composed numerous works horn and a heartbreaking adagio for strings. That moment represents for the concert stage, among them two symphonies, and concertos the Return of the Jedi score as a whole, which has a strong sense commissioned by several of the world’s leading orchestras, including a of familiarity as well as finality. Old friends die, character arcs come cello concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a bassoon concerto to an end. The dark side is at its darkest, and even the action has a for the New York Philharmonic, a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland weariness. Williams took his themes to the edge of the abyss — but in Orchestra, and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. the end, good triumphed over evil. In 2009, Mr. Williams composed and arranged “Air and Simple Gifts” especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama, and in September 2009, the Boston Symphony premiered a new concerto for harp and orchestra entitled “On Willows and Birches”. About the Artist Nicholas Buc conductor Nicholas Buc is a composer, conductor, arranger, violinist and pianist. He Potter and the Half-Blood Prince™. He has conducted all of the major studied Composition at the University of Melbourne, where he received the Australian symphony orchestras as well as the Minnesota Orchestra, inaugural Fellowship of Australian Composers Award. As the recipient of Houston, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Austin, Grand Rapids and Madison the Brian May Scholarship for Australian film composers, he completed a symphony orchestras in the US. He also makes regular appearances master’s degree in Scoring for Film and Multimedia at New York University, in Asia, conducting the Tokyo, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Osaka and Taipei receiving the Elmer Bernstein Award for Film Scoring. He has composed Philharmonic orchestras. music for film and television, with some of his work being screened at He is currently finishing up writing a major theatrical work, TROT. festivals and theatres around Australia, Asia and the US. Written with lyricist Gordon Lindsay, it is a new musical based on Charles Continuing his passion for music and film, he conducted the live-in- Dickens’ much-loved David Copperfield. He also recently completed a concert world premieres of John Williams’ Close Encounters of the Third new ballet score, Kazka, for Lehenda Ukrainian Dance Company, which Kind, Alan Menken’s Beauty and the Beast and Nicholas Hooper’s Harry toured throughout Australia, Canada and the US. Sydney Symphony Orchestra David Robertson The Lowy Chair of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Founded in 1932 by the ABC, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has John Farnham, Sting, Tim Minchin, Kenny Rogers, Natalie Cole, Olivia evolved into one of the world’s finest orchestra as Sydney has become Newton-John, Idina Menzel, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Tina Arena. More one of the world’s great cities. Resident at the Sydney Opera House, the recent highlights include concerts with Josh Groban, Diana Krall, Lea Sydney Symphony Orchestra also performs regularly at City Recital Hall, Salonga, Conchita Wurst and Paloma Faith, and tribute concerts for tours NSW and internationally. David Bowie and George Michael. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s concerts encompass The Sydney Symphony Orchestra also celebrates the role of the masterpieces from the classical repertoire, music by some of the finest symphony orchestra in movies, television and video games with living composers, and collaborations with guest artists from all genres.