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Geek Girl Authority
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
Concert Review: MARVEL STUDIOS' INFINITY SAGA CONCERT EXPERIENCE
On a surprisingly windy summer day in Toronto, Marvel fans came together to experience the Infinity Saga like never before. The Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience combined select scenes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe with live orchestral music from the franchise to produce an immersive experience unlike a regular movie-going one. The concert was brought to the city by Kashamara Productions, a Canadian-based special events company. The concert music was conducted by renowned Japanese-American conductor Sarah Hicks, and brought to life by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. About the Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience Photo courtesy Monita Roy Mohan The Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience debuted in 2024 and has since slowly been doing the rounds of North America. There were supposed to be two Toronto concerts, but the Friday show was cancelled. The Saturday show, which is the one I attended, therefore, had a packed audience, which was spectacular because the thunderous clapping and hooting reverberated across the expansive Meridian Hall. RELATED: Marvel Studios Announces Expansive Avengers: Doomsday Cast The concert kicked off with Hicks saying 'Avengers Assemble' to thunderous applause. After a short trailer of the MCU, the show began with the Marvel fanfare. But of course. The concert charted the journeys of key characters from the Infinity Saga, with a focus on the big three—Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). We got to see a few full scenes of their most heroic moments, all with the live orchestra's music playing alongside. Other hero tributes included nods to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), surprisingly Hope Van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), as well as Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), and, of course, an emotionally heavy dose of T'Challa/Black Panther, played by the late Chadwick Boseman. There were loud cheers for Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston), but also, randomly, Thanos (Josh Brolin). RELATED: Sadie Sink to Star in Spider-Man 4 The pre-intermission section of the Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience was joyful and bright. The inclusion of humorous fight scenes and banter from The Avengers added to the ebullience. Post-intermission was much darker, but it was absolute perfection—the second part almost exclusively covered Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame . It was intense and ever-so emotional. The Music of Marvel Photo courtesy Monita Roy Mohan The Marvel Cinematic Universe has plenty of stunning themes and musical interludes, but the franchise doesn't always get the credit it deserves for its music. Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience spotlights the more memorable musical moments of the franchise. I couldn't stop swaying and bobbing to many of my favorite tunes, like the theme from Thor , and the Oscar-winning music of Black Panther . RELATED: Captain America: Brave New World and the Importance of Self-Love A huge cheer went up for the Thor: Ragnarok theme. But the cheers and hoots for The Avengers theme, which played over the scene of the six original Avengers coming together, were deafening. The audience drowned the music out with our applause. While the music was glorious, there were a few missteps. I loved the inclusion of 'The Star-Spangled Man,' but I could not hear the lyrics. Not sure why the voices were completely drowned out by the music. The scene introducing Thor, 'Wakanda,' and Killmonger's theme seemed muted, as if the key percussions were missing. But the music picked up after that. RELATED: Denzel Washington Teases Black Panther 3 Role The Characters Photo courtesy Monita Roy Mohan The Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience emphasized the journey of some of the main characters. So, despite one audience member loudly yelling for Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier was hardly in the concert. Interestingly, despite the Snap scene being played out almost in full, Bucky's part was cut out. Strange choice. There was far too little of the Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) tribute. Only her theme tune and a short montage were played. But she got her due later in the concert. The loud hollers for Captain Marvel's epic entrance in Endgame made my heart sing. For all the hate that the ladies of Marvel, especially Brie Larson as Carol, get from the online community, an experience like Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience is a nice reminder that there are actual fans out there who don't revel in prejudice. RELATED: The Missing Women From the Avengers: Doomsday Cast I found the choices of Steve's scenes spectacular—they truly did