Zimmer Fame

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It was early evening, as we headed in the direction of Northampton and the town’s Cathedral – aka The Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate & St Thomas of Canterbury to listen to the London Film Music Orchestra.

Jo and Janet arrived at ours just before 4.30 and with Janet acting as chauffeur, we began our journey. Waze took us on an interesting route that seemed to avoid the A43 (no doubt it knew something we didn’t) and where we seemed to zigzag along all the minor roads between us and our destination!

In spite of the ‘scenic route’, we arrived in good time and where Janet bagged a parking space in the Cathedral’s car-park itself – just a few paces from the entrance. We then stood and queued for about ten minutes before being ushered in, heading for our VIP seats. It was an unusually early start for an evening performance – 6pm – with another immediately following it, so the Orchestra was clearly making the most of their visit to these parts! 👍

Outside, the exterior wasn’t the prettiest scenes of worship, but just like us humans, it was INSIDE that mattered!

Actually, the inside was much prettier, just a little chilly!! 🥶🥶

The event was very well-supported, and already half-full when we arrived. And they kept coming. Soon, all the pews were occupied and at that point, I wasn’t sure whether the comfort levels of the typical church seating were going to affect my appreciation of the event, but I needn’t have worried – they were uncomfortable, but the music was about to distract us, in a good way! 😉

And if listening to the music of famous contemporary German composer, Hans Zimmer wasn’t enough, the evening included music by John Williams too AND it was illuminated as well 👍. The lighting was very subtle (this was no ELO/Wembley/1978!) and so, perfectly suited the mood and the music – and the environment.

Complementing and contributing to the themes was Jasmine Faulkner who introduced the tunes and provided vocal support on many of the tracks. She had a fantastic soprano range, although, between tunes, the frequent encouragement for us to celebrate individual musicians from the orchestra between tracks became a little irritating! 🤔. Yes, it’s official, I’m a grump! 😉

The ‘London Film Music Orchestra’ was founded ten year’s ago in 2014. They’ve played alongside Stormzy at the Wireless Festival and are well connected
with many contemporary Film and TV composers. At the time of writing they are performing across 60 venues across the UK.

Any good?

It was a great mix of music with eight scores by John Williams and six from Hans Zimmer. These included:-

E.T.
Jurassic Park
Jaws
Sherlock Holmes
Schindler’s list
Gladiator
Harry Potter
Inception
Interstellar
Man of Steel
Star Wars
Superman Returns
Indiana Jones
Pirates of the Caribbean

(It seems they dropped ‘Da Vinci Code‘ from the Programme).

And it was worth every penny. The sixteen-piece orchestra performed flawlessly, producing a really ‘big’ sound (more akin to 50 musicians!) augmented by the Cathedral’s acoustics. Everyone in the audience had a great view of the performance thanks to the two additional big-screen TVs flanking the pews. The only obstruction to ours was the occasional ‘yoof’ insisting on videoing the performance, with their hands fully stretched above them to get the best view (rather than to get closer to the ‘Owner’! 😉)

The evening finished with the obligatory encore, where the Orchestra performed the ‘Cantina Song’ from Star Wars.

What a fantastic evening! The musicians were at the top of their game and the sound mix (fiendishly difficult to perfect in a Church or Cathedral) was outstanding and brought out the best in these iconic anthems. The performers also appeared to be enjoying the event as much as we were. Wow! Go see! 👍👍