Sometimes, it takes a major fan to pull off a major fan event.
That certainly seems to be true in the case of “Symphonic Fury! The Music of Japanese Monsters,” romping and stomping in an orchestral concert setting July 10 at the Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge. Though in this case it’s taken three major fans — executive producer Chris Oglio, conductor John DeSentis and host Erik Homenick—to make the mega-monster musical magic happen.
That’s the same team responsible for last year’s “Ifukube 100” concert at the Pickwick, celebrating the centenary of Akira Ifukube — best-known here for scoring numerous classic kaiju (monster) movies (including the original “Godzilla”) but also one of Japan’s most respected composers of classical music. A labor of love that came to pass only because DeSentis, a film composer himself, couldn’t convince any American orchestra to present Ifukube’s classical compositions — never mind his monster-movie oeuvre.
“This is something we would have wanted somebody else to do,” said DeSentis, who recalls falling in love with Ifukube’s music the first time he saw “Godzilla” as a kid. “But nobody’s doing it, so it’s up to us. This is something we want to experience ourselves as fans.”
Oglio and DeSentis raised $37,000 with a Kickstarter campaign, accounting for roughly half the cost of renting the Pickwick and hiring the 54-member orchestra and 10-person choir. And there’s little worry about covering the remainder with ticket sales, considering that the event has been timed (as it was last year) to coincide with Chicago’s annual G-Fest Godzilla convention at Crowne Plaza.
Especially since “Symphonic Fury” is doubling down on Godzilla composers by including the music of film, anime and video game composer Kow Otani — who will make a personal appearance at the concert. Part one of the concert will consist of the world premiere of an orchestral suite of Otani’s scores for three 1990s films featuring the giant, jet-propelled flying turtle Gamera, plus the 2001 Godzilla movie “All Out Monsters Attack.”
“That’s going to be a lot of fun,” said DeSentis. “His music is really dynamic and energetic and it will be especially exciting because this will be the first time his monster movie music is performed in a concert setting anywhere in the world.”
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Of course the music of the grand maestro, Ifukube, will be closing the show in part two. DeSentis will lead the orchestra in a performance of the composer’s “Three Symphonic Fantasias,” a series of suites written during a period of retirement in the 1980s, when interest in his kaiju film scores was particularly high.
“It’s basically an amalgamation of themes and melodies from his monster movies that he’s woven together,” said concert host Homenick, who is also the webmaster of http://www.akiraifukube.org, the official English-language website devoted to Ifukube’s life and work. Films represented in the suites include “Godzilla,” of course, as well as its plentiful sequels, plus “Mothra,” “Rodan,” “The Mysterians,” “Frankenstein Conquers the World,” “Atragon,” “War of the Gargantuas, “King Kong Escapes” and many more.
The performance will be the American debut of “Three Symphonic Fantasias,” but that’s not the rarest Ifukube piece on the program. “Symphonic Fury” also will feature the premiere of “Kishi Mai,” a march the composer wrote for the Imperial navy during World War II, which was performed only a few times in Japan — though it was eventually recycled into a march for Godzilla in the original 1956 film.
Homenick and DeSentis both say one of the things they admire most about Ifukube is the respect with which he always approached his monster-movie scores — as evidenced by his willingness to incorporate the theme from such a prestigious piece into “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”
“Even as the Godzilla movies became increasingly silly as the series wore on, he never thought, ‘This is a silly movie so I’ll write silly, throwaway music,'” Homenick said. “He always approached the material with the utmost artistic integrity and respect.”
‘Symphonic Fury! The Music of Japanese Monsters’
8 p.m. July 10
Pickwick Theater, 5 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge
$30-$35.
(847) 825-5800; http://www.symphonicfury2015.brownpapertickets.com/