The Music Behind the Magic in Hemet
As readers of this blog have noticed, I am especially interested in the timing of the Disney films, from Steamboat Willie onwards. Southern California readers can now "Discover the magic of Disney music at the Western Center Museum February 6th – May 10th, 2009. Disney: The Music Behind the Magic (organized by the Experience Music Project, Seattle) is the first museum exhibition to tell the story of how Disney has used music to engage audiences, drive its timeless narratives, and succeed in cartoons, television, theme parks, live-action films, on Broadway and the Billboard charts."
You will find the very first score for Steamboat Willie there, as well as Frank Churchill's score for the Three Little Pigs, Ub Iwerks' original 1929 drawn script for The Karnival Kid, and much, much more (ok, all the way up to Miley Cyrus and High School Musical 3...)
By the way, if you like mammoths, well, they have those, too!
It's certainly worth the hour-and-a-half drive from Burbank, folks. There will be special events, as well - more on those later!
By the way, Steamboat Willie clearly is 2-16 all the way through, though you could call it 4-8 as well. The easiest, most dividable beat possible. And if you still don't know what that means, you need to read up on your beats and barsheets!
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You will find the very first score for Steamboat Willie there, as well as Frank Churchill's score for the Three Little Pigs, Ub Iwerks' original 1929 drawn script for The Karnival Kid, and much, much more (ok, all the way up to Miley Cyrus and High School Musical 3...)
By the way, if you like mammoths, well, they have those, too!
It's certainly worth the hour-and-a-half drive from Burbank, folks. There will be special events, as well - more on those later!
By the way, Steamboat Willie clearly is 2-16 all the way through, though you could call it 4-8 as well. The easiest, most dividable beat possible. And if you still don't know what that means, you need to read up on your beats and barsheets!
Labels: News, Other Disney
posted by Hans Perk at 7:00 PM
1 Comments:
Having experienced the exhibit, I can say that it is attractive, family-focused and sound-filled. The coverage of 80 years of Disney music includes a few hand-written scores, a few sets of concept/story art, a few costumes, some memororabilia, a few interactive exhibits, many wall placards with text, and many videos and sound stations playing either loops of Disney music or discussions of Disney music. Of note is the sound effects "booth" where attendees watch and listen to a segment of "The Band Concert" and then are recorded playing 5 available sound effects devices (labeled with the image of the action where they should/could be used)--the recorded sound is then played back with the segment.
It is successful as a concise, general introduction to Disney music. The emphasis on animation is a relief given the many other areas Disney uses music. However, the exhibit's family-focus prevents deeper coverage of any particular aspect of the music.
There are some associated lectures in the evening and I attended one about Disney villains and music. The museum staff was surprised by the turn out and the group of 50 or so was decidedly mixed: a few families with children, a junior college English class currently studying myths, and a few animation enthusiasts. The presentation was a university-level lecture about Disney's portrayal of villains and how music was used to support those portrayals. The presenter effectively used a dozen or so VHS tapes of various Disney and non-Disney live-action and animated work to describe 3 main traits of Disney villains and 2 musical technics/characteristics reinforcing the villains. Because of the highly developed/focused nature of the lecturer's presentation and the audience's relatively low-level general interest, the audience was mostly quietly polite between the video clips and seemed to have thought the lecture would have been more general (some of the children perked up only during the video clips). There were no questions or follow-up and the audience left quickly.
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