I had a good seat in Row E for Saturday's El Paso Symphony Orchestra concert, but I snuck upstairs to the mezzanine for a better view of the program's second half — a multi-media presentation of Gustav Holst's "The Planets."
What that means is that conductor and music director Sarah Ioannides wanted a video to accompany the 50-minute, seven-movement piece, the British composer's World War I-era astrological journey through the solar system. Symphony brass reached out to NASA, the country's top astronomical agency, for images and UTEP for someone to put those images together into a cohesive whole.
That someone was Robert "Bobby" Gutierrez, an El Paso native and senior lecturer in UTEP's film and video department, who spent more than 20 years editing videos, movie trailers and more in Hollywood. No disrespect to the conductors, the musicians or the management, but Gutierrez's work was the real star Saturday night.
Drawing on NASA live-action footage, computer-generated animation and still photos taken mostly by the Hubble Space Telescope, Gutierrez fashioned together a 52.5-minute video (using a performance conducted by Andre Previn as his guide) of this fascinating imagery.
But he didn't just slap together a bunch of cool pictures and videos, he choreographed these visions of other worlds, many taken by satellites and other unmanned craft, to the music.
So when the music from the first movement, "Mars, the Bringer of War" got bombastic, the NASA-provided video responded with explosive images, like CGI of the Mars Explorer bouncing on the Martian surface or shooting free of its capsule before reaching its final destination.
Other movements, like "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" and "Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity," danced in step with elliptical orbits, thunderstorms or that roiling, stormy red spot on the largest of our planetary neighbors.
It was a compelling bit of visual storytelling, a colorful and absorbing reminder that we are but specks in the cosmos.
But it also was a mesmerizing complement to Holst's music, the bedrock of modern musical interpretations of the frontier we've barely scratched; music, by the way, that was played with great passion and energy by the orchestra, its numbers swelled to accommodate the composer's requirements, including extra percussion, woodwinds and brass.
Especially impressive was the final movement, "Neptune, the Mystic," when more than 50 voices of UTEP's Women's Choral and Glee Club, singing off stage, provided the kind of wordless, otherworldly touch Holst intended.
It was inspiring to see and hear how the orchestra and its conductor, seated due to the fact that she's been carrying twins for more than six months and has swollen knees, rose to the occasion.
Yeah, I heard an occasional sour or misfired note once or twice, but for the most part Ioannides didn't let a monitor distract her from keeping a tight rein on the orchestra, which worked confidently and intently through a diverse, well-paced piece of music that just seemed to fly by Saturday night.
The beauty of this particular approach was just how well the aural and visual worked together, even though symphony staff had to fiddle all week with the projector's and the screen's location, settling on a rear projection system, with the projector just behind the brass in the back, with a smallish screen suspended over the middle of the orchestra.
It was a performance and presentation that dripped with the sense of awe and wonder that space, the final frontier, tends to evoke in us all. Certainly, Holst captured that well before we had the kind of technology that allowed us to identify Pluto, not represented in this symphony, first as a planet,then later as a dwarf planet.
Further adding to the experience was the pre-concert talk by scientists David Pieri and Ashley Davies of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The pair, who spoke to EPISD students Friday morning, packed the 200-seat Philanthropy Theatre on Friday, a rarity for the free lecture series, and drew more than 70 on Saturday, showing many images that appear in the video, including detailed shots of the planets and their moons.
Their presence was a nice touch on the symphony's part, essentially supplementing Holst's vision with a picture of what we know today.
The planetary journey was preceded in the first half by Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, which featured mostly the strings and understated but exacting performances by principal flutist Melissa Colgin-Abeln and harpist Grace Cloutier.
The Mozart composition seemed quaint compared to the featured attraction, which drew additional audience who skipped the Mozart like it was a no-name opening act.
The highlight of the opening duo's performance was their encore, Debussy's "Claire de Lune," which, with its luminous, haunting melody, was the perfect segue from the lighter first half to the more fascinating second.
It was Ioannides' last concert of the season — she'll miss the April concerts due to her pregnancy, but is expected back for the July 4 concert at the Chamizal. She went out on a high note.
The multi-media approach was no gimmick, but an inventive bit of theatricality that augmented, not supplanted the music. And it was a hit with music fans, nearly selling out (a rarity) on Friday and filling more than 1,600 of the Plaza's 2,000 seats on Saturday.
I'm just glad I was in one of them. It was by far my favorite of the five symphony programs so far this season.
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