Callling “Star Trek” a successful television and film franchise is a grave understatement. People are addicted to it. They watch every episode of every incarnation, dress up as characters and flock to conventions. On Valentine’s Day at the Providence Performing Arts Center, fans will find one more thing to flock to. There’s going to be a celebration for the franchise’s 50th Anniversary called Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage. It features a live orchestra performing music from each incarnation of the series accompanied by video footage shown on the big screen. To prepare for this uniquely spectacular event, I had a chat with acclaimed conductor and show producer Justin Freer about conducting when he was a teenager, performing film scores and what the future holds.
Rob Duguay: Which series of “Star Trek” do you like the most?
Justin Freer: The answer is different now than I think it was before I started producing this project, really getting into it and immersing myself into the environment. I was born in 1980, so I grew up with “The Next Generation;” I didn’t have a chance to grow up with the original series like generations before me did. However, while I still love “The Next Generation” very much along with “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” and “Enterprise,” the original series has become a favorite for me over the last year or so because of the escapism.
Admittedly, I wasn’t that familiar with the original series before I started immersing myself in this world, but the amount of escapism that the producers, the composers and the actors were all forced to try and create because of limited technology and make us believe that they’re on another planet is staggering. I think being forced into that environment allowed them to have a freedom to create some wonderfully memorable and iconic moments. So much fun was had on that series and as a result, it has become one of my favorites.
RD: To do what they did with the series in the ’60s is pretty amazing.
JF: It certainly is. And one of the most important elements that created this idea of otherworldliness, other cultures and other locations was the music. The music was done by so many different composers, including Gerald Freed or Saul Kaplan. They had so much freedom to experiment and try different things, using traditional instruments and making non-traditional sounds. I think all of these musical elements really contributed to us feeling and believing that we were someplace other than where we really were.
RD: You had your professional conducting debut when you were 16. What was the venue, and do you remember which piece of music you were conducting?
JF: I was conducting a mix of my own music that I composed at that time and some concert wind symphony music that was composed by some very well-known wind composers. There was a work by Vincent Persichetti who is well known within the classical world. We performed it at one of the performing arts centers in Orange County where I grew up, and from then on it’s been a very humbling ride filled with great joy and great musical opportunities. I’ve been very lucky to partake in this “Star Trek” journey. I would have never thought when I was 16, 25 or even 30 years old that I would have had this opportunity to study “Star Trek” lore, “Star Trek” mythology and “Star Trek” music in a way that even my time as Jerry Goldsmith’s student never really revealed. And now it’s a brand new thing.
RD: You’ve also been part of live performances of music from The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Titanic and The Godfather, among others. Can it be difficult to master the music from movie soundtracks due to their unique progressions?
JF: I think that mastering music comes with a similar set of study tools regardless of the genre the music was written for — whether it was opera, ballet, chamber music or in this case, film and television music. Great music is great music and all great music deserves to be analyzed, studied, appreciated and respected. I think if you go into music with that mindset and that window of opportunity, then it’s a lot easier to humble yourself and immerse yourself in a positive way in these music scores. The added challenge of synchronizing the music to picture is something that you don’t experience in any other genre of music.
You come close with opera and close with ballet because there is synchronization required with the singers, the dancers and the actors on stage, but it’s not nearly as precise because it doesn’t need to be. In that way, I think that there’s an added level of challenge and perhaps an added level of stress that comes with conducting this on stage and restoring it to picture. Along with that, there’s an added level of enjoyment and an added level of restoration that I hope we all feel was worth it at the end of the day. In that way it’s a wonderful opportunity to restore these things and do them to picture, have the wonderful challenge with the musicians on stage — all 80 of us or 20 of us or 95 of us — seeking that same goal and living through that same challenge together.
RD: Have you ever considered writing your own music for a film score in the past or have you ever been offered the opportunity to do so?
JF: Sure, I’ve done a number of independent films in years past. The past few years have been much more conducting-heavy and classical composition-heavy. I still write music for the concert stage, wind symphony orchestras, chamber music, things like that. I certainly would never shy away from an opportunity to write more music for film and television should it come my way. You just never know where your career takes you in your journey. I did a little bit of that when I was younger, but the art form of putting music to picture has been one of my great passions since I was a boy around 9 or 10 years old. I think it’s an incredibly important art form in music history. I hope the universe presents more opportunities for me to immerse myself in it further. It’s a great joy.
RD: Do you plan to perform film scores in the future? If so, which ones can we expect?
JF: My answer to the first part of that question is yes, absolutely. I’m very excited to share some things coming up; we recently added It’s A Wonderful Life to our roster. We restored so much of Dimitri Tiomkin’s unused music from the original Frank Capra classic and now the version with the orchestra in the concert hall to picture is so very beautiful. We’ve done Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which is one that we recently did last year. Coming up we have some really wonderful projects, we’re doing a Dreamworks project where we’re doing a franchise celebration of all the great Dreamworks animation.
RD: That’s cool.
JF: Yeah, 22 years worth of Dreamworks animation shared over the concert evening. Clips and montages and all the great music from all the Dreamworks animation movies and there’s so much great music there. We’re just about to start doing Braveheart — the brilliant music score by James Horner who was a dear friend and colleague who we lost last year in a tragic plane crash in California. With that comes a very personal responsibility to do it right. So those are a couple of our upcoming ones this year, I’m excited about it and I really hope we continue to do more of these.
Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage takes place at PPAC on February 14, 2016. For tickets, go to http://www.ppacri.org/events/detail/star-trek-the-ultimate-voyage