2001: A Space Odyssey - Live Cinema Concert
A screening of Kubrick’s masterpiece with live orchestra and chorus
Text: Junichi Konuma (Music Critic / Faculty at Waseda University)
Intoxicate 2015 August
A rare opportunity to experience Kubrick’s world with live music!
Maximize your visual and auditory experience!
A screening of [2001: A Space Odyssey] with live orchestra and chorus will take place in an environment that is fitted up to be like a movie theater. Orchard Hall is perhaps the best venue to enjoy this particular film’s visuals and sound in Tokyo.
Stanley Kubrick’s [2001: A Space Odyssey] is recognised as a classic masterpiece in Sci-Fi films, but not only is it limited to 'science fiction' but a film that questions 'mankind,' intelligence, and technology. It is important to note that the director worked closely with the writer, Arthur C. Clarke, while making the film, and the short story was completed and published in 1968, the same year that the film was released.
【Reference】 [2001: A Space Odyssey] - Trailer
It isn’t just the story and the context. The special effects and sound were also extremely innovative at the time. Kubrick used light and color to portray the 'unknown' instead of using imaginary aliens, depicted being in zero gravity, and placed surrealistic objects. And the sound added to this imagery immensely enhanced the visual stimulation that one felt when watching this film.
The sound track was not an original written for the film. On the one hand there are familiar selections from the classics, but on the other hand are the 'contemporary music' that was used to describe the ambiguous and undecipherable and gave the impression of instability and the unknown. In the first group of works were Richard Strauss’ "Also sprach Zarathustra", Johann Strauss’ "The Blue Danube", Khachaturian’s "Gayane Ballet Suite (Adagio)", and in the latter were György Ligeti’s "Requiem", "Lux Aterna", and "Atmosphères."
Kubrick did not just 'use' these pieces but tied them into the visual images and that is what made it a masterpiece. The sound that echoes behind the fighting man-apes. The stick thrown into the air falls in slow motion converting into a space ship heading towards a space station accompanied by waltz music that describes the weightlessness. The multitudes of colors and light that reflects off Bowman’s helmet accompanied by the voices of the chorus.
In these recent years, there have been other screenings of famous movies on the big screen accompanied by live ensembles. One could simply put this to be just another one to add to this list, but this epic film [2001: A Space Odyssey], with both orchestra and chorus, had not been presented in Japan before. And the mixture of classical and contemporary music is not a recording amplified by speakers, but performed live by an orchestra and chorus. So not only the visual scope is different from watching it on your iPhone or iPad, or their larger versions, a computer monitor, but also acoustically the quality will be a rare experience not to be missed.
