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Jersey Arts Podcast
New Jersey Symphony Puts the 'Tunes' in 'Looney Tunes'
35 years ago–well before orchestras performing film scores became popular–George Daugherty and his husband and producing partner David Wong developed Bugs Bunny at the Symphony. The concept was new at the time: a world-class orchestra would play full cartoon scores live alongside the films. It was an instant hit.
Of course, what makes Looney Tunes music different from many of the film scores played live is that it's based on some of the most famous classical repertoire in history. In fact, pieces by composers like Wagner and Rossini were not only the basis for Looney Tunes scores, but also provided plotlines for Bugs, Elmer, Daffy and the gang.
New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will perform Bugs Bunny at the Symphony February 14th, 15th, and 16th, so Jersey Arts spoke with creator George Daughtery (who tours with the program, conducting symphonies all over the world), and NJSO’s Vice President of Artistic Planning, Erin Norton, about their upcoming concerts.
Musical clips from "Warner Bros. Discovery Presents Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" used in this episode were performed by Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, conducted by George Daugherty. LOONEY TUNES and all related characters and elements are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
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Hi, I'm Maddie Orton and this is the Jersey Arts Podcast. Thirty-five years ago, well before symphonies performing live scores became popular, George Doherty and his husband and producing partner, David Wong, developed Bugs Bunny at the Symphony. The concept was new at the time A world-class orchestra would play full cartoon scores live alongside the films, and it was an instant hit. Of course, what makes Looney Tunes music different from many of the film scores played live is that it's based on some of the most famous classical repertoires in history, and pieces by composers like Wagner and Rossini were not only the basis for Looney Tunes scores but also provided plot lines for Bugs, Elmer, Daffy and the gang.
Maddie Orton:The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will perform Bugs Bunny at the Symphony February 14th, 15th and 16th. So I spoke with creator George Daughtery, who tours with the program conducting symphony orchestras all over the world, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's Vice President of Artistic Planning, Erin Norton, about their upcoming concerts. Take a listen, George, Erin. Thank you so much for your time today. George Norton, vice President of Artistic Planning, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. I was so excited when I saw Bugs Bunny at the Symphony would be performed by New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and I hoped that what I thought that meant is what that meant. Am I right to say that the symphony will play the classical music featured in Looney Tunes alongside the video?
George Daughtery:Well, we are playing actually the original scores that were created for these iconic Looney Tunes animated shorts were created for these iconic Looney Tunes animated shorts. So the concert consists right now of 17 Looney Tunes cartoons or animated shorts, which will be projected on a giant screen right above the orchestra. And then we play the original scores, fabulous scores by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklin, which are based on Wagner, Rossini, Johann Strauss, Smetana, Van Stuppe all of the great composers. So, yeah, it's exactly what you thought it would be.
Maddie Orton:That's terrific, and, George, this program Bugs Bunny at the Symphony was your brainchild, right Along with your husband and producing partner, David Wong.
George Daughtery:Right, we've been doing it for 35 years. Believe it or not, this is our 35th year. It was started in 1990 when Bugs turned 50. And I just had this idea about I love these cartoons as a kid, sitting on the living room floor watching them on Saturday morning, eating bowls of gigantic sugary cereal. And then, as an adult conductor, I was reintroduced to them because these were sort of unless you were getting up on Saturday morning, still into the 90s, these were sort of not that easy to see Because, remember, we didn't have downloading, we didn't have streaming, we didn't have devices, we didn't have anything. And so then, suddenly, in 1989 or so, this thing called home video suddenly was there and we could see these cartoons again.
George Daughtery:I saw them all again and now, as an adult conductor, I realized how absolutely brilliant and phenomenal these scores were and I really had the desire to conduct them in a concert, and at that time I was living in New York City, in Chicago I was conducting for American Ballet Theater and lots of opera and ballet companies in Europe. But I wanted to do this, but we immediately saw that we had to show the cartoon at the same time that we played the scores, and that was a really big deal because no one had ever done that yet in 1989. We were the very first. You know now there are hundreds of film and orchestra concerts out there, but we were the first. So, yeah, that's how it all started. I was going to do it for maybe a year and then go back to conducting opera and ballet in Europe and in New York and everything, and I'm still doing this.
