Sarah Hicks is the Minnesota Orchestra's principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall. The series highlights popular music, jazz, Broadway classics, movie scores and more. And there are a number of holiday concerts on the orchestra's calendar, as well as some events that you might not expect. Sarah Hicks joined us to talk about it. Listen to the interview using the audio player above, and read a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: Sarah, welcome to The Current's Morning Show. It's so nice to meet you and have you on.

Sarah Hicks: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Jill Riley: Well, for The Current audience, Sarah, I wonder if we could start with just a bit of a overview. Tell us about the Live at Orchestra Hall series.

Sarah Hicks: The Live at Orchestra Hall series really encompasses just a huge breadth of programming. It includes our movies and music series, Elf is coming up. It brings in guest artists. Last season, we had Ben Rector and Cody Fry. It incorporates concerts like Twist and Shout, which is a Beatles show that's coming up. We do produce things in house. We did an incredible set of concerts with Nur-D last season. So it is a huge scope of programming, of popular music, crossover music, guest artists, and movies and everything in between. We just had a John Williams night without a screen. So it's a little bit of everything, really.

Jill Riley: Yeah, Sarah, one of the shows that you mentioned, Elf in Concert. So that's the weekend of December 20. I'm really excited, personally excited, for this one. I'm going to bring my son. He's nine years old. He loves music. I think that this kind of world and what he's going to experience is, I think it's going to blow his mind. I'm excited. I hope he feels the same! Now, how does the orchestra do a screening with a film? I've heard about these, but I've never experienced one myself.

Sarah Hicks: Well, it's pretty complicated. It's highly technical. Basically, I have music. I have a score in front of me that was specially made for performing the film. I have a special set of scores. I have music that's created to do these live-to-film projections. There's a special version of the film that I have in front of me to help me coordinate the music. There's a lot of technical things: punches and streamers and measure counts and beat counts that help me align everything really precisely with the film. And then I communicate that to the orchestra. I often have a click track in my ear. It's a lot of stuff. It's like, I always say it's like playing a demented video game with a group of 100 musicians in front of me. So it's complicated.

Jill Riley: Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of moving parts. You're listening to The Current; Sarah Hicks is the Minnesota Orchestra's principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall. And we're talking about some upcoming events, and we — I kind of wanted to point out and talk about some of the ways that families can enjoy the orchestra together. I mean, I just mentioned a little bit ago that I'm going to bring my son to see the Elf in Concert event. So Sarah, I wonder if you could talk about the family concert series at the Minnesota Orchestra?

Sarah Hicks: So we do have two relaxed family concerts coming up. One is on Sunday March 2; one is on Sunday, April 13. It's a fantastic way for families to come into Orchestra Hall and a really welcoming environment, listening to music. On March 2, it's going to be orchestral music that's inspired by visual art. So it's a nice way to connect to art forms and to bring the family into the hall and to experience this incredible power that is an orchestra: 80 people on stage, working together to do something beautiful and amazing. So I think that's always worthwhile.

And then on April 13, this is going to be music that sort of evokes ecosystems from around the world. And our assistant concertmaster, Rui Du, is going to perform some segments from the Butterfly Lovers concerto, which is one of my favorites. So it's a great way to hear some repertoire that you might not hear, but also a way to interact with music and see it within the context of sort of other topics, like the ecosystem. So I really think the orchestra does a great job of curating these experiences, which is not just about music, but how music connects the world. And I think that's so important for young people and families to really be able to experience.

Jill Riley: For sure. I love the words "relaxed" and "welcoming"; I think that those are key words when it comes to families and being able to experience something like orchestral music and the Minnesota Orchestra and a trip to Orchestra Hall. Sarah Hicks is with me on The Current's Morning Show. You know, there are a couple of events that really caught our eye, especially with the music that we play at The Current; shows that really connect rock and pop music, indie music to classical music. Well, first of all, the Beatles and the work that they did with producer George Martin, really playing in both of those spaces — in pop music and experimentation and orchestral music. There also is a show coming up at Orchestra Hall with involving the music of Radiohead. So first, I wonder if we could talk about that Beatles show, Saturday, January 4.

Sarah Hicks: Well, it's going to cover everything from The Beatles, beginning with their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, lots of No. 1 hits, "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold your Hand." It's going to be accompanied by rare photos that will be projected on screen that might be familiar only to the most diehard Beatles fans. So they'll be new and really interesting. So it's another opportunity to experience this great orchestra melding what they do with the music of a rock band, and also have these projections. So it's sort of a really multimedia experience. We hope that people will have a great time attending.

Jill Riley: Yeah, and I feel like that one's really timely with that Beatles 64, that new documentary that's on Disney+ right now, I think there's kind of a really a renewed interest in that time period. Sarah, I wonder if we could talk about one more before we let you go: We have a lot of Radiohead fans that listen to The Current; another show in particular that caught our eye is that is Steve Hackman's Brahms X Radiohead, and that concert is March 21. So how does Brahms relate to the music of Radiohead? Because that was a really unexpected pairing when I read that.

Sarah Hicks: It is an unexpected pairing. What Steve does is he weaves in and superimposes and inserts melodies of Radiohead into the symphony of Brahms, which I think is a really extraordinary way of encountering both artists, if you were, and so that they're in conversation with each other. I've heard some of these concerts, and they really are quite remarkable. There's going to be three vocalists there, so it's a way of understanding symphonic Brahms through the lens of Radiohead, but also being able to hear these songs that we know and love by Radiohead through the lens of a classical composer and the symphonic medium. So I think it's a real trip. And I love these presentations, and I think Steve is a brilliant musician, so I really encourage people to check that one out.

Jill Riley: Yeah, that is Steve Hackman's Brahms X Radiohead, and that concert is March 21. Well, Sarah Hicks is the Minnesota orchestra's principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall, the series, and you can learn more about the Minnesota Orchestra at minnesotaorchestra.org. Sarah, thank you so much for the conversation. I think there's some really neat things coming up at Orchestra Hall, and I appreciate you taking the time.

Sarah Hicks: Of course! We hope to see everyone there.

Jill Riley: All right, well, let's go out with a little Radiohead from the OK Computer album. It's on The Current.

External Link

Minnesota Orchestra – official site