Review: San Antonio Symphony shows musical footwork in ‘La La Land’

The San Antonio Symphony elevated its movie concert series Friday night with a different kind of movie.

Whereas the symphony has performed movies such as “E.T.,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Jurassic Park” and two “Harry Potter” movies, mostly with John Williams scores, this time the orchestra played the supporting music for an actual movie musical, “La La Land.”

Music moved to the forefront, and the orchestra was more challenged as a result. But the results were more than pleasing.

“La La Land,” of course, was the 2016 movie that a year ago won the Oscar’s 2017 “Best Picture” award — for about a minute, until the award announcement was corrected to “Moonlight.”

“I really love the movie. The music is wonderful,” said Jennifer Sifuentes of San Antonio, who was the first person into the Majestic Theatre when it opened it doors Friday.

“Knowing the San Antonio Symphony would be playing live made me want to come. I’m looking forward to the music most of all,” Sifuentes added.

The music by Justin Hurwitz and the dance scenes punctuated the entire film as Emma Stone, playing Mia, and Ryan Gosling as Sebastian pursue their acting and jazz careers, respectively, playing out the movie’s theme of dreams that leave no room for enduring romance.

Keeping the orchestra in sync with the film was “La La Land in Concert” tour conductor Erik Ochsner of New York City. With so much of the music flowing from Sebastian’s piano, Ochsner clearly took the approach of presenting the two-hour movie like it was a piano concerto.

Making that possible was the sparkling keyboard work of area pianist Hank Hehmsoth, who performed the same role last year with the Austin Symphony when it performed “La La Land in Concert.”

It’s safe to say that most of the more than 1,300 audience members already had seen the movie, but they experienced something else with this live-music presentation. The audience felt free to applaud each song or musical piece, which doesn’t happen in movie theaters.

In the scene where Sebastian is explaining the joy of jazz to Mia, as a jazz band improvises in the background, Sebastian applauded the band, and, of course, the audience joined in accordingly for a nice moment. Local saxophonist Bill King was the live player in the orchestra for that scene.

But the whole orchestra was the star of the evening, its live-music magic shining best in the dream dance sequence shortly before the intermission, the one that reached the clouds at Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory.

The concert repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Majestic Theatre downtown.