On Sunday 30 August, the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra will bring music from Spirited Away, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and some of gaming's most recognisable worlds to The Concourse in Chatswood.
There are some pieces of music that seem to carry their own landscapes.
A few notes can suggest a distant galaxy, a mountain range, an ancient kingdom or a place that exists somewhere between the ordinary world and a dream. On Sunday 30 August, the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra will explore that quality at The Concourse in Chatswood, with a program that moves between animated cinema, blockbuster film and video game music.
Titled Spirited Away: Movie and Gaming Music with the KPO!, the concert will begin at 3pm and will bring together music by composers including Joe Hisaishi, Howard Shore, John Williams, Jeremy Soule, Aram Khachaturian and Nishiki Tsukasa Saitoh. The program will be conducted by KPO Artistic Director Paul Terracini.
Rather than concentrating on one style or period, the afternoon will follow the changing role of orchestral music in popular culture. These are scores written for stories that have travelled well beyond their original screens, becoming part of the memory of audiences who may recognise a melody before they remember precisely where they first heard it.
Spirited Away And The Sound Of Another World
The concert takes its name from Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 animated film produced by Studio Ghibli, with its music composed by Joe Hisaishi.
The film follows Chihiro, a 10-year-old girl who finds herself in a mysterious spirit world after her parents are transformed. Its setting shifts between the familiar and the fantastical, and Hisaishi's score plays an important role in making those changes feel natural.
The music rarely behaves like a simple backdrop. Piano, orchestra and quieter passages create a sense of movement between wonder, uncertainty and melancholy. There is a delicacy to much of Hisaishi's writing, but it can expand into something much larger when the story requires it.
That combination has helped make the Spirited Away score one of the most recognisable examples of contemporary film music. The KPO's program will feature a Spirited Away Suite, bringing that music into a live orchestral setting.
For audiences familiar with the film, there is likely to be something unusual about hearing the score without the images that normally accompany it. The music will have to create its own spaces in the imagination, allowing memories of the film to sit alongside the sound itself.
From Middle Earth To A Galaxy Far Away
From the spirit world, the program will move into two of cinema's most enduring musical landscapes.
Howard Shore's Fellowship of the Ring Suite will revisit music from the first film in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Released in 2001, the film established an expansive musical language for Middle Earth, using recurring themes to distinguish characters, places and cultures.
Shore's score was never simply designed to make the images feel larger. Its themes helped give the fictional world a sense of history. The Shire, the Fellowship and the darker forces gathering around them each have their own musical identities, allowing the orchestra to suggest a world that extends beyond what can be seen on screen.
There is a similar familiarity in John Williams' Star Wars Suite. The opening music of the original 1977 film has become one of cinema's most recognisable sounds, and its brass, strings and percussion remain closely associated with the vast scale of George Lucas' imagined universe.
Placed together in a concert program, the two works reveal how differently composers can approach the idea of fantasy. Shore's music often feels ancient and layered, while Williams' writing has a bold, symphonic clarity that immediately establishes a sense of adventure.
Both, however, demonstrate the ability of an orchestra to make an imaginary place feel tangible.
Spirited Away Meets The World Of Gaming
The KPO program will also move beyond film into music written for games, reflecting how much the medium has developed as a storytelling form.
Nishiki Tsukasa Saitoh's main theme from Elden Ring will bring a darker atmosphere to the afternoon. Released in 2022, the action role-playing game is known for its immense landscapes, mysterious characters and deliberately fragmented storytelling. Its music responds to that scale, using orchestral weight and haunting textures to create a sense of danger and uncertainty.
Jeremy Soule's Song of the Dragon Born, from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, will offer another interpretation of the fantasy tradition.
Skyrim was released in 2011, and its central musical themes helped establish the northern, mythic atmosphere of the game's fictional world. Soule's score combines the grandeur of classical orchestration with influences that suggest older Nordic musical traditions.
For listeners who have spent hours exploring these virtual environments, the effect of hearing the music performed live may be particularly different. In a game, music often arrives alongside movement and interaction. In a concert hall, the listener becomes still while the orchestra takes over the journey.
That change of context can make familiar music feel newly spacious.
The Unexpected Connections In The Program
The afternoon will not remain entirely within the worlds of film and gaming.
Aram Khachaturian's Adagio from Spartacus will introduce a work originally written for the ballet Spartacus and later associated with the television series The Onedin Line. Its long melodic lines and broad orchestral character have an unmistakable sense of drama, and the music has often been associated with images of ships, distance and maritime adventure.
The inclusion creates an interesting bridge between older forms of storytelling and the modern screen score. Long before film and video games became dominant forms of popular visual storytelling, composers were creating music that could suggest characters, journeys and emotional landscapes without words.
The program will also include Benjamin, written by Paul Terracini for the 1997 film Hymns of the Forefathers, which later became a television series. Terracini, who will conduct the concert, has worked across composition, arranging and conducting during a career that has included performances and collaborations in Australia and internationally.
His inclusion gives the program a distinctly local connection. Amid music associated with Hollywood, Studio Ghibli and major international game productions, there will also be a piece created by the person leading the orchestra from the podium.
A Concert Built Around Memory
What connects these works is not simply that they were written for films, games or television.
They are pieces that have escaped their original settings.
A Star Wars theme can be recognised without the opening credits. The music of The Lord of the Rings can suggest Middle Earth before a single image appears. The sound of Skyrim can recall a landscape that exists only inside a game. And the music of Spirited Away can bring back the strange quietness of Chihiro's journey even when the screen is absent.
That is one reason orchestral concerts built around popular culture can be unexpectedly revealing. The audience arrives with memories already attached to the music, but the live performance changes the scale and perspective.
An orchestra also makes the physical nature of a score impossible to ignore. Strings move together. Brass enters with weight. Percussion changes the sense of distance. Individual instruments disappear into a larger sound, then emerge again.
For younger listeners, it may also offer an accessible way into orchestral music through works they already know. For those who grew up with these films and games, the afternoon offers something more reflective: an opportunity to hear familiar themes outside the stories that first gave them meaning.
An Afternoon At The Concourse
The concert will take place at The Concourse, 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, on Sunday 30 August at 3pm.
The venue places the event within one of Sydney's most active cultural precincts, where a Sunday afternoon can begin with a meal or coffee in Chatswood before settling into the quieter concentration of a concert hall.
Tickets will be available at $60 for standard admission, $45 concession, $30 for students and children, and $150 for a family of four, with a maximum of two adults.
The Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra has been part of Sydney's community music landscape since its foundation in 1971. The orchestra describes itself as a community-based organisation, with its concert program combining established orchestral repertoire with programs designed to reach broader audiences.
This concert fits naturally into that tradition. It takes music that already occupies a familiar place in popular culture and gives it the room, scale and concentration of a live orchestral performance.
For bookings and further information, visit the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra official website.
When The Screen Falls Silent
There is something appropriate about ending an afternoon of screen music by returning to the sound itself.
Film and games usually ask audiences to look as well as listen. The orchestra asks for the opposite kind of attention. Once the musicians begin, the screen disappears and the imagination has to fill the space.
On 30 August, the first notes of Spirited Away will begin a journey through spirit worlds, Middle Earth, distant galaxies and vast game landscapes. Some listeners will know every theme. Others may simply recognise a melody without knowing its name.
Either way, the music will have the opportunity to stand on its own.
For a few hours in Chatswood, worlds that normally exist behind a screen will be recreated by people sitting together in a concert hall, with nothing between the audience and the musicians but the space between them.
And when the final note fades, those worlds will return to where they began: somewhere in the imagination.