Last Thursday evening, Mer and I headed back to CVCA to go to a string orchestra concert. We both like music, but this was special – CVCA’s orchestra is really amazing, with a full sound and great arrangements of music. Also, Mer and I also each have 7-8 students in the group (out of about 40), and finally, this night, they were doing all movie music.

I like movie music for “classical” concerts for several reasons. I usually know the piece of work already, and they tend to be catchy, and they tend to be short (only a few minutes long). My mind can seriously wander during music that does not have lyrics, especially if it goes more than about 5 minutes. So, I was very excited about this concert.

The kids were all in costume to represent the various movie music they were playing, so we had lots of pirates, a Princess Leia, an Indiana Jones, a Darth Vader, a dinosaur, and so on. It was a lot of fun to see the students (and the teacher!) get into their costumes.

They played well-known movie music, and the composer John Williams was featured heavily (not surprising given his body of work). We heard well-done arrangements of music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones movies, Jurassic Park, The Incredibles, and from all three Pirates of the Carribean movies. The concert was an almost ideal length for a school night – just over an hour. Probably my favorite moment of the evening was when Erik, the orchestra teacher, came out dressed as Darth Vader to conduct the Star Wars theme music, which he did. With a light saber. I found it very amusing. It was a fun night.