Movie music takes center stage and screen

Jurassic Park, one of the most thrilling science fiction adventures ever made and featuring one of John Williams' most iconic and beloved musical scores, transformed the moviegoing experience for an entire generation and became the highest-grossing film of all time in 1993.

Audiences are being offered the chance to experience this groundbreaking film as never before: projected on a super-large LED screen with a full symphony orchestra performing the score live.

Besides the work of John Williams, movie music by Oscar Award-winner James Horner, Hans Zimmer and Eric Morricone will be among the offerings at a concert celebrating the new year at Roy Thomson Hall on Jan 14.

Presented by China Broadcasting Film Symphony Orchestra, the international Movie Music Concert will combine a variety of legendary film soundtracks, including Jurassic Park, Brave Heart, Cinema Paradiso, Gladiator, Legends of the Fall, and Shao Lin Gong Fu, and features cultural offerings integrating West and East and sight and sound.

The 60-piece China Broadcasting Film Symphony Orchestra performs with special guest soloists and a local choir from Toronto.

Since its first tour abroad in 1992, the orchestra has performed in more than 40 countries on five continents, working closely with renowned conductors, composers, dancers and performers.

In recent years, the orchestra created innovatively a number of audience favorite big screen audio-visual film concerts, light concerts and other forms of presentation.

"Creating such a concert was not an easy task," said conductor Pang Kapang. "Those legendary masterpieces are the best of the best works of film soundtrack masters, and are very familiar to Western movie and music fans," he explained.

"In translating the score to a live performance, including the mix and instrumentation, we want to express the charm of these pieces, but also love to exhibit the special characteristics of our orchestra. So we decided to break them down into three areas: legendary connotation, folk fascination and Chinese and Western fusion."

renali@chinadailyusa.com