A week of film nights at Symphony Hall

So, tonight ended the week run of John Williams conducting the Boston POPs. As with all the POPs shows, they’re trying to appeal to the multimedia generation. Apparently, music is not enough: Now there’s film clips, sound effects, narration.

It’s interesting being there every night. When the nights are good, it’s too busy to really notice the music, except at the end of the night. For the John William’s concerts that was OK with me as the bulk of the program was music from the Harry Potter movies (with narration by Lynn Redgrave and, of course, plenty of film clips). I’m not a big Harry Potter fan. I never read the books or saw the movies, so the magic was lost on me.

But the encores were good. Even though I saw them about four times, it’s always fun to stand at the side and watch the audience, in this case seeing their faces light up when they recognized after the first few notes the themes from the original Indiana Jones and E.T. movies.

From where I stand, I can look around and see the whole hall, the ornate grilling on the balconies, and the backlit statues of Bacchus, Euripedes, Sophocles, and crew watching over the orchestra and the audience. At these times, when I’m all cashed out and don’t have to worry about if someone wants something or what the cash flow is going to be like, I think about all the years that I’ve worked there and the changes I’ve seen and also I think about the history of the hall itself. In over a hundred years, there are a lot of stories and ghosts in that hall.

And, of course, there’s the people watching. That never gets old.