Conductor Lucas Richman raised his baton and looked over the 86 musicians assembled on the Tucson Arena stage Wednesday.
With a gentle cock of Richman's head, the orchestra lit into John Williams' opening theme for "Star Wars."
The familiar "doom, do, do, doom, do" refrain had barely reached the folks sitting in the highest corners of the arena when the audience burst out in a chorus of clapping, whistling and screaming.
It was the kind of ovation you would expect at the end of a concert, not the beginning.
And certainly not the response you'd expect from a concert centered around 86 musicians in formal dress - black suits and ties, a few black dresses - performing music that borrows heavily from the symphonic playbook.
But "Star Wars: In Concert" is much more than a symphony concert. In fact, there is so much going on aside from the music that it's sometimes easy to forget an orchestra is performing on stage:
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• Brilliant laser lights shot out from the stage and darted into the audience.
• Anthony Daniels sans his C-3PO costume narrated the epic story of the galaxy's upheaval.
• And that 100-foot-high LED high-def screen flashed scenes from the six "Star Wars" films.
This was rock concert meets film retrospective with enough eye candy to distract all those squealing 8- and 9-year-olds - and their equally enthusiastic dads - that made up a big portion of the 4,500 in the audience.
And therein lies the genius of "Star Wars: In Concert." Whether they were aware of it or not, all those kids - some costumed as their favorite "Star Wars" characters - spent two hours listening to some of the finest contemporary symphonic music to ever come out of Hollywood.
John Williams' "Star Wars" music borrows from a variety of styles, but most notably it mirrors the Late Romantic idiom perfected by Richard Strauss. The music is as epic as the movies. Strong percussive bursts, cascading string passages and melodically brassy blasts characterize much of it.
There are flashes of Gustav Holst's landmark "The Planets" suite, and nods to Richard Wagner in Williams' use of leitmotifs. His music broods ("Dark Forces Conspire") and marches ("An Empire Is Formed"), joyously celebrating victory ("Luke's Theme") and contemplating defeat ("A Hero Falls").
Richman's string passages quivered and pulsated in "A Race With Destiny." He drew a lush and sublime performance on the ballad "A Fateful Love" from Episode VI. In the concert's second half, he and the orchestra had a little fun with "An Unlikely Alliance," the deliciously frolicking jazzy piece from the first film that repeats "Star Wars" original theme as a segue to 1920s flapper-era melodies.
You could try explaining all these glorious nuances, which Richman underscored so wonderfully, to the youngsters in Wednesday's audience. But to them it is all academic. They were not there for a symphony concert; they were there for a multimedia experience. They were there to see Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2 and Padmé Amidala right up there on an impossibly big and inconceivably crystalline screen that rivaled their neighborhood moviehouse.
But it would be nice to imagine some of those kids telling their parents that they wouldn't mind seeing an orchestra concert again.
Review
"Star Wars: In Concert" Wednesday at Tucson Arena.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.
