![]() ![]() “He is mesmerizing, on the podium and in real life,” says Lee Koonce, president and artistic director of Gateways Music Festival. After its longtime musical director Michael Morgan died in August 2021, Parnther seemed the obvious choice to replace him for the concert. Founded in 1993, the seasonal orchestra consists entirely of Black musicians, who remain woefully underrepresented in classical music. On April 24, Parnther will make his debut at Carnegie Hall as the guest conductor of the famed Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, which also performs at the hallowed New York institution for the first time. In addition to playing on or conducting numerous film scores (including Tenetand this year’s Turning Red), he has served for years as the cover conductor for the L.A. The first-generation American son of a Jamaican father and a Samoan mother, Parnther would go on to study music and Northwestern and Yale, eventually ending up in Los Angeles, where he has led parallel musical lives. ![]() “I’ve had quite an affiliation with Star Wars,” says Parnther, who adds he had been “obsessed” with the films growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the 80s and 90s. He played bassoon on the scores for Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (by John Williams), Rogue One (by Michael Giacchino), and Solo (by John Powell) and conducted Ludwig Göransson’s score for the hit Disney+ series The Mandalorian, as well as the music for the follow-up, The Book of Boba Fett. “That’s a rather bassoon-y looking instrument.”įew people know the music of Star Wars as intimately as Parnther. “I think it was played in the cantina band ,” Parnther said, without missing a beat. 'Star Wars' X-Wing Fighter, Which Had Been Lost for Decades, Sells for Record $3.1 Million at Auction The contrabassoon seems especially fitting: It looks like a Star Wars weapon, and its tone is as deep and otherworldly as Jabba the Hutt’s voice. with it now.” As soon as he returned, Parnther would play the instrument on the score for the highly anticipated Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi (premiering May 27). “I grabbed it this morning and I’ll be heading back to L.A. “I actually came up here to buy a very specific contrabassoon, which is sitting right over there,” he said, pointing to the cumbersome woodwind behind him. ![]() When chatting via Zoom in late March, the conductor and bassoonist was calling in from a hotel room in Kansas City. ![]()
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