12 – 14 SEPTEMBER 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 12 SEPTEMBER 2019, 8PM FRIDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2019, 8PM SATURDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2019, 2PM & 8PM SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE CONCERT HALL The Lowy Chair of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Star Wars: The Force Awakens 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 10.40pm (4.40pm for matinee performance) Star Wars Film Concert Series Star Wars The Force Awakens A Lucasfilm Ltd. production A Bad Robot production Starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Max Von Sydow Music by John Williams Visual Effects and Animation by Industrial Light & Magic Costume Designer Michael Kaplan Editors Mary Jo Markey, ACE Maryann Brandon, ACE Production Designers Rick Carter and Darren Gilford Director of Photography Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC Executive Producers Tommy Harper Jason McGatlin Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, p.g.a. J.J. Abrams, p.g.a. Bryan Burk, p.g.a. Written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt Directed by J.J. Abrams This film is classified M. Soundtrack available on Walt Disney Records © 2019 & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. IMAX is a registered trademark of IMAX Corporation In 3D, REAL D 3D and IMAX 3D DECEMBER 18 Original Motion Picture Disneymusicemporium.com Star Wars Film Concert Series Production Credits President, Disney Music Group Ken 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 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 The Force Awakens John Williams composer While the original Star Wars score took us back to the history of In a career spanning more than five European concert music, The Force Awakens — a sequel that arrived decades, John Williams has become 22 years after Return of the Jedi — transported audiences to the past one of America’s most accomplished of its own musical universe. But just as director J.J. Abrams only and successful composers for film and kept one foot in the old, introducing a cast of new young characters, for the concert stage, and he remains Williams kept his historical citations to a minimum (wagering that of one of the world’s most distinguished the score’s 102 minutes, only seven contained old Star Wars themes). and contributive musical voices. He His own writing style continued to evolve in the years since Return of has composed the music and served the Jedi, and there is a new fragility and minimalism in the way he sets as music director for more than one Rey’s theme, as well as passages of aching string elegy that recall his hundred films, including all eight more purely dramatic films such as Schindler’s List and Munich. Star Wars films, the first three Harry Kylo Ren, grandson and disciple of Darth Vader, darkly dominates the Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs film as Vader once did, and Williams empowers him with a terrifying of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone and theme that pulses and intimidates with martial brass in the family The Book Thief. His 45-year artistic partnership with director Steven style. Star Wars is all about darkness and light, however, and the Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and antidote is a buoyant new theme for Rey. “It’s an interesting challenge successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, with her,” Williams explained, “because her theme doesn’t suggest Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana a love theme in any way. It suggests a female adventurer with great Jones films, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, The Adventures of Tintin, strength. She’s a fighter, infused with the Force, and it needed to be War Horse, Lincoln, The BFG and The Post. His contributions to something that was strong but thoughtful.” Rey reminds us of both the television music include scores for more than 200 television films fiery and beautiful young Leia and the heroic, questing young Luke, for the groundbreaking, early anthology series Alcoa Theatre, Kraft and Williams managed to pack all of these qualities into her theme: an Television Theatre, Chrysler Theatre and Playhouse 90, as well as exploring melody that is feminine and muscular, romantic and heroic, themes for NBC Nightly News (“The Mission”), NBC’s Meet the Press, which he takes from the quietest moments on solo flute to the heat of and the PBS arts showcase Great Performances. He also composed battle, victoriously erupting from the entire orchestra. The composer themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, threads several variations of her melody into the end credits suite, as well as the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He has received five working up to the fateful moment where he braids it with the Force Academy Awards® and fifty-one Oscar® nominations, making him theme in counterpoint. Rey is the hero of this film, and her theme is the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most the heart of the score. nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), twenty-four Grammys®, four Golden The pilot Poe Dameron is given a grinning, heroic motif. The Globes®, five Emmys®, and numerous gold and platinum records. In Resistance enters with a stately, spiraling march that reflects the 2003, he received the Olympic Order (the IOC’s highest honor) for his new Rebels’ battle-ready seriousness. Echoes of the Emperor’s theme contributions to the Olympic movement. He received the prestigious are present in a low, throaty motif for male chorus that haunts the Kennedy Center Honors in December of 2004. In 2009, Mr. Williams shadowy Snoke. At the very climax of the film, Williams introduces was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a new theme — “The Jedi Steps” — a mystical and ancient melody he received the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to alternating on cellos and solo flute over a rippling current of strings. artists by the U.S. Government. In 2016, he received the 44th Life “I’m just lucky to be able to do a series of films where the Achievement Award from the American Film Institute – the first time preponderance of music is new, but there’s some relationship to the in their history that this honour was bestowed upon a composer. older ones, so that there’s an accumulation of melodic and other kinds In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named nineteenth music director of of materials that are added on, added on,” Williams reflected after the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. completing The Force Awakens in 2015. “It must be about 15 hours of He currently holds the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor music or more, having been created by, in this case, one composer, which he assumed following his retirement in December, 1993, after and one overall project. That’s, as far as I know, a unique opportunity, fourteen highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of and one that I’ve always enjoyed. It would be like writing an opera, Artist-in-Residence at Tanglewood. Mr. Williams has composed and then writing six more based on the same kind of material and the numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies, same story... over the course of 40 years. and concertos commissioned by several of the world’s leading “I think what one finds about that is, there are certain inescapable orchestras, including a cello concerto for the Boston Symphony things — it’s like bike-riding. You get back onto the Star Wars cycle Orchestra, a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic, a and it takes 30 seconds to get back into it. I’ve never felt separated trumpet concerto for The Cleveland Orchestra, and a horn concerto or estranged from it in any way. We have a toolbox, and we have for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, Mr. Williams composed a thumbprint, and we try to improve these things and expand it, and arranged “Air and Simple Gifts” especially for the first inaugural certainly. But this has been a unique challenge, and a uniquely ceremony of President Barack Obama, and in September 2009, the rewarding experience.” Boston Symphony premiered a new concerto for harp and orchestra entitled “On Willows and Birches”. Tim Greiving is a film music journalist in Los Angeles who reports for NPR and the Los Angeles Times. Find him at timgreiving.com. Nicholas Buc conductor Nicholas Buc is a composer, conductor, arranger, violinist and pianist. Third Kind, Alan Menken’s Beauty and the Beast and Nicholas Hooper’s He studied Composition at the University of Melbourne, where he Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince™. Other live film concerts he has received the inaugural Fellowship of Australian Composers Award.