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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

For many Americans the only classically inspired music they will hear in their lifetimes will blare through the speakers at a multiplex. With blockbuster movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a composer can influence the ear of millions of people in a single weekend.  The exposure is hard to refuse - as are the royalties.

There is little wonder that the Kansas City Symphony and Chorus would want to reach out to a larger audience and launch this behemoth film score.   Incorporating over 250 local performers from around the metropolis, the performance had deep roots and should have had a full house.  Whether the fear of sickness in a confined space was to blame or the fact that brokers didn't fill large blocks of seats, is unknown, but only a little over half of the seats were occupied Thursday night at the Music Hall which was promoted as a sold out show.

The Music Hall had the right ambiance for the adventure.  The art nouveau frescoes depicting lush forest scenes felt a little like Middle Earth.  But the stage didn't seem large enough to fit the huge cast of characters and exotic world instruments including the 7-foot prepared piano (a piano which has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings, or on the hammers or dampers) that was only used a few times.  The floor seats obscured most of the important views of the instrumentalists and vocalists in action.  Once in the balcony, the piece came alive as each soloist was lit by a white spotlight to aid the viewers. 

Beautifully drawn storyboard images panned slowly across the megatron.   Like the pen and ink illustrations of Arthur Rackman, they revealed the symbolism of the story and easily linked characters and their musical themes.  The backlighting effectively alternated between a green leafy projection and a red fire-like one. 

To be candid, that tiny red-caped devil of a music snob that sits on my left shoulder whispered that this undertaking was overdone and under-satisfying. He sneered that the tech problems stole the show, that any good high school band could have performed the music, and that there was absolutely no reason for that little boy soprano to sit through the entire first half, legs falling asleep, staring at the intimidating faces in the crowd for his solo, In Dreams, that consisted of a mere minute of music. The piece was schizophrenic, my devil hisses, going from lyric pastoral English folksongs to intense tympanic ostiantos over and over again.  It was just so predictable.

Truth be told, the boy soprano could have taken the stage after the first movement, but young Joseph Burkart did an admirable job when finally given the chance to shine.  Unfortunately he was sometimes overpowered by the orchestra even though he sang with a microphone. The Thursday night performance encountered a series of tech glitches which made the almost 200 live singers, working hard at the back of the stage, sound like 50 singers coming through poor speakers.  The men's choral solo was lost completely.  But really, mic-ing that many disparate instruments and singers would have been a challenge for any organization.

Although the Symphony Chorus dominated, the young Griffin Junior Singers, Shawnee Mission North Chorus and Young MAIstersingers offered a purity and softness that breathed fresh air into the production.  Singing in the various fantasy dialects such as Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul, Adunaic, Black Speech, as well as Old and Modern English without subtitles, seemed to free the singers. Most of the dialects seemed to be built, conveniently, upon pure vowels.

Local mezzo-soprano Marsha Wells gave her solo an exotic, Eastern European edge, similar to the sound of chorister from the Bulgarian Women's Choir. Unfortunately baritone, John Pinkston was barely audible.  Hopefully the balance problems were resolved in time for the Friday night performance.

In defense of this new hybrid of popular entertainment and classical music, the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.  The beautiful soprano, Kaitlyn Lusk, was very popular and I could just see the little girls in the seats nearby sighing when she took the stage dressed like a white elf Barbie.  The miraculous thing about her voice was her intensely, pure, straight tones that pierced the orchestra and mesmerized the listeners.  In one particularly entertaining part of the performance, she embodied the 'Ring' and sang a sultry siren song to the hideous and pathetic Gollum.

The Lord of the Rings Symphony was a two and a half hour long epic consisting of six movements encompassing the entire trilogy.  When fans hear the orchestral score live they can see the characters, feel the scenes and relive the book in a unique way.  Hopefully, audiences new to this form of entertainment weren't disappointed.

 REVIEW:
Kansas City Symphony and Chorus
Lord of the Rings Symphony
Thursday, May 7, 2009 - Reviewed
Friday, May 8, 2009
Music Hall, Downtown Kansas City, MO
www.kcsymphony.org

By Megan Browne Helm

Classical, Vocal and Theatre Contributor

Megan Browne Helm grew up singing, dancing and acting.  Inspired by Emma Kirkby as a high school student in St. Louis she went on to study voice and sing with the Collegium Musicum at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio where she also had a radio show of contemporary classical music on WOBC.  At the University of Kansas she had the pleasure of working with former Kings’ Singer, Simon Carrington in his Collegium Musicum and Oread consort. Years later, she was a choral fellow at the Yale School of Music’s  Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  She is currently singing with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus under the direction of Charles Bruffy. 

 As a freelance music and culture writer her work can be found on KCMetropolis.org, presentmagazine.com, the Lawrence Journal World, Shawnee Magazine, Leawood Lifestyle Magazine and KC Parent.  She was one of 26 journalists in the country chosen as a NEA Institute Fellow for Classical Music and Opera at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Her current interest is how classical music remains relevant through active collaborations with artists in different fields, including science.  She also sees a connection between classical music, travel and food as a way to engage all of the senses in a 360 degree cultural experience.  She blogs at raworganum.wordpress.com.