Maddie Orton:35 years later. You're a real trailblazer because this is such a phenomenon. Now I was speaking with Aaron beforehand about how I, maybe 10 or so years ago, saw New Jersey Symphony Orchestra perform the score to Casablanca and it was just incredible and I know that you know so many of these orchestras now do so many of these other. You know John Williams scores and things like that Williams scores and things like that.
George Daughtery:No, I mean, the other day I counted I just made a quick count of myself for another interview and there are over 250 film concerts out there in the marketplace in the US. Wow, that's amazing. But nobody knew what this was going to be like. And we did it for the first time in 1989, 1990 was the first performance. It was a test performance in San Diego to see if it was even going to be something that people would come to. And Warner Brothers wanted it close enough to LA that they could come to it, but they wanted it far enough from LA that, if it, was a disaster that the stench wouldn't reach the Warner.
George Daughtery:Brothers lot in Burbank. So we did it in San Diego and it immediately sold out. Wow, the first day that the ad was in the San Diego newspaper it sold out. So we thought, okay, there's something here. And then the performances. The performances then were mostly all adult audience, mostly all adult Interesting. This is not a kiddie show, although it's perfect for kids, but it's not a kiddie show. This is. Adults loved this from their own childhood. And then, by an act of fate, warner Brothers had a Broadway musical playing on Broadway at the Gershwin Theater at that time, which is now where Wicked is and has been forever. But that musical closed and they suddenly decided to put us in there. So the phone rang and it was Warner Brothers saying can you open this on Broadway in two weeks?
Erin Norton:Oh my gosh.
George Daughtery:And we did, and it was sold out. Every performance was sold out. There were lines around the block, so we knew okay, this is something.
Maddie Orton:Well, I think that the question that would come to a lot of people's mind is how do the musicians stay in sync with the videos?
George Daughtery:Well, I'm there, I'm a conductor, I'm the conductor and I'm the GPS. Well, I'm the pilot, I guess, or the driver. But we use something called a click track. And a click track is a audio track that me, as the conductor, and the musicians listen to in one ear with a little headphone, and it's like a metronome. And this is essential because these cartoons are incredibly fast and incredibly complicated. But even more than that, the music is 100% in sync with the sound effects and dialogue that is coming from the film audio itself.
George Daughtery:So the audience is hearing the sound effects from the original cartoons and then they're hearing us with the music. Those things have to be together. We only have a one or two frame wiggle room, which is only about a, let's say, 40th of a second, to be correct. The cool thing about the clip track is that the clip track was actually invented by carl stalling, who was the composer, because he had to figure out in 1930, 1940, whatever, when these cartoons were first being made how to keep the music with the film when they recorded it. So it was was actually Looney Tunes that actually contributed this incredible technology to the film world in general, and every film score to this day is still recorded with a click track, and it was Carl Stalling who invented it. So thank you, carl. Thank you Bugs Bunny.
Maddie Orton:Wow, that's incredibly full circle. I never would have thought that If you haven't seen one of these performances full circle, I never would have thought that If you haven't seen one of these performances. Basically, what happens is that the video is projected with all of the dialogue, all of the sound effects, as you said, and the music is essentially stripped out right, so it's not like the music is duplicated.
George Daughtery:We also had to figure out how to do that, which was laborious, and it was done by hand. I won't go into the way we invented to do it. Now they have all these computer programs. You basically just load the cartoon into the computer, tell it to strip out the music and come back in the morning and it's done. We had to do it manually. We had a whole team of 16 people that was doing this and sometimes we could only strip out one or two seconds of music a day. Wow, oh my gosh. So, like I said, it was an invention process.
George Daughtery:When you have an amazing, incredible, world-class orchestra like the New Jersey Symphony, which is one of my favorite orchestras in the world and I've been able to collaborate with them many times over the years this is like because the original Warner Brothers Orchestra was one of the greatest orchestras in the world. It's very interesting that in 1930s and 40s there were more classical musicians in Hollywood than any other city in the world, including New York, london, paris, whatever. Because tons of European immigrants musicians had fled World War II and the horrendous most of them, jewish musicians, had fled World War II. They came to the US to work. All the East Coast orchestras already were full. So they all ended up in Hollywood and every studio had its own orchestra. It wasn't one orchestra that was playing all over the place. Every studio had its own orchestra Warner Brothers, mgm, 20th Century Fox, universal, paramount all of them had these world-class orchestras. And so when you have a world-class orchestra playing them, the audience is seeing basically what it was like to record them in the first place.
