Celluloid Brass

I didn't give a report on my wife's last concert. It was a lot of fun. They played selections from several movie scores, arranged for brass band. Behind the band, the film played silently with the dialogue displayed via closed caption. The conductor did a good job of discussing the pieces and how they fit into the films, as well as discussing generally the process of film scoring, which I found interesting. He threw in little tidbits, like, "In this next scene, notice how the tempo of the music is set by the hoof beats of the good guy's horse as he gallops across the prairie."

All of the kids except for the youngest were there, and they all enjoyed it. Three of the five selections were cartoons, including the scene from Dumbo where Dumbo and the mouse become drunk, a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon, and Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny condensing Wagner's epic Ring of the Nibelung cycle (14.5 hours) into about five minutes as only Warner Bros. could do. My kids don't really know the classic Warner Bros. cartoons--they'd never seen Wile E. Coyote in action--but they thought it was hilarious, particularly my older son. I'm not sure if those cartoons aren't widely available because of licensing issues, excessive violence, or something else, but today's kids are missing out with the crappy cartoons they watch. My brother and I imagined many times the cool stuff that we could do with an Acme catalog in the days before we heard of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.