showcase his heroism. But they also inadvertently showed off how brave and strategic Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) was. My favorite part of the concert was the obvious love for Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). One woman screamed throughout the scene when Wanda staved off Thanos' attack while destroying the Mind Stone, and the love of her life, Vision (Paul Bettany). It was a bit much, but we felt the love. Another audience member stood up and clapped while Wanda fought Thanos in Endgame . The concert also gave us the funeral and farewell for Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) that the all-male writing-directing team of Avengers: Endgame didn't bother to give her. Not only that, but the Black Widow tribute was absolutely stellar. As Natasha Romanoff fell to her death in Vormir, the concert cut to a collection of scenes of Black Widow throughout the MCU, including the dream sequences of the Red Room and numerous touching moments between Natasha and her sister, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). The tears flowed freely. Literally, the best part of the show. RELATED: Movie Review: Thunderbolts* An Unmissable Experience The Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga Concert Experience ended the way Avengers: Endgame did, concluding decades of nostalgia and investment in these characters with Alan Silvestri's unforgettable musical refrain. Yes, there were more tears. The Concert Experience isn't just a way to re-tread the journeys of the Avengers, it also recontextualizes the meaning they have to us — the audience and fans — and to the new heroes who've joined the MCU since the Infinity Saga ended. RELATED: Why Did Thunderbolts* Even Bother Including Taskmaster? We've all watched Marvel films in theatres far and wide, but the best part of the concert was that it gave us fans the ability to do the things that are not possible in the movie hall — we screamed, we clapped, we hooted. We re-lived the magic of Marvel, one musical theme at a time. Who Is Bob Reynolds, the Newest Hero Introduced in THUNDERBOLTS*? Monita has been championing diversity, inclusivity, and representation in entertainment media through her work for over a decade. She is a contributor at Bam Smack Pow, and her bylines have appeared on 3-time Eisner Award-winning publication Women Write About Comics, Geek Girl Authority, HuffPost, (formerly Soundsphere/Screensphere, FanSided's Show Snob, and Vocal. She was also a TV/Movies features writer at Alongside her twin, Monita co-hosts the pop culture podcast Stereo Geeks.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Why a Percussionist Was Playing a Siren
Good morning. It's Friday. We'll find out what happened when an experienced percussionist rehearsed with a siren at the New York Philharmonic. We'll also get details on a 30-day reprieve from the Trump administration on congestion pricing. Joseph Kelly's first rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic went well. He felt he was 'getting familiar' with the instrument he was playing in his spot behind the trombone section — an instrument he had not played before. In the second rehearsal, he said, 'I felt like my approach was coming together.' Then he broke the instrument. The instrument was an air raid siren. Kelly was one of 12 percussionists who had parts in 'Amériques,' a dissonant piece that the composer Edgard Varèse began writing in 1918, a couple of years after Varèse moved to Brooklyn from Paris. As the critic Harold C. Schonberg observed when the Philharmonic played it in 1975, 'it calls for unconventional instruments and makes unconventional sound.' It also calls for an unconventionally sized orchestra. The version of the piece that the Philharmonic played squeezed 122 musicians, 53 more than were needed for Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 last season. Only two of the 12 percussionists in the Varèse were full-time members of the orchestra. Kelly, who is the assistant principal timpanist and a section percussionist with the Toronto Symphony, and the other nine were hired as 'extra musicians' to fill out the unusually large percussion section in 'Amériques.' Varèse wrote parts for castanets, sleigh bells, whips and even a drumlike instrument called a lion's roar. 'I think that was him experiencing the city' when he was still a new New Yorker, Kelly said. The sound of sirens is 'so much a part of being in New York that you almost don't notice it' after a while, said Kelly, who graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and lived in Manhattan for seven years before moving to Chicago, Miami and then Toronto. The note in the Philharmonic program book said that some listeners had 'latched on to' the siren 'and decided that 'Amériques' depicted a bustling modern American city.' Varèse, though, called 'Amériques' 'a piece of absolute music, completely unrelated to the noises of modern life.' But was it? He also said that 'Amériques' was 'my own rather vivid reaction to life as I know it.' Unlike a violinist or a cellist who carries his own instrument wherever he plays, Kelly did not bring any sirens on the plane to New York. The Philharmonic has several, and when he tried them out, a military-green one caught his ear. 