Photo credit: Erika Goldring
2016 marks 50 years since Gene Roddenberry’s iconic Star Trek franchise launched with the original series. To celebrate, California’s CineConcerts has created a symphonic concert featuring music from Star Trek’s television and film scores. “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage,” currently embarked on its North American tour, also boasts lush, immersive visuals—including a 40-foot projection screen for footage from the franchise’s five television series and 12 blockbuster films. CineConcerts conductor/producer, Justin Freer, spoke to the Shepherd in anticipation of the tour’s stop at the Riverside Theater this Sunday, March 13 at 8 p.m.
How did the idea for “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage” come about?
The 50th anniversary certainly had a lot to do with it. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of, and any franchise lasting 50 years is quite an accomplishment. I’ve always adored the music since I was a boy growing up with “The Next Generation” in the ’80s and have admired so very much the creative material that Gene Roddenberry started for us all. So there was that, the 50th, there was the music, there’s the film and the television footage. It’s amazing and I’ve been a fan for so long so what an opportunity to put all of them together in an exciting and hopefully emotionally immersive concert experience that highlights the great music, the great film, the great television—all of it at the same time.
In addition to growing up with “Next Generation,” what is your personal connection to the Star Trek universe?
I come from a very classically trained and composition-conducting background and since I was a kid I’ve always loved the music of Star Trek. Many years later I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to study with Jerry Goldsmith for a couple of years before he passed away of cancer in 2004 and, you know, Jerry was one of the great composers of any culture or any generation but the fact that he wrote so much music to Star Trek was fantastic. He and Alexander Courage were considered the grandfathers of the Star Trek music universe. It’s safe to say that most people at some point in their careers have looked to Jerry for inspiration, and certainly within the Star Trek universe, have looked to Jerry for what he did at one time or another. So the connection to Jerry really helped me to feel more personal about this project and to really put as much passion as I could into it and so with that there is a great deal of Jerry’s music being represented, along with, of course, Gerald Fried and Alexander Courage, the very first one to write anything for Star Trek. And Jay Chattaway, Dennis McCarthy and David Bell. And Michael Giacchino—some of the most recent music that’s been written for the J.J. Abrams films. So we’ve really tried to represent as many composers as possible and I hope we’ve done that.
Can you tell me a little about how you came into the roles of producer and conductor?
I run the company CineConcerts, the company that’s responsible for this, and, along with my producing partner Brady Beaubien, the two of us put this Star Trek experience together and mixed the sound design and of course dialogue. Everything—lighting, stage pieces—helps the orchestra feel like they’re playing inside of the “Next Generation” bridge on the Enterprise. And of course, a 40-foot big screen on the stage. I restored many of these scores personally, reorchestrated many of the works for the concert stage and I conduct some of the other projects that we do at CineConcerts so it made sense that I would try to work with the musicians this time around as well. It’s great fun.
How did you gather your musicians?
Well there’s an orchestra that I’ve worked with many times over the years and they’ve kind of become the touring orchestra for this project all around the world, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. I’ve worked with them on “The Godfather” in Europe, I’ve worked on “Titanic,” and they’re working with us on Star Trek on all the different continents that this tour’s going to.
An interesting connection with some of the players in the orchestra: James Horner, who was a friend and a genius of a composer. One of the things we’re performing of his is the Epilogue and Title Suite from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It’s amazing music. And unfortunately we lost James last year to a fatal plane crash north of Los Angeles. And only hours after this crash happened, many of these same musicians who are celebrating James in part every night in the Star Trek concert, were performing the entire score to Titanic in Cologn, Germany, that very same day. So there’s a real connection for the players. They’re very mindful of it and you know they try to celebrate James every night in that way. It’s a delight to share that with them.
Can you tell me a little about what audiences can expect to experience visually and aurally?
If you can imagine the symphonic orchestra playing on stage and surrounded by all kinds of set pieces that help to shape the Enterprise bridge. There’s some pieces that help frame the 40-foot screen that resemble Klingon weapons. Each of the set pieces is indicative of something from the Star Trek franchise and they’re all lit in different ways with LED lighting strips and so we kind of help people to immerse themselves in perhaps the color theming—the mood of what they’re seeing on screen while the music is playing. In the case of the Borg, we might go to this mysterious green color, or in the case of the Klingons, we might kind of flirt with more red shades and things like that. Very subtle changes so we’re keeping the attention on the screen and the orchestra, but something to help people feel that it’s more than just music and the screen.
My understanding is that the concert is structured around different themes. Can you tell me about that?
It is. The footage is basically two separate worlds. Take a montage—a collection of things. It could be “The Enterprise,” and that would be the theme of the montage. Or “Captains,” or “Man’s Exploration, or “Close Bonds and Friendship,” or something as fun and silly as “Life Forms.” So we trace one of these themes over the course of 50 years of footage set to a really iconic piece of music at the same time.
And then on the flip side of things, we’re also celebrating much of the originally intended music with the originally intended television scenes. There’s about 13 or 14 of them across the evening, about three or so from each of the five series. So you can imagine the original fight scene from “Amok Time”—that great scene between Kirk and Spock fighting on Vulcan from season two of “The Original Series.” Or one of the lesser-known scenes, but so amazingly powerful—Captain Sisco from “DS9” is speaking into the video recorder in his captain’s quarters basically about embracing this idea of genocide to save the Federation, to annihilate the Cardassians. And he’s embracing genocide. What an interesting episode that is. And everything in between. So there’s a lot of original stuff and much of this music has never been heard in person before, ever. Much of it never made it to the sound track albums. They’d never been heard outside of the television series. There was a lot of restorative effort that went into the scores and reorchestrations and we’re trying in some cases to find missing materials that were in storage facilities that composers forgot they had [laughs].
Do you believe it is accessible to attendees who are not very familiar with Star Trek? What effect has the tour had on audiences so far?
I do think it’s accessible for everybody, and that’s actually something that surprised even me. I wasn’t quite sure where the demographic was going to sit. You know, was it going to be heavy Star Trek fans or was it going to be music fans? But we’ve seen an incredibly wide demographic across just about every country we’ve been to. I’ve met, of course, the über Trekkie who comes dressed as Lokai or Warf or one of the captains, which is so fun. But I’ve seen a lot of top-hat-and-tails kind of folk as well that are used to the symphony crowd. And I’ve also met engineers and avionics professionals and video gamers whose professions, in some cases, were inspired by Star Trek. They wanted to go into engineering or into being a pilot because of Star Trek. And then there’s the laymen—they just wanted to see something cool with Star Trek. The age range has been fairly wide as well, but the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. The orchestra has earned just about three standing ovations at every concert. It’s been really great.
For tickets to “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage,” visit pabsttheater.org.
