Beaverton Community Band: Masters of Film Music
$15 ($10 senior/veteran, $5 ages 11-17; $30 family of 4)
- Lisa Neher, soprano
John Williams — Far and Away
John Williams — The Cowboys
Ennio Morricone — Selected works
Lin-Manuel Miranda — Encanto
Chuck Mangione — The Children of Sanchez
The Beaverton Community Band presents a musical journey back to the movie music we love. The band will highlight the concert with music by Elmer Bernstein, John Williams, the Italian music master for "Spaghetti Westerns" Ennio Morricone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Chuck Mangione.
Galloping horses, stampeding cattle, and lots of dust are images of the Wild West captured in John Williams' music from The Cowboys. Scottish immigrants to Australia inspired the music from Far and Away, also by Williams.
Best known for the haunting melodies in a trilogy of 1960s westerns, Ennio Morricone wrote the movie music for the movies Sergio Leone made famous with the then little-known actor Clint Eastwood. A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly centered around Eastwood's taciturn gunslinger, known as "The Man With No Name."
Prepare to be charmed by the music from Encanto by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Disney animated film about a teenager who is the only member of her family without magical powers. Also on the program is music from a little-known movie called The Children of Sanchez by Chuck Mangione, which features a flugelhorn playing the central theme.
About Lisa Neher, soprano
Dr. Lisa Neher (she/her, "NEER") is an award-winning composer and new music mezzo on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. With a voice praised as "full and rich" and "especially alive" (Oregon ArtsWatch), Neher's performance credits include Third Angle New Music, Really Spicy Opera, Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre Oregon, New Music Gathering, Resonance Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, Renegade Opera, and Big Mouth Society. She is a member of Portland Opera Chorus and President of New Wave Opera.
Described as a "supremely talented," "visionary composer" (Willamette Week), "maestro of beautifully wacky noises" (Oregon ArtsWatch), and author of "liquid, impressionist piano writing and fluent melding" of voices (New York Classical Review), Neher's compositions are inspired by the climate crisis, the tender love of family and friends, and the eerie mystery of deep ocean life. She is Composer in Residence for the Beaverton Community Band. She has been commissioned and performed by the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Third Angle New Music, FearNoMusic, Dinosaur Annex, New Opera West, Mirror Visions Ensemble, Alma Ensemble, Opera Elect, and Opera Santa Barbara, among others.
Her awards include the Flute New Music Consortium Competition, ICDA/ICF Choral Competition, Mirror Visions Ensemble Young Composer Competition and the Celebris Ensemble Choral Competition.
http://www.lisanehermusic.com/