KW Symphony’s “James Bond: The Music”

I went to the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s performance of “James Bond: The Music.” It was glorious — this is music I absolutely love, and the K-W Symphony never lets you down.

The orchestra’s brass and percussion section were beefed up from what they are for playing things like Beethoven.

The conductor was John Morris Russell, who I’ve seen a couple of times before. He’s a terrific conductor, and has a great relationship with the orchestra. His jokes are juvenile and he occasionally gets his facts wrong — but I’m there for the music.

Many of the tunes are songs with lyrics, so there were two singers — Ron Bohmer and Capathia Jenkins. Bohmer was all right, but Jenkins was magnificent — you could call her the woman with the golden voice.

They could have easily filled the entire concert with James Bond tunes (for example, “You Only Live Twice” and “A View to a Kill” were missing). But they included some other “spy fi” tunes — I wasn’t upset, though, because any day you hear “Soul Bossa Nova,” “Mission: Impossible,” and “The Pink Panther” is a good day.

Russell got the audience to snap their fingers during the appropriate parts of “The Pink Panther.”

He surprised us with the song “The Writing’s on the Wall” from the upcoming James Bond movie Spectre — this was its North American premiere.

As an encore they played a great orchestral version of John Barry’s “Goldfinger.”

Here is the complete list of tunes:

  • James Bond Theme — Monty Norman
  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — John Barry
  • Thunderball — John Barry
  • For Your Eyes Only — Bill Conti
  • Dr. No Suite — Monty Norman
  • Tomorrow Never Dies — David Arnold
  • Surrender (Tomorrow Never Dies) — David Arnold
  • From Russia with Love — John Barry
  • Diamonds are Forever — John Barry
  • Live and Let Die — George Martin
  • Skyfall — Adele
  • Soul Bossa Nova (Austin Powers) — Quincy Jones
  • Peter Gunn — Henry Mancini
  • The Avengers (TV show) — Laurie Johnson
  • Mission: Impossible — Lalo Schifrin
  • The Pink Panther — Henry Mancini
  • Shaft — Isaac Hayes
  • The Writing’s on the Wall (Spectre) — Sam Smith
  • License to Kill — Michael Kamen
  • The Look of Love (Casino Royale 1967)– Burt Bacharach
  • You Know My Name (Casino Royale 2006) — Chris Cornell
  • Nobody Does It Better (The Spy Who Loved Me) — Marvin Hamlisch

I previously reviewed the KW Symphony’s concert series “Beethoven Marathon.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2015 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Reviews of music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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