George Daughtery:The difference is that when they recorded these scores back in the old days of the studios, they would only do one or two minutes of music at a time. Exactly, they were called cues. So cue one, cue two, cue music at a time. Exactly, they were called cues. So cue one, cue two, cue three, cue four. And then a music editor would assemble it all.
George Daughtery:After the fact. What we have to do with the New Jersey Symphony, the incredible musicians of the New Jersey Symphony, is play these cartoons from beginning to end, which are seven minutes long with no pauses, and do 17 of them in one concert. When you see an orchestra like the new jersey symphony, which is one of the great orchestras, I mean you know, I just love this orchestra. I've and um, you have so much appreciation for what the musicians, what the individual musicians and the orchestra itself bring to the mix here, because you can not only, first of all, you hear them in a way you didn't hear them before, when we were all listening to them on television long before either of you were 30, 40 years before either one of you were born, it was coming through a really tinny speaker.
George Daughtery:They were only recorded in mono and they were. It wasn't easy to hear all the music. Now you can hear the music in all of its unbelievable full spectrum glory and you realize how much the music adds to this. People who come to these concerts but I like to think especially our concert say that they are never able to look at film music the same way again after they see this.
Maddie Orton:I believe that, and Erin, for the musicians, I mean this does sound like quite an undertaking. It is how?
Erin Norton:what is the experience like for them. I mean, it's exactly what George said, that these scores were often designed to be played a minute at a time, and so and this is something that orchestras are asked to do time and time again Now in the modern age, we play entire, you know, cinematic scores, from beginning to end. We play the Star Wars films. Those are two hour movies that are just through composed, but they were never meant to be played that way. So I think this show and all of these movie shows that we do really show off the stamina and the virtuosity of the orchestra. And, you know, playing with a click track too is it is kind of an a different skill for a musician. I mean, we're, we're used to. It is exactly. I mean, musicians are used to being able to have this like push and pull and have initiative and how exactly they're going to phrase something. Or are they going to take a little time here? Are they going to kind of push forward here? Not so here, whereas you know George says there's like one to two frames of wiggle room there's. You have to be right on.
Erin Norton:Remember the first time I saw Bugs Bunny at the symphony when I was in high school, at the North Carolina Symphony was the first time I saw it. So my mom played in that orchestra and I remember I didn't grow up with the. Yeah, I grew up around that orchestra. It's a very special group for me and I remember my mom came home I would. I was not a Looney Tunes kid, like I had kind of seen the cartoons and passing the way they're so important in pop culture that they're ubiquitous in a way. But I hadn't. I never sat down and watched them. But my mom was like you have to come to this, like we're playing on a click track. It's one of the craziest gigs I've ever played in my life. And I showed up and I was just I had.
Erin Norton:I don't think I'd ever seen a film in concert before, maybe just one. This was around the time where they were like just barely starting to get going Meanwhile, where they were just barely starting to get going Meanwhile Bugs Bunny at the Symphony had been going for a while. At this point you guys were really pioneers in this space. But I just remember being completely in awe of the way the orchestra was able to line up with the cartoon, but also the way that the music just leaps out of the cartoon in this live setting that you notice all these things that you never would have noticed if you're just watching it on TV. You really have an appreciation for what the music lends to the storytelling. So it's a really special thing and I've always been very fond of this show for that reason.
George Daughtery:You know people say, like, why did Carl Stalling put classical music in these cartoons, and why was there so much classical music? And it wasn't just because it was cheap, it wasn't because it was public domain. Carl Stalling and his other composer associate, milt Franklin, and Chuck Jones, the director, fritz Freeling, the director, they love the world of classical music. And so it's not just the music, it's the plot of these cartoons that are based on classical music. Oh, that's interesting. So one of my very favorite cartoons that we are doing with the New Jersey Symphony is Long Haired Hare, where Bugs is conducting the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra or the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra or the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. And you actually see the Hollywood Bowl, you see an animated Hollywood Bowl in the cartoons.
