28 March 2021
Symphony Central Coast is back on stage! After a year to forget, your local symphony orchestra presents a swash-buckling, rip-roaring, shark-infested concert, celebrating the magnificent music of the movies. To everyone past and present who has come with us on our journey: our audience, our supporters, our musicians, our performance partners, we give our heartfelt thanks. In 2021, a brave new world of music making awaits. Join us and discover a local ensemble that is in tune with the fabulous Central Coast and is helping to build its future. PERFORMANCE PARTNERS
Penmans Solicitors SPECIAL THANKS TO Christopher Kezelos
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Erich KORNGOLD Caitlyn YEO Bryony MARKS
The Seahawk (1940) The Butterfly Tree (2017) - Into the Forest
Cloudstreet (2011) - Deceit - Not this time - Bushfire - Mulberries
John WILLIAMS
Jaws - main title (1975)
Steven STANKE
Buster Keaton's 'The Goat’ (1921)
Hans ZIMMER Gladiator (2000) Kyls BURTLAND Zero (2010) Max STEINER King Kong – main title (1933) Howard SHORE The Lord of the Rings (2001-3)
- Prologue - The Shire - Isengard and Rivendell - Mt Doom and The Days of the Ring
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Well, it's certainly been a long wait, but we are finally back! Thank you for your patience and for helping us celebrate our return to the stage today. Our regular supporters will be aware that today’s venue is new for us. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, we have had to be creative and find an alternative to our regular venue at Central Coast Grammar School and are delighted to be here at The Art House. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to the first concert of our 2021 Concert Series, Lights Action Music! Today you will be taken on a musical/ visual journey. Amongst many composers that we will showcase today, you will be able to enjoy some worldrenowned film composers such as John Williams for Jaws, Hans Zimmer for Gladiator and Howard Shore for Lord of The
Rings. We are also extremely proud to be highlighting three Australian women film composers, Bryony Marks, Caitlyn Yeo and Kyls Burtland. You may want to pop this date into your calendar: Prodigies Concerto Competition 12 Sep at 2:30pm. And we are also planning to bring you two more exciting concerts, in June and December, when the venues can be confirmed.
Thank you for supporting us today. As always, we are interested in feedback from you, our valued patrons and friends, so please chat with any of the members during the interval or drop us a line through our website. Happy Listening, Lauraine
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The history of writing music for films may be very broadly divided into three periods.
successful in the eyes of the movie director or studio executive.
A moviegoer during the silent film era would have heard, depending on the size of the theatre and time of day, music from one or more live musicians, valiantly attempting to add character and energy to a scene. Ragtime was a popular choice for the sole pianist and the orchestra director might have chosen excerpts from the classical music repertoire.
There was no guarantee that the standard of performance would be sufficient or that the chosen music would be appropriate. Certainly it was different at each theatre. A solution was the cue sheet, a list of recommended music, where to find them and when to play them. While this unified the presentation of the movie somewhat, there was still no guarantee that the musician was of a suitable standard or if they would play the recommended music at all.
Ragtime was a popular choice for the sole pianist It didn’t take long for the enterprising entrepreneur to realise that there was a need for music books for a range of instrumental possibilities containing music for a range of scenes. Classical works, popular music and specially written music were now accessible for the discerning theatre musician but, while it worked well from their point of view, it was less
The next period of movie scoring solved this problem. With the advent of movies with sound in 1927, the studios were now able to move full steam into becoming selfsufficient moviemaking factories. They had their own dedicated resources from concept to delivery, from scriptwriters to theatre. And they spared little expense when it came to the orchestra.
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Newly arrived European-trained composers such as Max Steiner and Erich Korngold brought a lush and highly Romantic style to their films. Using sweeping melodies, broad musical motifs and a full symphony orchestra, their music was a welcome contrast to the spare and hopeful musical accompaniment a decade earlier.
Leit-motif, a short musical phrase that could be attached to a character, scene or mood Steiner, for example, was one of the first to recognise the value of the leit-motif, a short musical phrase that could be attached to a character, scene or mood, thereby influencing the experience of the viewer through audio. Although Steiner has been called “the man who invented film music” he himself pointed out that Richard Wagner had done this in his operas seven decades earlier. One of the important principles that guided Steiner, and then others, was the idea that every character should have a theme. Steiner created a musical picture that told the audience all they needed to know about a character. In King Kong, for example, Steiner aimed to
express Kong’s feelings of tenderness towards his helpless victim, underscoring feelings that the camera could not express.
Every character should have a theme The 1950s saw the rise of the modernist film score: jazz, dissonance, blues and atonality. Choice of instruments and musical texture became more adventurous as composers sought to add new colours and musical commentary. This also began the third period of film scoring, ushering in a new player, the independent composer. With improvements of technology, it was becoming easier for composers to freelance or work from small or home studios.
It was becoming easier for composers to freelance or work from small or home studios But, while many of the big studios have become progressively smaller or even gone out of business, there is still a parallel opportunity for the composer with grand ideas who will attract the attention of the blockbuster director, and populate the sound stage with musicians, eagerly providing musical commentary to the next Bond or Star Wars epic.
