Victoria Symphony brings frights to stage with film-score performance

Arts October 18, 2017

Orchestra music doesn’t normally go bump in the night, but that’s about to change.

Sean O’Loughlin is conducting the Victoria Symphony this month in Hollywood Thrillers, during which the symphony will perform songs from scary movies such as, among others, Hitchcock films, classics Jaws and Psycho, and the ’90s smash Jurassic Park.

“This kind of music really accelerates my heart rate from a purely musical standpoint,” says O’Loughlin. “Maybe [the audience’s] heart rates will get a few more ticks a minute than they anticipated. It’s quite remarkable what can be emoted through that music we’re performing.”

Conductor Sean O’Loughlin is leading the symphony through some thrillers (photo provided).

O’Loughlin says that one of the main draws of this sort of music is escapism, something different from the day-to-day lives we all lead. He says there’s a thrill-seeker in each of us.

“You know when we go to work and we do what we do, there’s a certain predictability about that,” he says. “At some point as humans we want to have something that maybe does jar us in a certain way, or excites, or it accelerates the heart rate and gives us something to really be thrilled about, because there’s just a little bit of danger involved in that.”

O’Loughlin says that when the music is separated from the movies like this, it allows for more creative freedom and flexibility, which gives the symphony the ability to stretch out more climactic moments.

“[This] allows the music to stand on its own and in turn allows the listener and the audience member to kind of go back and make their own visual attachment to that music that they hear,” he says. “Music is just like a sense—you hear a familiar theme or a familiar sound, and it’s a way to be transported back to the time period. There’s plenty of music on here that they know and love, and they’ll be able to relive all those great memories. Not all of the music they might have heard before, which is wonderful; there’s the element of discovery that should be there when going to a concert.”

There’s music that we love and know and want to hear, and there’s music that we want to challenge us, says O’Loughlin. But no matter what, music is clearly important to him.

“You can really colour emotions; you can raise the heartbeat of someone just with the pace of the music,” he says. “It’s the medium which gives us words where words fail us.”

Hollywood Thrillers
2 pm and 8 pm Saturday, October 28
$32 to $85, Royal Theatre
victoriasymphony.ca