At beginning of October, the American production of La La Land in Concert contacted me as orchestra conductor for Italy tour.

La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles while pursuing their dreams. The film’s title refers simultaneously to music, the city of Los Angeles, and to the idiom for being out of touch with reality.

Following the massive success of Chazelle’s film, which showed staying power in movie theaters for much of late 2016 and early 2017 before winning several Academy Awards, La La Land in Concert was the next logical step in paying homage to the classic entertainment immortalized in La La Land and the films to which it is indebted.

In this one-of-a-kind experience, a full orchestra played along with the film as singers, actors and dancers enhance the on-screen events with full choreography, bringing the hit tribute to love and the Hollywood musicals of yesteryear to the stage in an unprecedented way. Alongside the film’s familiar score – played live by the orchestra to the soundtrack vocals of stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone – were several previously unreleased orchestrations, including the “Overture,” which opens the live production before segueing to the already-iconic “Another Day of Sun,” the opening number from the film.

The orchestra was composed by 50 musicians, including strings, woodwinds, rhythm section and a jazz band. We performed 3 concerts in Padova (Geox Gran Teatro) and Milan (Teatro dell’Arcimboldi), with a great success.