The Art of Live-to-Picture Film Score Performances

In this additional segment after Tim Davies and David Das studied Danny Elfman’s 1993 masterpiece, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, we invited composer and conductor Susie Seiter to join us for an engaging discussion about the new movement towards performing film music with live orchestra, and the unique challenges that this tweak to the art form is bringing.

ABOUT TIM DAVIES

Tim Davies is one of the busiest conductors and orchestrators in Hollywood. His film and TV credits include The Lego Movie 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Hotel Transylvania 3, Empire, La La Land, Minions, and Frozen. In addition he has a wealth of video game credits under his belt, having orchestrated and conducted scores to Marvel’s Spider-Man, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and multiple titles from the God of War, Infamous, Resistance, and Batman: Arkham series. He is also becoming known in the concert hall having conducted Frozen Live and Beauty and the Beast with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and Pokemon: Symphonic Evolutions with the Baltimore and San Diego Symphonies. In January 2018 Davies conducted the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, for the first time, featuring his arrangements for Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds.

The Babyface concert was the most recent in a string of collaborations with the NSO and the Kennedy Center that have included arranging and playing drums for the twentieth anniversary concert of NAS’ Illmatic, being lead arranger for Kendrick Lamar’s performance of To Pimp a Butterfly, and working on shows with artists Ledisi and Common. He has arranged for albums by chart-topping artists Amy Winehouse, Akon, Miguel, Cee Lo Green and for orchestras all over the world from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to frequent collaborations with The Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest. He plays drums and writes for his own group, the 18-piece Tim Davies Big Band, and received Grammy nominations for Best Instrumental Composition in 2010 and 2016.

Davies has also worked as a composer, beginning with a collaboration with two-time Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla on the score to the Fox animated film The Book of Life. This was also the beginning of a relationship with producer/director Guillermo del Toro, which led to writing additional music for Crimson Peak and then creating the Annie-nominated score for his TV show, Trollhunters, produced by Dreamworks Animation for Netflix.

ABOUT SUSIE SEITER

Susie Benchasil Seiter is a prolific conductor and orchestrator for film, television, video games, and live concerts. She recently completed a worldwide orchestra tour as conductor and music director for multiple Grammy-winning Evanescence and Billboard Music Award winner and YouTube sensation, Lindsey Stirling.

Seiter is perhaps best known for orchestrating and conducting the remarkably successful orchestral concert tours The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses and Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions. Combined, these tours have been performed more than 300 times by some of the world’s most respected orchestras. In 2015 alone, she conducted over 60 orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic at London’s Apollo Hammersmith, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Madison Square Garden, the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap, and the Sydney Symphony at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Seiter excels in leading popular symphonic film concerts such as Frozen Live and Pixar in Concert. In 2015 she conducted and hosted the Orlando Philharmonic’s inaugural season at the Dr. Phillips Center Walt Disney Amphitheater with Pixar in Concert. Later this season she will conduct John Williams music with a performance of Star Wars: A New Hope in Bulgaria.