BWW Reviews: ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2015: DANNY ELFMAN'S MUSIC FROM THE FILMS OF TIM BURTON Was A Massive Hit

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Saturday 14th March 2015

Danny Elfman and Tim Burton; what a combination! Three standing ovations closed the evening of Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. With a capacity of 16,000, and only a couple of small sections on the sides left vacant to avoid poor sightlines, that adds up to a lot of people.

The evening is a collection of suites drawing on musical themes from the fifteen films that the duo made together over the thirty years of their collaboration. On a large screen are projected Tim Burton's sketches, drawings, watercolours, and storyboards, as well as stills and short sections of video from the films. These included Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Sleepy Hollow, Dark Shadows, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Planet of the Apes, Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie, Big Fish, and Mars Attacks.

John Mauceri conducted the sensational Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the superb Adelaide Festival Chorus. The score called for a few seldom used instruments, such as contrabassoon, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, and contrabass trombone, and employed a huge arrange of percussion instruments. A few extra instruments, such as hammer dulcimer and piano accordion, were provided by the use of synthesiser and sampler.

Regular concertgoers are more than familiar with the extremely high standard and enormous versatility of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and the complexity of the orchestrations were of no problem to an orchestra that has twice played for productions of Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen and once for Parsifal and massive works by the likes of Mahler, Stravinsky, and other great composers, all of the usual orchestral repertoire, and numerous new works by Australian composers, as well as working with such diverse artists as Pat Metheny, Hilltop Hoods, and The Zep Boys, a Led Zeppelin tribute band.

The Adelaide Festival Chorus also has an enviable reputation, for which they are fortunate to have the tremendous advantage of having as their director one of Australia's most respected and experienced choral conductors, Carl Crossin.

Putting those two groups together ensured that, musically, this concert was impeccable. The projections added so much to the performance, bringing Tim Burton's presence into the venue. John Mauceri has been conducting this concert around the world for quite a while now and so has an intimate connection with it, which he conveys to the ensemble and, of course, having the composer there, singing with them, brought another level of excitement to the event.

Danny Elfman appears as Jack Skellington, with Australian singer, Beatrice 'Bertie' Blackman, in the role of Sally, with songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas. She has a remarkable voice and really brought the song to life and, of course, Elfman drew many rounds of applause every time that he sang, as he well deserved.

Nine-year-old Adelaide singer, Charlie Wells, is kept busy throughout the concert as the boy soprano with the chorus, and came to the fore in Alice in Wonderland. he has such a beautiful clear and well-controlled voice, a little reminiscent of Aled Jones when he was young.

Classical violinist, Sandy Cameron, was a real showstopper, clad in a black leather outfit, letting her hair down, and dancing, bobbing, prowling, weaving, and playing up a storm in her solo in the Edward Scissorhands section. The applause and cheering was deafening. Her exciting performance can be viewed here.

The one drawback was the appalling acoustics of the Entertainment Centre which, as near as anything, resembles a massive aircraft hanger with raked seating all around. Seating is added in the arena section for concerts such as this. To the people at the very back, at the top of the raked seating, the performers look like ants. Even half way back on the flat section, I was using my small binoculars.

Technically, too, some work was needed as the sound mix was very poor, and the live video projection bleached out the faces of the soloists and was somewhat discoloured, showing that the white balance had not been set on the video camera, and the light level reading was not centre weighted. These are basic things that any competent operators should have seen and corrected.

Fortunately, the concert itself was so wonderful that most people probably would not have noticed, but they are infuriating to a classically trained professional musician, who has also worked in several genres as a sound mixer, and for a professional photographer, making it a double annoyance for me.

I would love to see this done again sometime, but in the acoustically far superior Festival Theatre, with its highly skilled technical staff on sound and video. This concert was really something, but that would be something else again.

That aside, the performance itself, in all respects, could not have been any better, and was the very best way to end the Adelaide Festival for this year. Those three long standing ovations made it very clear what the audience thought. I have no doubt that every one of them would love a repeat performance.

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