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'Moana,' 'Avatar' come to Popejoy with live orchestra accompaniment
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The silver screen and a live orchestra are coming together for a whole new experience of Disney and Nickelodeon favorites.
Popejoy Hall presents “Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert” on Sunday, Nov. 2, and “Moana Live-To-Film Concert” on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Heidi Joosten is the associate conductor for “Avatar” and will be leading the Albuquerque show.
The concert is broken into specific scenes from the TV series, Joosten said.
“For this particular show, we’re so lucky that the original creative team got together to be able to really have an idea on how this concert production was going to go,” Joosten said.
“They made the decision from the top to really focus on Jeremy Zuckerman’s music, so we are featuring complete thoughts of the music in several different movements,” Joosten said, “and they super cut the visuals and the like dialog to fit the complete thoughts of music.”
She said that, from beginning to end, the audience sees Aang’s journey as the Avatar through all the people he meets through the seasons.
“It feels a lot like a ballet, in terms of seeing some of the visuals, but really highlighting and focusing on the music,” Joosten said.
Joosten said she finds the live concert a beautiful offering for a series that has captured audiences for 20 years.
“If you’re a huge fan of the show, it checks all of the boxes for how it makes you feel both happy sad, it takes you right back to the first time you ever experienced it,” Joosten said. “At the same time, if you don’t happen to know this show, you’re still getting a complete concert experience where you understand what’s going on.”
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The audiences are electric, she said, and sharing the music and emotions with them is one of the best parts.
“We’re putting the music as the focus,” Joosten said. “And so it’s such a beautiful experience to be reminded of just how gorgeous this music is and how thoughtful it is.
Two days after “Avatar,” the sounds and music of “Moana” will be brought to Popejoy with a full-length screening set to a live music performance.
“What we’re doing is bringing the film to life,” Sosefina Yandall, female lead vocalist, said.
Anthony Kauka Stanley, lead percussionist, helped build the show with five percussion sections and over 40 instruments and percussion tools in each, he said.
“Our goal is to bring the heart of Polynesia, which is very percussive heavy, but also featuring amazing vocals,” Stanley said.
The show includes a variety of instruments, including conch shells and vocals, creating what Stanley said was a larger-than-life score.
“All the other textures are meant to amplify and not take away, but it kind of does allow the Polynesian vocal and percussion to kind of lead the way,” Stanley said. “But the texture is still there from the original.”
Yandall said she feels a sense of love doing the show because, for her, it represents so much more than the movie.
“I’m loving that we are able to represent our Pacific Islander people in this way, for Disney and for the culture,” Yandall said.
“It does feel like we are carrying our culture on our backs around the country,” Yandall said.
Yandall and Stanley both enjoy sharing their Polynesian culture with the audience through music, and watching as the audience becomes closer and starts to get up and dance along.
“As the piece continues, you watch these strangers become family, which is a goal,” Stanley said.
The cast goes out to greet the audience after the show, which Yandall said is one of her favorite parts because she gets to create core memories for those in attendance.
Yandall has also found herself connecting more and more with the film throughout the tour.
“You notice the little things that you used to overlook, and a lot of the things that I’m starting to notice now are the cultural references within the film,” Yandall said. “And it just makes me very emotional and way more connected with the film.”
