Marin Symphony Plays Pixar

Mark MacNamara on June 6, 2013
Jenny Douglass

When Pixar decided to do “Pixar in Concert,” celebrating the scores for their hugely popular movies, Marin Symphony jumped on board. So, this Sunday, June 9. Maestro Alasdair Neale will conduct, with projected movie clips, from Brave, Up, Cars, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Wall-E, Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life, and The Incredibles.

We spoke to Jenny Douglass, principal violist with the Marin Symphony (who you will also often find sitting in with the San Francisco Symphony on some dates). She’d just been practicing when we reached her to ask for a musician’s view of the music.

“I find it challenging,” she said. “That’s partly because I’m learning it from scratch; it’s not like re-learning a Beethoven symphony. Actually, the viola part is 70 pages. It’s very fast paced — because you’re dealing with animation — and so the rhythms are ever-changing: You have four beats in one measure and three in the next. With A Bug’s Life, it moves from slow to fast to a jazz, swinging style. You have to be a real gunslinger, and use your all of your skills and focus.”

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“There are a lot of notes” she added. “If you were paid by the notes, you’d be rich.”

The four composers who wrote the scores for the 13 films include Randy Newman, Michael Giacchino, Thomas Newman, and Patrick Doyle. Pixar, born from the mind of George Lucas in 1979, produced Toy Story in 1995. It was the first computer animated feature film and the highest grossing film that year. It was also nominated for Best Original Song, Best Original Score, and Best Original Screenplay.

Is this music that we’ll be listening to in 50 years? we asked Douglass.

“I think it is,” she replied, “if only because some of these films will always remain popular, even iconic. And say what you will about them, they always seem to start conversations. Wall-E comes to mind because in our house that started a conversation about loneliness.”

Douglass has two boys, 7 and 9, and they like the Pixar music, although they prefer the music from Harry Potter. “That music seems to have a special appeal; they’ll sometimes hum a tune, and it’s not the main melody...

“But I think whether your children like the music or not, hearing it played live by an orchestra is just so different from listening to it on a DVD. And there’s a visual quality, apart from the films, which is that the percussionist, for example, is running back and forth between instruments. It’s all a lot of fun.

“Most important performing it in this way elevates the music, and that’s really what the Marin symphony is about, spreading an appreciation of different kinds of music and the workings of an orchestra.”