The Modernish Father

Just about everyone who’s spent more than ten minutes around me knows that I’m a huge Star Wars fan. I like a lot of nerdy stuff, but Star Wars has been the one passion that’s spanned my entire life and is still by far the strongest. Original trilogy, prequels, cartoons, books… I eat it all up.

A huge part of my fascination with the franchise has been John Williams’ masterful scores. I can’t even begin to estimate how many times I must have listened to each of the soundtracks. I remember discovering an old 45 recording of the original A New Hope soundtrack and playing it over and over in my room as a kid. From the very first time the needle touched the vinyl, I was hooked.

Perhaps even more importantly, the scores (along with Williams’ other work and many other film composers) served as a gateway to another passion of mine – classical music. I don’t know if I ever would have discovered and grown to love Mahler, Shostakovitch, Nielsen, Stravinsky, or even Beethoven, if I hadn’t become fascinated with the masterful interplay of the numerous leitmotifs and the delicate balance between raw power, quiet introspection and occasional whimsy in Williams’ scores. As Obi-Wan would say, the scores were truly my first step into a larger world.

All that being said, I had the time of my life a few weeks ago when The Boy and I headed to Houston to watch and listen to “Star Wars in Concert” at the Toyota Center. The tickets were a bit pricey, but in the end they were worth every penny. It was honestly probably the coolest thing I’ve ever been to.

Before the concert, the corridors were filled with artifacts from the Lucasfilm archives, including costumes and props used in the actual films. How cool is it to see the real Vader suit? Or Chewbacca? Or Ewoks? Freaking awesome.

Perhaps the coolest item on display, however, was the portion of the handwritten original score for Phantom Menace. Sitting there, just six inches away in a plexiglass box, was where some of the music that I’ve listened to countless times was shared with the world for the first time. Very cool.

There were also a number of people in costumes to take photos with fans – something The Boy really liked. I think we took our photos with just about everyone there. By the time the actual concert started, we’d already had a memorable day.

The concert itself was incredible. For years, I’ve been accustomed to the music serving as an accompaniment to visual imagery and spoken dialogue of the films. “Star Wars in Concert” turned that on its ear, showing us what the saga would have been like if it had been developed as a musical piece first, with visual representations created later to help interpret it. Imagine the concept of Fantasia applied to the Star Wars saga and you’ll have a better idea of what I’m talking about.

For two hours, the entire saga was broken apart and reconstructed to be told in musical form, focusing primarily on the central story of the Skywalker family. As the orchestra played and the choir sang, clips from the various films were shown on a giant screen behind them with a focus on underlining the thematic elements instead of presenting things in chronological order.

The pieces were linked to together with brief bits of narration from C3-PO himself, Anthony Daniels. On the way home, The Boy (who’s still at that magical age where Star Wars is real) commented that the narrator did a very good impression of C3-PO. If only he knew.

In short, we both had a great time and it’ll be something that I remember for the rest of my life. If you’re in one of the remaining cities left on the tour and even remotely like Star Wars (and who doesn’t?), I highly recommend going to see it.

I have a bad feeling about this

The only blemish on the day was the Toyota Center itself, which obviously wasn’t ready to handle the massive influx of fans that crowded the hallways and corridors outside the seating area. Foot traffic was a nightmare and about a half-hour before the show started, the fire marshal shut down the escalators due to overcrowding.

Once we hoofed it up to our poor people nosebleed seats, we discovered that the Toyota Center folks (they handled the sales, not the concert people) had sold us tickets for seats that didn’t actually exist. Nice. So, twenty minutes before the concert started, we were waiting in line at a “courtesy” table to get reassigned.

In the end, it actually ended up working in our favor as we were moved down to the lower level and still got to keep a center view of the stage and screen. I’m still not happy about it though. There were a lot of people in large groups that were forced to split up or be moved to the sides and have significantly curtailed views. Shame on you, Toyota Center.