George Daughtery:Bugs starts out on a hillside just singing to himself and playing his own music and this bombastic baritone named Giovanni Jones is trying to rehearse in his house and Bugs keeps disturbing him and Giovanni Jones decides he's going to get Bugs and this thing escalates until now we are at the Hollywood Bowl, giovanni Jones is on stage and Bugs comes dressed as Leopold Stokowski and as Bugs makes his entrance into the pit, and this is totally audible. All the cartoon musicians are going Leopold, leopold, leopold, leopold, leopold, leopold, leopold, and it's just a totally iconic moment. Two things about that are so cool. In the 1950s, when that cartoon was made, leopold Stokowski was appearing on television all the time, so general audiences knew who Leopold Stokowski was. He's also Anderson Cooper's stepfather, if you never knew that. Oh, that's interesting. That's a whole other thing. But the other cool thing was that when we first started doing this with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra was still a pretty tight-laced orchestra in many ways in terms of onstage behavior, but even they would start screaming out Leopold, leopold, leopold.
Maddie Orton:That's so cute, I love that this happens everywhere.
George Daughtery:What's Opera Doc is the entire ring cycle. Feel the rabbit, feel the rabbit, feel the rabbit. Of four ring cycle operas Die Valkyrie, siegfried, götterdammerung and Das Rheingold. And if wait, if that's not enough, let's add the Flying Dutchman, tannhäuser, lohengrin and Rienzi Eight Wagnerian operas which would normally take a week to perform, literally a week to perform. We do in six minutes and 20 seconds, and the entire plot is the Ring Cycle Bugs is Brunhilde and Elmer is Siegfried.
George Daughtery:Almighty warrior of great fighting stock. Might I inquire to ask him what's up, doc? The Rabbit of Seville is the barber of Seville Overture, with Bugs as Rosina and Elmer as Figaro. So it's the plots of these that also take on this classical music world.
Maddie Orton:It was partly that they were inspired by the classical music and by the storytelling, totally inspired.
George Daughtery:Totally inspired and totally respectful. I love that this music is not cartoony. If you listen to what's Opera, doc, it is done in complete Wagnerian grandeur. It's huge, it's gigantic. It's gigantic. It's five French horns. Normally there are eight, but we five, okay, but it's huge. The Rabbit of Seville is orchestrated with the same minimal Rossini orchestration as the Barber of Seville. Long-haired Hare is full of gigantic major opera excerpts that are played in their full glory. So they didn't reduce this music to cartoony. You know comic sound. The original music has this grandeur, which makes it all the more funny.
Maddie Orton:So when you were curating this program, how did you pick the pieces? I mean, there are some that are so obvious, right, like if you didn't include Kill the Wabbit, people will be upset.
George Daughtery:And we can never take it out of the concert.
George Daughtery:No, of course, if you walked out anywhere on the street with a bunch of concert goers and went bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, most people would sing kill the rabbit. But um, I think that's right. Absolutely, it's totally true. The great ones were obvious. What's opera, doc, the rabbit of Seville, long haired hare, um, but there were others that I didn't know so well because I hadn't seen everything. We opened the concert with a cartoon called Baton Bunny, which is absolutely fabulous. Bugs in a yellow tuxedo, conducts the orchestra in in Von Supe's morning, night, and and and morning, morning, noon and night in Vienna overture. And it's the real overture, it's the real thing. And Bugs doesn't say a word in this. There is not one word of dialogue in this cartoon. Bugs' conducting patterns 3-4, 4-4, all are totally accurate. Wow, any orchestra could watch Bugs conducting from the screen. No, seriously, because Chuck Jones studied conductor patterns. I love just a thought of that. Yeah, so I barely have to do anything during this concert.
Erin Norton:Yeah, just watch this yeah.
George Daughtery:I didn't know this cartoon but another one that came to light which is just once again I've got to find another word besides brilliant, spectacular, extraordinary, whatever is one where none of the famous characters are. Even in this cartoon All of the characters are notes and rests and treble clefs and bass clefs and staff lines from a musical score. And the musical score is the Blue Danube Waltz and one of the notes from the Blue Danube falls off the score page and lands in the score for how dry I am and becomes drunk and he goes back to the Blue Danube and wreaks havoc on the score and all of the notes are getting out of the ways. And it is so brilliant. I didn't know this cartoon either. And another one of my great favorites is Cordy Concerto.
George Daughtery:Cordy Concerto was a send-off on Fantasia. When Disney did Fantasia, the Warner Brothers guys felt they had to do their own version, so they did Corny Concerto. In Corny Concerto all the backgrounds are these florid, gorgeous sort of neo-impressionist backgrounds and trees waving in time to the music and stuff like that. And then it's Bugs and Elmer doing Tales of Vienna and then once again we hear the Blue Danube. It's brilliant also. And again, this cartoon now is totally Johann Strauss Orchestration, the way it's performed, the way we delay the second and third beats, bop, bop, bop. All those things Totally genuine, totally legit.
