Concert - Moonlight -The Film - live in concert with full orchestra

By Mulder, Los Angeles, Million Dollar Theater, 11 january 2017

Moonlight was presented at the Million Dollar Theater next to the the Grand Central Market in Downtown Los Angeles. Grand Central Market is a great dinner spot to hit with 30 plus food establishments to choose from before the movie starts. If you arrive late, they sell beer, wine and soda inside the theater.

Several days before the Golden Globes Awards there were plenty of tickets available at the 2,000 plus seating auditorium. After the Golden Globes ceremony, Moonlight tickets were sold out. Movie start time was at 8PM, and the doors to Million Dollar Theater open at 7PM. Before 6PM there was already a line of people being turned away from the ticket office because tickets had already sold out and the line to enter the theater was 50 plus people.

Moonlight tells the story of a young man dealing with his dysfunctional home life and coming of age in Miami during the "War on Drugs" era. The story of his struggle to find himself is told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love while grappling with his own sexuality. Currently Golden Globe nominated for his score, Nicholas Britell describes the event as a re-creation of the score, involving “many complex soundscapes and audio textures.” He will be using the "Chopped & Screwed" technique to the score, meaning the tracks will be slowed down, with an enriched and deepened sonic texture as the result. A variety of techniques will be used, (including real-time pitch shifting) to re-create in real-time what was made in the studio. Director Barry Jenkins explains “When I hear Nick’s score, I see the movie. He absolutely nailed what this movie feels like. Listening to his work, I envision a 1974 Chevrolet Impala on 28-inch rims drifting down MLK Boulevard blasting Bach, chopped and screwed, all across Liberty Square.”

Ronen Givony, founder of The Wordless Music Orchestra, the company behind these live orchestra events (past live orchestra screenings include ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild,’ ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘The Tree of Life’) believes that by giving these films the live score treatment, he is proposing “a twenty-first century canon.”

The presentation of the movie was blended with Nicholas Britell, Wordless Music Orchestra who worked closely with the production company to present a seamless mix of audio from the movie with a live orchestra performance throughout the three parts of the movie that follows the life of Chiron played by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes during his childhood, teen years and adulthood as his discovers his inner self and how he deals with childhood dramas that affect his later life to make the man he becomes.

Here you can read our Nicholas Britell’s interview : here

An huge thanks to Andrew P. Alderete for invited us to this cine-concert