Joe Hisaishi and the San Francisco Symphony
Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
September 7, 2024
Photos provided by the San Francisco Symphony, header photo by Omar Cruz
As well as music, one of my other passions is film. And one of the things that I love most is the intersection between the two, particularly when a specific film director and a specific film composer are thought of hand-in-hand. There are a lot of those pairings that can immediately come to mind: Stephen Spielberg and John Williams, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman… the list goes on and on. But for me, the pairing that trumps all of the others is that of the film director Hayao Miyazaki and the composer Joe Hisaishi. Ever since the first film that Hayao Miyazaki made for the then-fledgling Studio Ghibli, Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind, Joe Hisaishi has scored every single one of his films. One can’t think of some of the most iconic moments of films like Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle without Hisaishi’s accompanying score driving home the emotional weight of them. And with Joe Hisaishi making his premier with the San Francisco Symphony for a series of shows celebrating his collaboration with Miyazaki, I knew that making it my first time seeing a live orchestra would make the evening that much more memorable.
After walking onstage to a rapturous applause, Hisaishi conducted the symphony orchestra beginning with selections from the first Studio Ghibli film, the aforementioned Nausicaä. It was a fitting beginning to the evening, as the film’s music has unfortunately never gotten the same amount of reverence as other scores that Hisaishi has composed. Although a good portion of the original film score features synthesizers other electronic instrumentation, it all translated perfectly to the instrumentation of the full orchestra. Late last year my wife and I made an effort to watch every film put out by Studio Ghibli, and over the next few months we completed that goal. Doing so prepared me for all of the films that Joe Hisaishi conducted and performed music from over the course of the evening, the composer sometimes switching from conducting the symphony orchestra to playing piano and then back again in the same composition.
Unlike some of my closest friends, I didn’t grow up watching Studio Ghibli films. The first one that I remember seeing was Spirited Away, and that was probably in my mid-teens a couple of years after it was released in North America. Despite that, the films and music have always instilled a sense of nostalgia in me that I’ve never quite been able to pinpoint the reason as to why. So seeing selections from Kiki’s Delivery Service was the first time in the evening that I was actually moved to tears, particularly during the first song that was played, “A Town With An Ocean View.” Paired with visuals from the film that were being shown on a screen hanging above the symphony, I couldn’t stop getting choked up. I know that I wasn’t the only emotional member of the crowd, as I saw others dabbing the corners of their eyes with tissues throughout the evening or hearing a sniffle during a quiet moment in the music.
What followed was the same format repeated: Hisaishi and the San Francisco Symphony would perform a number of selections from a given film while either footage of the film or live footage of Hisaishi or members of the orchestra were shown on the screen hanging above them. For as good of a view as I had, it was a treat to see the emotion on his face on the screen as he conducted or sat behind the grand piano at the front of the stage during a song like “A Journey (A Dream Of Flight)” or “The Legend Of Ashitaka.” During the selections from The Wind Rises, the musician Kyle Pudenz joined the other musicians onstage to accompany the songs on mandolin, which helped to set those songs apart from anything else that was performed throughout the evening.
Also featured throughout the evening was the Australian soprano Janet Todd, who sang on selections from Princess Mononoke and Ponyo On The Cliff. Also singing was Mai Fujisawa, who vocalized while Joe Hisaishi played “One Summer’s Day,” the opening song from the Spirited Away film score, on piano. Once the song was over Hisaishi gestured at Fujisawa proudly and exclaimed to the crowd, “She’s my daughter!” Both Mai Fujisawa and Janet Todd would sing together on the last song of the evening, the titular song from My Neighbor Totoro, backed by the entire San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Hearing so many voices singing about the iconic forest spirit is something that I would never have thought that I would experience, and ending the main set of the show with the song felt like the perfect decision.
After a seemingly endless round of applause from the audience, Hisaishi did come back onstage for two more songs. The first was “Madness” from Porco Rosso, the lights on the side of the stage spinning and glowing red and green to match the intensity of the song. Once that was done, Hisaishi left the stage briefly and came back to sit at the piano and play “Ashitaka And San” from Princess Mononoke. Starting as a tender solo piano piece, eventually the rest of the symphony orchestra joined in. The touching song was another one that elicited a deep sense of melancholy inside of me, as Princess Mononoke was the first Studio Ghibli film that my wife and I watched together, and her personal favorite film by the studio. Once the song ended, the crowd erupted into the longest standing ovation that I’ve ever seen. Joe Hisaishi made every member of the symphony orchestra stand up to receive their own round of applause and shook the hands of most of the musicians before walking offstage for the final time.
Music is one of the most powerful things in my life. It’s one of the reasons why I dedicate so much of my own time listening to it in various formats and attending concerts as frequently as I do; I strongly believe that experiencing music in all of its various forms, whether it be recorded or live, on a vinyl record or streamed on your phone, has a power to it that no other form of artistic expression can match. And seeing Joe Hisaishi conducting and performing with the San Francisco Symphony was one of the most powerful performances that I’ve ever witnessed. For four decades Hisaishi’s music has elevated some of the most powerful and unique visuals ever put to film, but his film scores have the rare ability of being able to also be enjoyed on their own, separated from the visual elements for which they were composed. And that was what the audience at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall were witness to. Despite this series of shows marked Joe Hisaishi’s debut with the San Francisco Symphony, I have a feeling that he will be back before too long to work with them again. And this time I’ll make sure to bring a tissue.