Maddie Orton:Looney Tunes ended up being a major entry point to classical music for a lot of people, myself certainly included. Is that a feedback you get often when you perform the show?
Erin Norton:Yes, I mean absolutely. And I think, like the wonderful thing about Looney Tunes, I think it's a an illustration of a broader kind of pop culture consciousness around classical music. It was more steeped in our everyday lives back then. And I think without these Looney Tunes cartoons, I think a lot of these really famous melodies Kill the Wabbit included, barber of Tunes cartoons, I think a lot of these really famous melodies Kill the Wabbit included, barber of Seville included I'm not sure they would have the cultural staying power that they've had.
Erin Norton:And when we do these programs I mean it's been the last Bugs Bunny at the Symphony I did was gosh, like nine years ago or so when I was at the Utah Symphony People just really you almost hear like when one of the cartoons comes up, if they're not looking at the program, they don't know what's coming next. A lot of people don't even bother picking up the program and you'll hear these like nostalgic sighs in the audience, like what? The title comes up or the first scene comes up and they're like, oh, it's this one. Like people really know these cartoons at an innate level and, like I said, I wasn't a Looney Tunes kid either and I knew them, like my music teacher showed them to me, if I hadn't seen them just in my day to day life.
Erin Norton:So these cartoons have been such an important way that classical music stays alive in popular culture and I think the this concert, this program everywhere, I've done it across the country now Utah, north Carolina, now here. It's amazing that there's a certain cohort of people who are older now who come for the nostalgia of the original cartoons, but there's always kids in the audience who are seeing these for the first time. And so having that kind of combination of, you know, nostalgia and remembrance and discovery and excitement of these, this new thing, I think, is what makes this so special. It's continually recyclable and it crosses generational lines in a way that not a lot of other things that we do can do. It's really special in that way.
Maddie Orton:And Erin, I know a focus of yours and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras is bringing in new audiences and families. Do you anticipate this being an entry point for classical music for people who might not be?
Erin Norton:symphony regulars? Yeah, absolutely, I really hope that it is. And you know, our Pops programming over the last few years has been very. We focus very heavily on some of these blockbuster films. We've done a lot of the Star Wars and I think those are great.
Erin Norton:But I think this program feels very different in that it really celebrates the music that the orchestra already plays all the time. This is music that you're hearing in this concert, that you can come hear again and again and again. These are pieces that orchestras play all the time and again and again. These are pieces that orchestras play all the time and I think for me it's really exciting to think about, you know, especially kids coming into this concert and maybe they haven't seen these cartoons before and maybe this will awaken something in them.
Erin Norton:I think seeing an orchestra play any score with film for the first time especially that's the first time you're seeing the actual film itself this has happened to me a couple of times. There've been a couple of films where the first time I saw it was orchestra like live in concert it's just a transcendent experience that's hard to describe. I mean it just really makes you understand the power of music to tell stories and to kind of carry the narrative. I'm just very excited for the new people that we'll bring in, because I know there will be a lot and I hope that they'll kind of this will spark something in them and they'll want to come back and hear the orchestra again and again.
Maddie Orton:That's all folks. Thanks to George Doherty and Erin Norton for joining me. Warner Bros Discovery presents Bugs Bunny at the Symphony will be performed by New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank on February 14th NJ PAC in Newark on February 15th and the State Theater in New Brunswick on February 16th. For more information on the concert, visit njsymphonyorg. Musical clips from Warner Bros Discovery Presents Bugs Bunny at the Symphony used in this episode were performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, conducted by George Daughtery. Looney Tunes and all related characters and elements are copyrighted and trademarked by Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.
Maddie Orton:If you liked this episode, be sure to give us a review, subscribe and tell your friends, or review, subscribe and tell your friends. A transcript of this podcast, as well as links to related content and more about the arts in New Jersey, can be found on jerseyartscom. The Jersey Arts Podcast is presented by Art Pride New Jersey, advancing a state of creativity since 1986. The show is co -founded by and currently supported by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. This episode was hosted, produced and edited by yours truly Maddie Orton. Executive producers are Jim Atkinson and Isaac Serna-Diez. Special thanks to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. I'm Maddie Orton for the Jersey Arts Podcast. Thanks for listening.
