Live concert experiences of the music for films, TV shows, and video games, with full orchestras, are nothing new. Screenings with a full onstage orchestra celebrate watershed scores, create communal experiences of beloved musical themes, and get people to see live music — to say nothing of a hellacious way to end “Tár.”
It’s not surprising that a juggernaut film like “Barbie” would eventually have a North American amphitheater tour of film screenings with a live orchestra. But IndieWire is happy to report that “Barbie’s” concert era has come together in the most “Barbie” way possible. Folks looking to see the film with a live instrumental performance of Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt’s score — and their songs — will be treated to the Barbieland Sinfonietta, an all-female orchestra conducted by Macy Schmidt.
Schmidt, the first woman of color to work as a Broadway orchestrator, has taken her love of music, musicals, and particularly the instrumental overtures of musicals into the worlds of TV and film before; the Sinfonietta, also made up predominantly of women of color, performed an orchestral, live version of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” in New York last year. That experience solidified for Schmidt what the true pleasures of live concert screenings are, and also areas where the experience could be made more immersive.
“There’s obviously an established tradition of these kinds of live score events, often with legacy composers and very serious scores,” Schmidt told IndieWire. “But something that really struck me when we started doing film concert work with the Sinfonietta, especially given the demographic of it, was the spotlight that’s on this orchestra.”
Lots of film and television scores are recorded live, of course, but unless someone (this writer) starts doing a YouTube deep dive through “Lost” making-of bonus content, we don’t usually get to see that process. With Schmidt’s experience on Broadway, too, the orchestra is meant to be as invisible as possible — literally holed down in a pit — and support the vocalists. It’s only in the live concert screening format where the music, and the people playing it, can shine. With “Barbie,” there was a huge opportunity, Schmidt thought, to make that spotlight as pink and sparkly as possible.
“If we lived in Barbieland — and I would love to live in Barbieland — and wanted to go out for a night out at the symphony, what would that experience feel like? I don’t think it would be, like, a bunch of men dressed in black, being treated as a unit, playing Classical music. I think it would be so hyper-individualized and so fun,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt’s orchestration keys in on moments where individual members of the Sinfonietta ensemble take hold of the spotlight and meld the performance of live music with the world of Gerwig’s film. “[I wanted] to really take the relationship between the human beings on stage making the music and what’s going on above you on screen to the next level, creatively,” Schmidt said.
But as Schmidt pointed out, the concert is a creative evolution simply by elevating the “Barbie” score with a live performance. It’s the kind of thing we tend to associate with John Williams, frankly, between the sheer number of heart-melting versions of his scores played by the Boston Pops and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. But despite a few members of her team wondering whether there was even enough music in “Barbie” for a live concert version, Schmidt found that the film absolutely merits this orchestral treatment, too.
“The whole film is music,” Schmidt said. “There’s this absolutely beautiful score by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, and there’s the themes happening underneath all the scenes and dialogue. Then there’s the album released by Atlantic Records, with these now culturally iconic pop songs made for the film. And we’re playing all of it.”
There’s precedent for how to treat the score portions of the film, but Schmidt is especially excited for how the Sinfionetta will handle the songs in “Barbie.” Bringing out the instrument pieces of the songs live gives listeners a new appreciation for just how much is going on in them, and how Ronson and Wyatt wove the film’s themes seamlessly throughout. “‘Dance the Night’ has these amazing string licks all the way throughout that our string players play live; or in ‘Pink,’ there’s great horn and saxophone sections and stabs and all of that. Between the songs and the score, we really get to get everyone [in the Sinfonietta] involved,” Schmidt said.
But what’s most exciting for Schmidt is the ways that experiencing a film this way can get the audience to appreciate the music. “A non-musical person in the audience watching a film might not be putting together that there’s a bunch of orchestral instruments playing on a song until you literally see them doing it,” Schmidt said. “I don’t want film concerts to be limited to, ‘there’s this lush orchestral score by a famous composer.’ Very early on, before we really put this project together, I would get reactions from people that were like, ‘Does the music in this film merit that kind of treatment?’ And my answer is, ‘Obviously. Even more so.’”
“Barbie The Movie: In Concert“ is playing at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, July 27.