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Erich KORNGOLD Korngold, born in Austria in 1897, began his career as one of the most astonishing child prodigies and reached maximum fame writing film scores in the 1930s and 40s. A master of late-Romantic opulence, he shaped the sonic texture of Golden Age Hollywood. Overall he wrote the score for 16 Hollywood films, including Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940) and The Sea Wolf (1942). He spent the last 10 years of his life composing concert pieces, including a violin concerto, a cello concerto and a symphony. He died in 1957 at the age of 60.
Caitlyn YEO A graduate of Sydney University and Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Caitlyn is one of Australia’s busiest screen composers. Her signature style is based on a fascination with music from many different cultures and this shows through her deep love of telling stories with music. Caitlyn’s score for The Butterfly Tree was awarded ‘Feature film score of the year’ and ‘Best Soundtrack’ at the 2018 APRA Screen Music Awards and her work on Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan won ‘Best Original Score’ at the 2019 FCCA Awards. Recent works for television include The Pacific in the wake of Captain Cook and The House with Annabel Crabb.
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Bryony MARKS Bryony’s extensive list of works for film and television include We Can Be Heroes, Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, Cloudstreet, Felony, Hawke, Dance Academy, Anzac Girls and Please Like Me. She has also received numerous commissions including three string quartets, a quintet and a sextet, an opera excerpt and a one-hour chamber opera called Crossing Live, which was premiered by Chamber Made in 2007. Bryony is currently working on the second season of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay for Avalon TV/Stan and the ABC TV documentary Back to Nature.
John WILLIAMS It’s no overstatement to say that John Williams is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time. In a career spanning seven decades he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history.
He has won 25 Grammy Awards, seven British Academy Film Awards, five Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2005, the American Film Institute selected his score to Star Wars (1977) as the greatest film score of all time.
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Zimmer’s works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral works and, since the 1980s, he has composed music for over 150 films.
Kyls BURTLAND Kyls graduated from the Australian Film and Television School with the award for Best Film, and a nomination for Emerging Talent of the Year. She studied composition with Nigel Westlake and Peter Sculthorpe.
He began his career playing keyboards and synthesisers in the 1970s, with the band Krakatoa but turned to writing film scores after being hired by director Barry Leveson to score Rain Man.
Recent awards include Best Score at the 2020 British Web Awards, and a Song Hubs Scholarship to LA in 2019. She has twice won Australian Songwriter of the Year.
Later films included Driving Miss Daisy, Thelma & Louise, The Power of One, The Lion King, Gladiator, the Pirates of the Caribbean series and Batman Begins.
Her TV credits include ABC’s Giggle and Hoot and Whitlam: Power and the Passion, and Here Come the Habibs for Channel 9. In 2010, she was nominated for 'Best Music for a Short Film' for Zero.
Hans ZIMMER
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Max STEINER Steiner was another child prodigy from Austria, writing his first operetta when he was twelve and becoming a fulltime composer, arranger or conductor by age 15. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 and, with his knowledge of post-Romantic music, in particular Wagner and the use of leit-motifs (small musical cells that could be attached to a character, scene, mood, etc.), became one of the first composers to write for films, referred to now as “the father of film music”. He composed over 300 film scores including King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942), A Summer Place (1959) and Gone with the Wind (1939).
Howard SHORE Born in Toronto, Shore is one of today’s premier composers whose music is not only attached to films but also played in concert halls around the globe. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he spent his formative years touring and recording with jazz-fusion band Lighthouse. His first film score was to the low budget thriller I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses (1978) but following films include The Fly (1986), Big (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Seven (1995) but his biggest successes were for The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the early 2000s.
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Violin 1 Yuko Hughes Elissa McGregor Liz Acton Elizabeth Blajet^ Faith McLeod Violin 2 Sarah Fisher-Dobbin Lauraine Fulbrook Jude Hulson-Calvert Reg Lear Eva Koslowski Chaylah Chivas Katie Dixon Viola Charlotte Brown* Jill Robinson Gabrielle Steele^ Helena Hutamale Vicky Vukovich Cello Natalie Lambert Hilary Day Robyn Wand Keiko Clements Heather Hinrichs*^ Naomi Dart
Bass Ian Esplin Vhairi Todd Mark Szeto Flute MaryEllen Gillard Nicole Wyatt Oboe Rachel Tolmie*^ Robyn Crowley^ Clarinet Helen Hamlin Phillip Stroud Bassoon Zola Baldwin Joe Wolfe Horn Chris Hunt^ Melissa Shields Arthur Webster Dominic Tynan
Trombone David Markham Phillip Rutherford Piano Gerard Nicolls Timpani Stephan Muehr
Percussion Thomas Chin Jack Li ~ Nell Hudson ~ Stage Manager Melissa Urquhart * Central Coast Conservatorium teacher ~ Central Coast Grammar School student ^ Central Coast Grammar School tutor
Trumpet Michael Tierney Graeme Reynolds
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