SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26   8:00 PM

Richard Lee, conductor
John Einarson, host
Daniel Tselyakov, piano
St. John’s-Ravenscourt Rock Show Ensemble

What have groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Procol Harum, The Beatles, Moody Blues and so many more taken from classical music? A lot, as you will find out in the company of Canada’s leading Rock historian John Einarson who, with the WSO, will take you on a personally guided tour of classical music chosen by renowned Rock groups. You’ll be surprised and enlightened by what you hear!

Last year’s SoundBytes audience was enthralled as filmmaker Guy Maddin got everyone up close and personal as to why movie directors bond to classical composers. We’ll connect here within the realm of Rock on this program and guarantee plenty of ear-opening insights as well as some pretty amazing music!

Roll Over Beethoven

MUSICIANS IN THE MAKING: Come and listen to various student groups perform on the Piano Nobile Level at 7:15 pm.

Single tickets on sale now: WSO Box Office, 949-3999 or online.

April 14  8:00 pm

There is no other movie experience like sitting in front of a large screen in a theatre, watching a silent film, listening to the movie score and then leaning forward in your seat only to realize that a 65-piece orchestra is performing all the music and sound effects!

Charlie  Chaplin’s classic film Modern Times (1936) is the pièce de résistance! Sound had come to the movies in 1927 but Chaplin resisted it, instead using music to express everything in the film. The only speaking in Modern Times comes through electronic devices (phonograph record; PA system) so as not to humanize person-to-person spoken contact, which is much of the story.

Chaplin spent many hours in the recording studio getting the music exactly right, creating specific musical moments to fit the hundreds of physical motions on the screen. This is evident when the WSO  performs this demanding music score live with the film!

Modern Times marked the last screen appearance of the Little Tramp – the character which had brought Charlie Chaplin world fame, and who still remains the most universally recognized fictional image of a human being in the history of art.

Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times (film with orchestra)
Richard Lee, conductor

For more info, click here.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28   8:00 PM

Richard Lee, conductor
Film with music

“(I am) more proud of that picture than any picture I ever made because I took an actual happening out of the Civil War.” – Buster Keaton

We present Keaton’s 1926 silent masterpiece The General in a digitally restored print with Carl Davis’s celebrated musical score performed live by the WSO.

This wonderful film not only gives a precious glimpse of the West – sometimes down to the tiniest leaf – but the memorable and treasurable antics of the great Keaton as he plays a quick-thinking Southern railroad man that thwarts a daring raid by Northerners of a locomotive during the Civil War. Miles behind enemy lines, he learns of plans for a surprise attack, and manages to escape on his captured engine, with his girlfriend stuffed into a sack in one of the wagons!

Silent movies were meant to be seen in theatres where the audience morphs into a comedy meter responding en masse to each gag. Experience all the thrills and spills in this comic gem!

SOUNDBYTES: Pre-Concert Chat hosted by Sam Minuk, film historian on the Piano Nobile Level at 7:15 pm.

Single tickets are on sale now at the WSO Box Office, 949-3999 or online.

The acclaimed series from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25   8:00 PM

Richard Lee, conductor

We are proud to introduce our audience to this acclaimed and exciting multi-media presentation created by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that brings a major classical work to both new and veteran listeners using live theatre, a screen presentation, actors and a host followed by a complete performance of the work.

Dvořák’s New World Symphony is one of the most popular pieces of orchestral music ever written. For North Americans, this is the first great symphony about America memorably using Indigenous sources.

You’ll see, hear and learn how this symphony grew out of Dvořák’s abandoned opera based on Longfellow’s Hiawatha epic, and how Longfellow’s inspiration itself mixes North American and European stories. In this symphony, the echoes of many different nations mix with one another to produce a rainbow of music, a vision of many colours and identities, presented to bring you closer to this masterpiece than you ever thought possible.

MUSICIANS IN THE MAKING: Come and listen to various student groups perform on the Piano Nobile Level at 7:15 pm.

Single tickets are on sale now at the WSO Box Office, 949-3999 or online.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26   8:00 PM

Richard Lee, conductor
John Einarson, host
Daniel Tselyakov, piano
St. John’s-Ravenscourt Rock Show Ensemble

What have groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Procol Harum, The Beatles, Moody Blues and so many more taken from classical music? A lot, as you will find out in the company of Canada’s leading Rock historian John Einarson who, with the WSO, will take you on a personally guided tour of classical music chosen by renowned Rock groups. You’ll be surprised and enlightened by what you hear!

Last year’s SoundBytes audience was enthralled as filmmaker Guy Maddin got everyone up close and personal as to why movie directors bond to classical composers. We’ll connect here within the realm of Rock on this program and guarantee plenty of ear-opening insights as well as some pretty amazing music!

Roll Over Beethoven

MUSICIANS IN THE MAKING: Come and listen to various student groups perform on the Piano Nobile Level at 7:15 pm.

Single tickets on sale now: WSO Box Office, 949-3999 or online.

April 14  8:00 pm

“I go to a lot of movies, and I can’t remember the last time I heard a paying audience actually applaud at the end of a film. But this one did. And the talk afterward in the aisles, the lobby and in line at the parking garage was genuinely excited; maybe a lot of these people hadn’t seen much Chaplin before, or were simply very happy to find that the passage of time have not diminished the man’s special genius.”
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

There is no other movie experience like sitting in front of a large screen in a theatre, watching a silent film, listening to the movie score and then leaning forward in your seat only to realize that a 65-piece orchestra is performing all the music and sound effects!

Charlie  Chaplin’s classic film Modern Times (1936) is the pièce de résistance!
Sound had come to the movies in 1927 but Chaplin resisted it, instead using music to express everything in the film. The only speaking in Modern Times comes through electronic devices (phonograph record; PA system) so as not to humanize person-to-person spoken contact, which is much of the story.

Chaplin spent many hours in the recording studio getting the music exactly right, creating specific musical moments to fit the hundreds of physical motions on the screen. This is evident when the WSO  performs this demanding music score live with the film!

Modern Times marked the last screen appearance of the Little Tramp – the character which had brought Charlie Chaplin world fame, and who still remains the most universally recognized fictional image of a human being in the history of art.

Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times (film with orchestra)
Richard Lee, conductor

For more info, click here.

November 4  8:00 PM

Join celebrated Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin as he takes you on a journey of music and movies, and explores how classical music is used in Hollywood’s famous films such as: The Incredibles, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Amadeus, Apocalypse Now, Austin Powers, The Shining, Blues Brothers, Manhattan, Platoon, 10, Excalibur and Fantasia.

Guy Maddin’s most distinctive quality is his fondness for recreating the look and style of silent or early sound era films. His award-winning feature films include Tales from the Gimli Hospital, The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain, and My Winnipeg, to name a few.

Along with resident conductor Richard Lee, you will be surprised and mesmerized by how classical music is interwoven into popular culture.

Richard Strauss: Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001: A Space Odyssey)
Mozart: Symphony No. 25 (Amadeus)
Barber: Adagio for Strings (Platoon)
Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries (Apocalypse Now)
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (The Shining)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 (Austin Powers in Goldmember)
Khachaturian: Sabre Dance (Blues Brothers 2000)
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (Manhattan)
Ravel: Bolero (10)
Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Fantasia)
Mozart Requiem: Dies Irae (The Incredibles)
Orff: “O Fortuna!” from Carmina Burana (Excalibur)

Richard Lee, conductor
Guy Maddin, host

For more info, click here.