MANN MUSIC ROOM: VAULT

Blog Entry by Jack McCarthy, Historian, The Mann Center for the Performing Arts

The Mann Center traces its history to the Robin Hood Dell, which opened in 1930 in East Fairmount Park as a summer home for The Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1976 the organization moved to a new venue in West Fairmount Park. Originally called Robin Hood Dell West, it was later renamed the Mann Music Center in honor of its longtime director and benefactor Fredric Mann, and subsequently renamed the Mann Center for the Performing Arts.

The Mann will offer its popular “Movies @ the Mann” series on four nights this season, from July 23rd to September 29th. Featuring screenings of well-known films with live orchestral accompaniment, “Movies @ the Mann” began in the mid-2010s and has been a mainstay of Mann programming ever since. This year’s series includes three classic movies—Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Godfather—whose iconic scores will be performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra or The Philly Pops, and a special sing-along showing of the film, Encanto, with live band accompaniment.
 
Film music has become an increasingly important part of symphony orchestra programming in recent years. Originally dismissed as light entertainment with little artistic merit by most orchestra leaders and critics, film scores have gained in respectability in the early twenty-first century while becoming enormously popular with audiences. Although film music began showing up on concert programs more regularly some twenty years ago, it was not until relatively recently that the technology developed to the point that orchestras and venues could meet the very challenging technical demands of offering complete, uninterrupted movies synchronized to live orchestral accompaniment.
 
When John Williams, the most successful film composer of all time, made his debut at the Mann Center on July 15, 2003, conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra in “John Williams Salutes the Silver Screen,” featuring selections from his beloved scores to E. T., Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter, it was a traditional music-only concert, not accompanied by screenings of the films. The same was true for subsequent movie-themed Philadelphia Orchestra concerts at the Mann over the next decade, including a 2009 “Hollywood Classics Under the Stars: Star Wars and More” concert and a 2012 concert salute to Williams’ eightieth birthday. These shows featuring the music of John Williams and other film composers did not include screenings or clips of the films. Things would soon begin to change, but it would be a gradual process to showing complete films with live orchestra.
 
On June 27, 2013, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performed selections from three Pixar films at the Mann—Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Brave—as clips from the movies were shown on a screen. A month later, on July 23, 2013, Philadelphia Orchestra associate conductor Cristian Macelaru led the ensemble in musical selections from the Disney animated film, Fantasia, as parts of the film were shown on screen. Neither of these concerts entailed continuous, uninterrupted showings of the movies, however; rather, they were performances of individual orchestral pieces from the film scores, synched to specific clips from the films.
 
(The  Philadelphia Orchestra has a rich history with Fantasia, having been involved in its creation. The original groundbreaking 1940 film was a collaboration between Walt Disney and the Orchestra’s renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski, who selected and arranged the pieces that formed the film’s soundtrack; led The Philadelphia Orchestra in recording the soundtrack in the Academy of Music; and appeared in the film himself.)
 
Screenings of complete, uninterrupted films with live orchestral accompaniment began in earnest in 2014, when for three nights in July, The Philadelphia Orchestra played the full film scores to Gladiator, West Side Story, and Star Trek Into Darkness as the movies were shown. Billed as “Movie Nights at the Mann— With The Philadelphia Orchestra And Giant Screens,” guests were encouraged “to make a night of it and pack a picnic dinner — and BYOB, too. Bring a bottle of your favorite wine and watch the films unfold on the big screen.” The concerts were a big hit and for the following season in 2015, in which The Philadelphia Orchestra accompanied screenings of The Godfather and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, the Mann upgraded the sound system in the lawn area and added jumbo screens on either side of the stage.
 
2016 saw the first use of the now-familiar “Movies @ the Mann” by-line in advertising for the series, which that season included The Philadelphia Orchestra accompanying Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra accompanying Back to the Future and performing video game music in a “Pokemon Symphonic Evolutions” concert. The next year, in 2017, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia accompanied La La Land, while The Philadelphia Orchestra accompanied Jurassic Park and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
 
By this time, movies with live orchestra accompaniment had become one of the most popular offerings of the Mann season. The 2018 series featured Star Wars: A New Hope and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan, both with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and in 2019 the series included Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Reading Symphony Orchestra; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, with The Philadelphia Orchestra; and Grease with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. There were no concerts in 2020 due to COVID, but 2021 featured Toy Story with The Philadelphia Orchestra and E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Black Panther with the Mann Center Festival Orchestra.
 
This year’s Movies @ the Mann series—featuring The Philadelphia Orchestra accompanying Harry Potter, The Philly Pops accompanying Star Wars and The Godfather, and a live band playing to a sing-along screening of Encanto—is sure to be a treat once again for audiences of all ages.

For more information and tickets to the Movies @ the Mann series, click here.