<\/p>\n
This weekend, the New Jersey Symphony<\/a> put on its proverbial sorcerer\u2019s hat and delivered real magic. After opening the season two weeks ago with a gala concert<\/a> celebrating their 10th year with music director Xian Zhang, the orchestra went more casual for their second concert series of their 103rd season, accompanying the classic Disney film, \u201cFantasia.\u201d<\/p>\n A touchstone of 20th century American culture, \u201cFantasia,\u201d represented the highest ambitions of the nation\u2019s culture when it premiered in 1940. Featuring visuals by Hollywood\u2019s finest animators and music by some of the nation\u2019s best musicians, \u201cFantasia\u201d still delights today \u2014 even if you stream it on your phone on Disney+. But seeing it projected on a big screen at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank on Saturday with a full audience and the forces of the New Jersey Symphony live on stage was a thrilling event.<\/p>\n As is often the case with \u201cNew Jersey Symphony at the Movies\u201d events, the conductor Saturday was Constantine Kitsopoulos. He led the orchestra through a solid, up-tempo account of the movie\u2019s soundtrack, made up from chestnuts of the classical repertoire. The Basie is a converted cinema and vaudeville theater, so its acoustics are sometimes a challenge with the NJS comes to town \u2014 but not so with \u201cFantasia.\u201d With the exception of an over-mic\u2019d piano, the sound the orchestra and Kitsopoulos delivered was rich and nicely balanced. There were many moments it was easy to get lost in the sonic and visual splendor of \u201cFantasia.\u201d (Lynette Wardle on harp sounded particularly fine in her solos.)<\/p>\n The film seen on Saturday was not the full 1940 \u201cFantasia,\u201d but a mash-up of sequences from the original as well as the 2000 IMAX reboot, \u201cFantasia 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n In Red Bank, the show began with abstract images flying and fluttering to the first movement of Beethoven\u2019s 5th symphony. Next up was the cartoony \u201cPastoral Symphony\u201d sequence from the original, using Beethoven\u2019s 6th symphony as score to a playful tale set in ancient Greece. The \u201cNutcracker Suite\u201d followed, with the Jersey strings and winds gracefully accompanying the dancing mushrooms and ice-skating sprites. Finishing the first half was Debussy\u2019s \u201cClaire de Lune\u201d in an orchestration by the film\u2019s original conductor, Leopold Stokowski. This is one of the simplest, beautiful sequences in \u201cFantasia\u201d \u2014 the French composer\u2019s spare but stirring melody playing beneath animated egrets in the Everglades. It was cut from the original but restored by Disney and released later. On Saturday, it was the highlight under Kitsopoulos\u2019 baton.<\/p>\n The second act of the program featured the most famous segment of \u201cFantasia,\u201d the one with Mickey Mouse and the magical brooms. It didn\u2019t disappoint, nor did the 2000 segment featuring Donald Duck and Daisy Duck on Noah\u2019s Ark. The other famous sequence from original was included here: the ballet-dancing hippos and alligators frolicking to Ponchielli\u2019s music from his opera \u201cLa Gioconda.\u201d<\/p>\n But the most stirring moments in the second half came in one of the newer creations, the artful telling of devastation and rebirth after a forest fire, set to Stravinski\u2019s ballet music from \u201cThe Firebird.\u201d It\u2019s a reminder that \u201cFantasia,\u201d like all classical music, isn\u2019t stuck in the past. It\u2019s about preserving the past but also reimagining it anew in the present. \u201cFantasia in Concert,\u201d showcases this masterfully, which is why the audience was filled with people of all ages, laughing and applauding together.<\/p>\n Read the original article on NJ.com<\/a>. Add NJ.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend, the New Jersey Symphony put on its proverbial sorcerer\u2019s hat and delivered real magic. After opening the season two weeks ago with a gala concert celebrating their 10th year with music director Xian Zhang, the orchestra went more casual for their second concert series of their 103rd season, accompanying the classic Disney film, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2119301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[402243,402244,23301,402242,370690,402245],"class_list":["post-2119300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-constantine-kitsopoulos","tag-count-basie-theater","tag-disney","tag-fantasia-2000","tag-new-jersey-symphony","tag-pastoral-symphony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/NJ-Symphony-gets-fantastic-with-Disney-classic-accompanying-Fantasia.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2119302,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119300\/revisions\/2119302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2119301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}