Last Saturday Night I attended a concert by a local orchestra (See March 23 post on http://www.rhfactors.blogspot.com/) that featured Disney music. I won't go into the details of the event but I do want to talk about what the event showed me about Disney music.
The concert included some of the most popular songs from classic Disney animated features. The works of songwriters like Richard and Robert Sherman, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Time Rice, and Elton John were performed.
As the orchestra played the music and the special guest vocalist sang (all 5 have actually worked as singers for Disney) you could feel the crowd's love and appreciation for the songs and the movies being shown on the auditorium's video screen.
The excitement and pleasure being experienced by everyone in the audience was very similar the atmosphere you would feel at an attraction or show in a Disney theme park. And this was in a small arts building on a college campus nearly 800 miles away from Orlando.
I could feel that each person in the auditorium had a personal history and felt a direct connection to the classic Disney animation up on the screen. The vehicle that facilitated that connection was the music.
What I also found remarkable was the age range of those in attendance. It was a multi-generational group. I saw toddlers, senor citizens, and every age group in between. From my seat I could see: a little girl dressed up in her Disney princess gown sitting next to her mommy & daddy, a school age little boy waiting to hear Simba sing about his plan for when he one day becomes king, a group of college age girls reliving their not too distant childhood dreams of meeting Prince Charming, and a grandmother and grandfather holding hands as they remember the first time they saw the Jungle Book with their young children while watching their grandchildren dance in the aisle to "Under The Sea."
I can't think of very many things in the world today that touches so many people as individuals yet brings them together as a group. Disney music touches our lives and helps us remember the happy times.
The last song played at the concert, the encore selection, was the Sherman brothers' theme park anthem, "It's A Small World". The lyrics that go with this ubiquitous simple melody convey the message that even though geographically the people of the world live far apart there are some things about us that are the same and should draw us together. Saturday night's concert helped illustrate for me once again the fact that one of those things just happens to be Disney music.
