TOO MUCH AND NOT ENOUGH

Glorious music, rushed
through and overproduced

Joe Hisaishi Film Music Concert

Joe Hisaishi, one of the world’s great living composers, was last at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023, in what I considered one of the highlights of that year. Since then, he seems to be making Los Angeles a regular stop, which has me beyond excited. However, I am unhappy to say that his latest appearance at the Bowl with the LA Phil on July 21, awkwardly titled Joe Hisaishi Film Music Concert, was deeply unsatisfying, despite featuring so much music that I love.

The program got off to a confusing start with what was supposed to be a tribute to director Nobuhiko Obayashi. Known in the US almost exclusively for House (1977), Obayashi was a terrific director who made profoundly moving pictures while showing a complete disregard for realism. Hisaishi composed the score to six of his movies, none of which have been released here, and began the evening with a selection from Water Traveler – Samurai Kids (1993), which has all the sweep and sweetness we’ve come to expect from him. However, while the orchestra was playing, a video montage of titles, credits, and tour dates was displayed on screens above and around the stage. Was this a prelude or the performance of Water Traveler? It turned out to be the latter, the video reducing it to an overlong credit sequence. I learned nothing about Hisaishi and Obayashi’s relationship.

Joe Hisaishi

Hisaishi followed that with selections from his score to Buster Keaton’s The General (1926), one of the most disappointing scores to a silent film I’ve encountered. Given the lightness Hisaishi creates for Studio Ghibli, he seems a natural fit for Keaton. Surprisingly, this is not the case. He latches on to the grandness of the film, but he concentrates on its epic scale while ignoring Keaton’s silliness. And why The General? As good as it is, it’s played to death. Pretty much any other available score is better, but if you admire Hisaishi like I do, you’ll ignore my advice to skip it and watch it anyway. To save you the search, it’s on this Blu-ray edition. The Bowl’s video did a further disservice to the movie, frequently freezing. Soprano Ariadne Greif joined the stage to sing a very French take on themes from the score. Divorced from the picture, it’s beautiful music.

Calling to mind Michel Legrand’s romantic music from Jacques Demy’s films, they continued with “La lune brille pour toi” and selections from Le petit poucet (“Tom Thumb,” 2001), one of the few movies Hisaishi scored outside of Japan.

Director Takeshi Kitano is another repeat collaborator with Hisaishi. Between 1991 and 2002, they made seven films. Hisaishi and the orchestra played brief selections from four of them. Largely minimal in nature, they were too short to latch onto and began to sound too similar to each other, which became a recurring problem of the night.

Joe Hisaishi

The second half of the show was devoted entirely to Hisaishi’s music for Studio Ghibli, this time joined by the CSU, Fullerton University Singers. Covering 12 movies over 19 selections in 46 minutes, it came across as superficial fan service. That means the average time spent on each selection was under three minutes, or just over four if you’re going by title. That’s not enough time to get absorbed in the music, only enough to scratch a nostalgia itch. Similarly, Hisaishi periodically moves to the piano to play solo, which would be amazing, except he only plays a line or two, then it’s back to the conductor’s podium.

Ghibli and Hisaishi are famous and respected for their restraint, for their willingness to be quiet and still, even silent. Chad Cannon’s expansive but ultimately bombastic new orchestrations throw all that out. It felt a little pandering and overdone when what was once a solo child’s voice in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) becomes a full chorus with harmonies, but it was passable. Other songs like “Hey, Let’s Go” from My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and the title song from Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008), charming in their simplicity, when given the full force of the LA Phil and roughly 80-member adult chorus, no matter how fun they are to sing and play, came across as heavy, obscene, and pretentious.

Mai Fujisawa

Mai Fujisawa, Hisaishi’s daughter, sang the title song from Princess Mononoke (1997). Maybe it was nerves, but her voice was so thin and her vibrato so trembling, that, well—there’s no delicate way to put this—she warbled. Can I just blame the new AI-powered sound system that makes the music no longer sound like it’s coming from the stage?

Joe Hisaishi Film Music Concert

All throughout the concert, video was playing on giant screens everywhere. Live-orchestra screenings have been all the rage over the past several years, but this was not one of those. Instead of the orchestra playing to picture, there were short (60 seconds, tops) clips from the movies. Most of the video focused on the performers, with such pedestrian direction, constant cutting, and incessant camera movement that it became impossible to ignore. From my seat alone, there were eleven screens in my view. The films of Studio Ghibli are all about being in harmony with nature. The Bowl used to provide something like that, but with permanent screens, everyone ends up watching TV instead. In an era when people are calling for fewer screens and experiencing reality, the Bowl is a good place to turn them all off.

The one bright spot of the night was the new (but, alas, abbreviated) arrangement of “Merry-Go-Round of Life” from Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). It quietly began with carillon and harp, then gracefully blossomed into full orchestra without the overcooking that plagued the rest of the program. Thank goodness they didn’t try to improve music that’s already perfect.

Joe Hisaishi

The concert ended with an overbearing and painfully loud performance of “Tonari no Totoro,” climaxing with maximum chorus and orchestra. That an evening filled with some of the best screen music of the past 40 years, conducted by the man who wrote it, could be this unsatisfying is stunning.

CSUF chorus director Dr. Robert Istad, Ariadne Greif, Mai Fujisawa, and Joe Hisaishi

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photos by Elizabeth Asher

Joe Hisaishi Film Music Concert
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood
performed July 21-23, 2026
2 hours with intermission
for future performances, visit LA Phil and Joe Hisaishi

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