When Film Music Comes Alive

A trip to the cinema is always full of excitement and anticipation. We all know the feeling: you take your seat, the lights go down and you wait with bated breath to hear the Main Title music that introduces the film.

From these first few notes a new world is born. Whether it’s a fantasy realm with fire-breathing dragons or a dystopian thriller, this opening music introduces the place we will call home for the next couple of hours. Music, perhaps more than anything else, can do this; it can build worlds, create characters and tell us how to feel about it all.

It is for this reason that I think a trip to hear film music in the concert hall is especially evocative. When these timeless melodies are given the opportunity to step out from behind the screen and themselves become the main event, we begin to realise just how much of the emotional weight-bearing the music is doing in a film.

Take, for example, John Williams’ Flying Theme from the Spielberg classic E.T. It is virtually impossible to listen to that music and not picture a bicycle soaring above the clouds. Even if you have never seen the film, the music lifts you up along with itself.

Perhaps Steven Spielberg put it best when he presented John Williams with an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. “Without John Williams”, he said, “bikes don’t really fly, nor do brooms in Quidditch matches, nor do men in red capes. There is no Force; dinosaurs do not walk the Earth. We do not wonder; we do not weep; we do not believe”.

Ask so many musicians and they will tell you that film music is one of the reasons they wanted to become musicians (they’ll also tell you it can be some of the hardest music out there to play). This is certainly true for me, and it’s why I’m so very much looking forward to conducting the City of Stoke-on-Trent Symphony Orchestra in its Music From the Movies concert on 6 June.

Here is an opportunity for me to showcase some of the music that has inspired me throughout my life; music that still makes me laugh, cry, or even terrifies the life out of me! Here is a chance to showcase some of the brilliant composers who have brought powerful stories to life in ways nothing else could have achieved.

But, above all else, here also is an opportunity for you, our audience, to come on a whistlestop tour of these worlds that have meant so much to you for so long. As you listen, be transported and believe once more that bikes really can fly; that there is a Force and that dinosaurs really do walk the Earth.

Joe Hearson, CSSO Artistic Director & Principal Conductor, 2026.