More film scores in concert

Tuesday’s Disney music concert is just one of many movie-music events happening in the L.A. area this month, suggesting that film music in the concert hall is a growing trend.

This weekend, John Williams has been conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a series of film-music concerts labeled “Music From the City of Angels.”

Next Sunday, Italian maestro Ennio Morricone (“The Mission,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”) will make his West Coast debut conducting his own scores at Hollywood Bowl.

Next Saturday, the Golden State Pops Orchestra, which performs at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, will perform music from “Battlestar Galactica” and “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.”

Richard Kaufman, who earlier this month conducted the Dallas Symphony in Texas-themed film music (“Giant”) and Orange County’s Pacific Symphony in Audrey Hepburn film music (“The Nun’s Story”), will over the next few weeks conduct “Psycho” in Calgary, Canada, and an all-John Williams program with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Kaufman quotes Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold -- who spent a decade writing music for Warner Bros. -- by noting that “music is music, whether it be for the concert hall or the motion picture screen.”

That philosophy, he says, “is more prevalent as symphony orchestras in this country and elsewhere find that their audiences are looking for opportunities to listen to all kinds of music.

“The idea of hearing these memorable scores in a concert hall, without the dialogue and sound effects, is exciting, whether it’s ‘Gone With the Wind’ or the music of John Williams. Audiences remember this music, it’s part of the fabric of their lives and in the concert hall the focus is on the music itself.”

-- Jon Burlingame