Well last year the wife and I went to see The Music of Bond while in London and with that said I saw Skyfall was coming in October and already bought a plane ticket/ seat. I literally love London because of the Royal Albert Hall, the English Breakfast(regency café to be exact), and Bangers & Mash.

Anyone else looking forward to it? Anyone else go to Music of Bond last year?
Of course Ill have my Seamaster while in London, it’s only fitting. Think I'm making the whole trip for the show

Anything else I should look to do on the second go this year?

 

Similar show in Toronto this fall...

https://www.tso.ca/concert/james-bond-music-0

I recall walking past a theatre in downtown Toronto last year, and seeing a poster for a show where they would have the Skyfall movie playing, and live music to accompany it...

 

Yes live music via Orchestra, very good show indeed.
Seems to only ever be in Europe, and Canada, but I don't mind the excuse to travel.

 

Looks like that may be the Music Of Bond, very cool show, especially if your a bond fan. My wife isn't much of a fan but loved it none the less.

 

Thanks for the notification - I've booked for the Saturday afternoon

Things to do - definitely go to Dukes Hotel bar … https://www.dukeshotel.com/dukes-bar/ - where Ian Fleming drank while he was writing Bond... and it's the best Martini and I've ever had, probably...

 

haha same, afternoon as well for me. All the seats at night are around $1,000+ haha, trying to make this a cheap trip but still enjoy it. Couldn't pass up round trip tickets at $500 otd with seats picked and decent flight hours.

I'll have to hit it up, going with a buddy this go around instead of the wife, so will be able to do things like that!

 

Dukes is a fairly small bar off the lobby of a traditional hotel stuck down a back alley in St James; there are no table reservations unless you're staying at the hotel and/or a Russian gazillionaire, so if you rock up and want a table for 2, you may need to wait in the hotel lobby for a short while. You need to be wearing a collar (shirt or jacket) too, so no jeans & t-shirt.

 

Ah I cant get away with my signature blazer and jeans?
I stayed in the St. James area last time, bar there had a good martini, actually got the Vespar

 

I too am going on the Saturday. Went to the Casino Royale one a couple of years ago too. Superb.

 

I just rewatched Casino Royale, would be great to see it live as well!

 

Today's the day - looking forward to it!

 

Enjoy! I'll be there again for this afternoon's showing

 

Enjoy! I wish I could be there.

 

We'll be craning our necks a little to see the screen but we'll be able to hear the orchestra

 

Live-to-projection is such a treat. I used to live in Grand Rapids, MI and for some unfathomable reason the symphony there has something of a world-class reputation for it's live-to-projection performances.

They started out maybe 20 years ago doing it on a children's series to cartoons (you'd be surprised how much classical music made it's way on to cartoons). From there they did a bunch of old MGM musicals. "The Wizard of Oz" was particularly good, on a film like that the orchestra gets a major workout with all the extra musical flourishes (flutes subbing for songbirds in the trees, stuff like that) that occur all during the movie. I spoke to one of the musicians afterward and he said they work every bit as hard if not more so than a standard classical program. He also mentioned that there's an extra challenge because unlike in a film scoring stage, they weren't using a "click track".

When performance rights for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy came up the GR Symphony became only a handful of orchestra's to perform the films, along with NY, London, Rome and a couple of other places. They went the whole nine yards with a 200 voice choir, some really obscure instruments and everything. Breathtaking. They've gone on to doing a handful of other films like "The Matrix" and one of the Indiana Jones films IIRC.

If you should even go to a film-to-projection performance, pay particular attention to the conductor's tv monitor. It shows the film but also has cue and tempo indicators superimposed over the picture so the conductor can hit the right beat at the right cut in the film. Fascinating stuff. It's as close as you're apt to get to being at one of the few film scoring stages left in the world.

Highly recommenced. Just be sure you're going to a live-to-projection performance because since it's become something of a can't miss cash-wise affair for them, a lot of symphonies are cheating a bit by doing slide shows of stills and clips of the film rather than the entire motion picture.

 

As big Bond fans my mates and I went to see Casino Royale, the secret cinema presentation... billed as an immersive experience where in-character actors play out scenes around you in person whilst you play at the “casino”, eat, drink and generally be merry.
Bond attire is encouraged (black tie, etc) and later in the evening the film is laid on in a cinema with extras such as flames and gun shots, actors running around and an Aston Martin db5 driven around the screen at suitable scenes.
We thought it sounded fun and went.
It wasn’t.... Don’t recommend personally!

The RAH events are pretty spot on though and always very professional with super high standard of orchestra.
Hope the guys who went/going enjoy

 

Post-RAH Vesper at Dukes Bar

 

I had a Vesper at the St James hotel bar and was actually quite amazing. Wish more bars knew how to make them.