Anthony Daniels, the voice and body of golden-boy robot C-3PO, is the only actor to have had a part in all six film instalments of the Star Wars saga. He is also the most ardent advocate of the rich music American composer John Williams created for the soundtracks.
Anthony Daniels, the voice and body of golden-boy robot C-3PO, is the only actor to have had a part in all six film instalments of the Star Wars saga. He is also the most ardent advocate of the rich music American composer John Williams created for the soundtracks.
You’re forgiven for thinking that Star Wars in Concert is an event for sci-fi fans, but Daniels insists it’s an intensely powerful musical experience for anybody interested in going to a good, live show.
The two-hour multimedia spectacle, narrated by Daniels, combines specially edited clips from George Lucas’s immortal films – shown on three-storey-high high-definition LED screens – with a full, live symphony orchestra. It had its premiere in London, England last April, and has been touring ever since. There’s even a companion exhibit of Star Wars memorabilia.
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Star Wars in Concert makes its pc28stop at the Air Canada Centre on Thursday. Even without a lot of advance publicity, the show has struck a chord. A check with Ticketmaster earlier this week showed that ticket sales have been brisk.
“It’s an enormously well-told story,” Daniels says of the movie compilation, which he leads in a beginning-to-end retelling. “Even people who’ve never seen (a Star Wars film) can follow it.”
The British actor reserves his most enthusiastic praise for the score, which Williams rearranged specially for this outing, conducted by Belgian Dirk Brossé.
“This is a superb classical concert,” says Daniels. For him, Williams’ evocative music is as great as the film scores by such a 20th-century master as Sergei Prokofiev.
“I’ve now done this concert 32 times,” he continues. “I find something new in the orchestra every time. These are not simplistic orchestrations.” The musicians feel the same way. The orchestra “bounces off the stage every night,” Daniels says of the energy they pick up from the score.
Despite the “wow” factor of the supersized video montages, he adds that “the biggest round of applause every night is for a purely instrumental piece.”
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There is an inspirational quality to having a live orchestra on stage – especially when it is magnified on the giant screens. “Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by a violin when you see it magnified to 80 feet across and see the fingering and the bowing?” Daniels says. “You see a harp 100 feet high. You see banks of instruments answering other banks of instruments.”
The 63-year-old actor has enjoyed classical music his whole life, and thinks that this is an excellent opportunity to spread that love.
“I want people to think that, `if this is what a concert is, I want to go to another concert,’” he says. Daniels adds that people should try to arrive in time to see the 7:30 p.m. opening, which he promises is something spectacular.
Timothy Mangan, who reviewed the Oct. 2 opening of the North American leg of the Star Wars tour for California’s Orange County Register said that the event is “more of a multimedia extravaganza, sensory overload division, than a mere concert.”
Whether the audience members are dyed-in-the-fur wookie aficionados or people out for a night of entertainment, it appears that the force is with them.
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