'I liked that one in particular because I was able to start and stop it very comfortably and control the dynamics more clearly' — all elements that mattered in 'Amériques' because Varèse wrote instructions in the score for 'when to rise and fall, how loud to play and when to cut off,' he said. The instrument had been modified to start and stop with a handle. During the second rehearsal, the pin that connected the gears to the handle broke. 'I stopped too suddenly,' Kelly said. The gears no longer whirled, and the siren no longer whirred. Kelly lugged the object backstage and, with the production crew, took it apart. 'It looked like we were performing surgery,' he said. 'It's at least from the '40s. This is from an age when things were built to be repaired — not like now, when something breaks and you throw it out and get a new one.' The broken pin was stuck, so someone carried the parts to the machine shop at the Metropolitan Opera, just across the plaza at Lincoln Center. But the pin could not be salvaged, and a replacement pin was nowhere to be found. So Kelly tried other sirens in the Philharmonic's collection. 'It's the New York Philharmonic,' he said. 'They had four other sirens.' He ended up using two red sirens, one hand-held and one mounted on a table. 'They cut through the orchestra more easily than the original one,' he said, and that 'served the music better.' Early showers and cloudy skies should give way to sunshine by noon. Expect gusty breezes up to 39 miles per hour and high temperatures in the low 50s. Both the wind and the temperatures will fall off overnight, with a low around 42. In effect until March 31 (Eid al-Fitr). The latest New York news Trump official delays congestion pricing deadline New York was defiant when the Trump administration demanded that congestion pricing end by today. Now Washington is willing to wait a month. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, extended the deadline by 30 days. But the reprieve came with a threat: 'Continued noncompliance will not be taken lightly,' he said in a social media post that was directed at Gov. Kathy Hochul. He called congestion pricing 'unlawful' and said that the federal government and President Trump were 'putting New York on notice.' 'Your refusal to end cordon pricing' — as congestion pricing is sometimes called — 'and your open disrespect towards the federal government is unacceptable,' he said. It was yet another twist in the fight between the administration and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the program. A spokesman for Hochul said that Duffy's post 'doesn't change what Governor Hochul has been saying all along: The cameras are staying on.' The M.T.A. took the Trump administration to court last month, arguing that the administration could not reverse a program that had been approved. That approval came in the last two months of the Biden administration. Duffy's announcement about the extended deadline came two days after he sent a letter to the M.T.A. in which he threatened to withhold federal money from the authority if it did not respond to questions about crime on the subway, which he characterized as out of control. Crime on the subway has, in fact, been declining. Duffy's letter made no mention of congestion pricing, but some transportation specialists and legal experts suggested that the missive was a thinly veiled effort to gain leverage over the M.T.A. Trump has promised to end congestion pricing and could use a range of tactics to get his way, legal experts said. Most passenger cars are charged $9 during peak hours when they drive into the 'congestion relief zone,' which is anywhere in Manhattan south of 60th Street. The tolls are discounted by 75 percent overnight. Seeing Stars Dear Diary: It was 1985, and my husband and I were living on the Upper East Side. We planned a rare date night out and found a friend to babysit our 1-year-old daughter. We set out for a nearby theater where 'Cocoon,' with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn among the stars, was playing. I was a fan of the couple, having seen them onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis when I was growing up in Iowa. Unfortunately, when we got to the theater, we found that the next showing was sold out. Determined not to waste the evening, we walked a few blocks to another theater, where 'Prizzi's Honor,' with Kathleen Turner, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston, was about to start. As we waited to buy tickets, I noticed an older couple standing a few feet ahead of us in line. I nudged my husband. 'Look,' I whispered. 'That couple: That's Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn!' — Jean Young Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Brandon Thorp, Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
