Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino is coming to Dublin this week, for a pair of very special performances at the National Concert Hall.
On Friday 21 June, he'll perform his scores for some of the most popular and acclaimed movies in recent history with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, while on Saturday 22nd June, he conducts the European premiere of We Have to Go Back: The LOST Concert Dublin, an evening of music and storytelling celebrating his compositions for the classic TV series.
Below, Movies and Musicals presenter Aedín Gormley tells us why she is such a fan…
That scene in the Pixar animated feature Up... You know the one I mean, right? You cried, right? The wordless four-minute scene where we see a montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together, ending with Ellie’s illness and death. It’s incredibly emotional visually, and Michael Giacchino was one of the few to see this scene without music. It was his task to score this stunning animated sequence - and he did it beautifully.
A poignant waltzing melody, the instrumentation immediately nostalgic and adaptable to both joy and sadness. He deservedly took home an Academy Award for best original score.
Giacchino began his career scoring video games and writing impressive scores for the television shows Alias and Lost with director J.J. Abrams. This collaboration proved hugely successful leading on to big budget films with Abrams such as Star Trek, Mission Impossible III and Super 8. In recent years, he's scored Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, War for the Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Pixar's Inside Out, Coco and The Incredibles 2.
Listen: Aedín Gormley talks to composer Michael Giacchino for Movies & Musicals:
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For me, Giacchino is the next John Williams. Apart from following in the footsteps of Williams, scoring Jurassic World, he became the first person other than John Williams to score a Star Wars film (Rogue One) and did a brilliant job. In an interview with Variety, he acknowledged that no one can top Williams but that he felt up to the task: "There were all these new characters, so they needed new themes. But I wanted it to feel like Star Wars. It’s a very specific style of orchestration and composing, grounded in Ravel, Prokofiev, Holst."
This is one of the great things about Giacchino as a composer; there is a classic old-fashioned quality to his compositions using full orchestra and nodding to the greats that have come before him, but he brings a fresh twist to each score and totally enters into the spirit of the film in question. He is a natural, and is obviously passionate about his work. He chooses to work only with people he knows he will get on with. He is also popular among studio musicians, as he likes to draw on local talent and often uses musicians he heard playing on soundtracks as a kid.
Finally, when I see a new Michael Giacchino release, before I listen to it, I know that he will bring a smile to my face with his witty track titles. He is a very funny… or should I say punny guy. His track titles for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes include; Ceasar no evil, hear no evil, The Apes of Wrath, Gibbon take and Aped Crusaders!
When it comes to Hollywood composers, they don’t come much bigger or indeed much wittier than Michael Giacchino.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra presents A Celebration of the Music of Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino, conducted by Michael Giacchino & Ernst van Tiel and presented by Aedín Gormley, on Friday 21 June 2018 at 7.30pm in the National Concert Hall - find out more here.
The European premiere of We Have to Go Back: The LOST Concert Dublin, conducted by Michael Giacchino with special guest presenter Carlton Cuse, is on Saturday 22 June 2018 at 7.30pm in the National Concert Hall - find out more here.
