When someone pictures an orchestra, it often involves stuffy rich people and slow music from the 17th century. However, orchestras have slowly come back into the cultural zeitgeist again thanks to a number of creative ideas.
Last Friday, I attended a show in Des Moines called Emo Orchestra, in which an orchestra played classic emo songs. For those that don’t know, emo, short for emotional, refers to a group of people who stereotypically have dyed black hair, tight band tees, extreme makeup, etc who listen to the music subgenre of the same name. Most popular during the early 2000s, emo music resembles punk and heavy rock but covers more emotional topics. Popular emo bands include My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Paramore, among many others.
As someone born in 2000, I was an aspiring emo child, something I was never able to actually bring to fruition due to the drop in popularity by the time I was a teen. I can track my love for emo music back to September 2013, as a classmate introduced me to My Chemical Romance the first week of school, only for me to learn they had broken up just six months earlier.
All this is to say I was thrilled to be attending this concert. I maybe should have done an iota of research, as it wasn’t quite what I expected. Rather than being a fully orchestral show, the emo band Hawthorne Heights played a variety of emo songs accompanied by an orchestra.
Considering emo stands for emotional, adding on orchestra really added to the emotional aspect of the music. This event really showed how the stereotypes surrounding orchestral music is changing, as most of the audience were obvious post-emo kids.
Similar to the Emo Orchestra, Boston-based Video Game Orchestra is a group that performs musical arrangements from video games. From Tetris and Zelda to Final Fantasy, the Video Game Orchestra has started a trend in bringing new music to the orchestra scene.
There’s even a local video game orchestra, the Des Moines Gamer Symphony Orchestra, which includes Creston-grad Joseph Mullin. Most recently the group performed at Urbandale High School, in which they highlighted music from Mario, Star Fox and Minecraft.
Bridging orchestral music with non-orchestral music is not the only way in which orchestras are becoming more popular for the regular person. In the last few years, film concerts have become popular.
In a film concert, an orchestra will play movie music live as the movie is playing. Films popularly used for such events include the Harry Potter and Star Wars movies, as well as “The Polar Express” and “Home Alone” during Christmas time.
While I have yet to see a film with live music, it’s definitely on my bucket list. There are a number of movies that I can imagine would be 10 times more impactful with the background music being showcased.
Overall, I think the orchestra has become more accessible to the everyday person, both in price and content. No longer is it just Monopoly Man types listening to Beethoven (though no disrespect to the musical genius). Orchestra now belongs to the geeks, the nerds and the everyday person.