Courtesy of Corporate Image

It has taken six months to prepare the scores for The Symphonic Rocks concerts that will be held at the GrandWest Grand Arena in Cape Town on October 1, and the Carnival City Big Top Arena on October 7.

John Walton from the Cape Town Pops Orchestra first started scoring the music in April this year. His aim was to ensure a seamless musical marriage between the full symphony orchestra and popular South African musicians Flat Stanley, Arno Carstens, Loyiso, Ard Matthews of Just Jinjer, CrashCarBurn, Zebra and Giraffe and Tumi & The Volume. Joining the impressive lineup for the Johannesburg concert will be Locnville and Freshlyground’s Zolani Mahola.

The orchestra will consist of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani (kettle drums), mallet percussion (xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone and marimba), general orchestral percussion, 10 first violins, eight second violins, six violas, six cellos and three double basses.

According to Walton, “We are turning the orchestra inside out when compared to the traditional classical layout where the strings are in front, followed by woodwind, followed by brass and percussion, and will place the strings at the back.  The reason for this is that keeping the loudest instruments up front with the strings (quietest) at the rear will give us the best possible sound design for the show.”

The volume of writing is staggering and first began in April this year, finally completing the task this week.  The first step in the process was transcribing recordings of all the songs into music notation, as the songs weren’t available in sheet music.  From there, John says “I let the music speak to me.  It takes a while for my subconscious to start suggesting what orchestral textures, counterpoints etc to use for each song.  But once this starts, it’s hard to turn it off.  In fact, my consciousness gets flooded with ideas and I then have to sift through them, and not be precious about it.  Some nice ideas need to be discarded, unfortunately, as the effect for the show needs to be put first.”

John has also written an overture that will transit smoothly into the first item and prepare the audience for what lies ahead.  He has also written bows music for the finale. A special rearrangement of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (with a twist) will begin the second act.

“I love doing this work and it is a privilege to be able to conduct an exceptionally fine professional orchestra playing my arrangements – there’s not much that beats this experience.”

The concert is the brainchild of Flat Stanley’s front man, Andy Mac.

The shows start at 8pm and tickets are available from Computicket.  For more information, visit www.symphonicrocks.co.za