The Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College spent Valentine’s Day weekend at the movies, with two performances of “Magical Movie Music,” presented Friday and Saturday at the VanTrease PACE.
The program was a miscellany of music from films, ranging from the ubiquitous (John Williams’ contributions) to the classic (Max Steiner’s work for “Gone with the Wind”) to the more or less obscure (Alfred Newman’s music for a swashbuckler called “The Captain from Castile”).
It even included – in a last-minute addition to the show – a couple of bits of music that were cut from a film: the Kander & Ebb songs “So What?” and “Don’t Tell Mama” from the stage musical “Cabaret,” performed by members of the cast of TCC’s upcoming production of this work.
As is something of a custom with the Signature Symphony, it took a little while for things to settle into a comfortable groove. At Friday evening’s performance, a hiccup in the timing of opening number – a play on the opening of “Star Wars,” complete with text crawling up the large screen over the orchestra – resulted in a couple of minute of odd silence. This was followed by “The Captain from Castile” piece, which sounded as if it asked a bit too much from the brass section this early in the evening.
And problems with the microphones marred the performances of the “Italian Street Song” with Sue Wilson, whose supporting chorus of male singers were difficult to hear, and of “Stouthearted Men,” in which the same chorus more or less drowned out soloist Paul Mabrey.
But then, the acoustics of the VanTrease PACE are notoriously lively and idiosyncratic. During the waltz from “Swan Lake,” for example, there were times when the lone percussionist playing the triangle sounded from where we were sitting louder than the entire string section. I’m fairly certain that wasn’t the intended effect, but odd little sonic surprises such as that happened frequently in this hall – and will continue to do so until TCC invests in a decent orchestra shell.
The orchestra began to hit its stride with the Suite from “Vertigo” by Bernard Herrmann, with its nervously seesawing melodies and sledgehammer bass chords.
The second half of the evening was much most consistent, starting with a superb performance of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” better known as the theme to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the rousing theme to an independent film called “Pendragon: Sword of his Father,” which was composed by Signature Symphony violist Lydia Ashton.
The second half also focused more on vocal music, featuring medleys of songs from the classic movie musicals of MGM, complete with a umbrella-twirling take on “Singin’ in the Rain” and full chorus performances of “Let’s Fall in Love” and “In the Still of the Night.”
No one plays the Theme from “Schindler’s List” the way Ithzak Perlman does, but concertmaster Maureen O’Boyle played this tender and haunting melody well.
Pianist Larry Dalton anchored one of the evening’s best segments, with seven chorus members singing his arrangements of such movie songs as “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “Dancing Cheek to Cheek,” “Jean” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” with Dalton slipping in “Born Free” with all the Roger Williams-like flourishes he could muster, and ending with a campy take – as if there could be any other sort of approach – on “Ghostbusters.”
The evening closed with a medley of movie songs about Oklahoma, including Henry Mancini’s theme to “Oklahoma Crude,” Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again,” and – what else? – “Oklahoma!”
