Winter is humming: ‘Thrones’ fans cheer
RESTLESS “Game of Thrones” fans who are traumatized that this year’s seventh season of their favorite show won’t start till summer — later than usual — can get a Westeros fix Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
That’s when the “Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience” will attack the arena with 65 musicians, pyrotechnics, moving stages and specially designed instruments playing ditties from the Seven Kingdoms. The evening will look back at the best musical moments of the first six seasons and will be led by the show’s composer, Ramin Djawadi.
“The [concert] started with the showrunners, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], who threw out the idea,” Djawadi tells The Post. “I had no idea that we would ever do any kind of concert. I’m used to working and recording in the studio.”
To capture the spirit of the cinematic fantasy series, the team decided to craft “a big stage that really is designed around ‘Game of Thrones,’” he says. The theme-parklike landscape includes giant morphing LCD screens that will display clips from “Thrones” — like a massive, immersive TV recap.
Djawadi wants to convert major Thronies into music aficionados.
“We’re hoping it’s very appealing to the fans, and also a new group of people that might otherwise not be interested in seeing a live concert,” he says. But this won’t look anything like the buttoned-up New York Philharmonic. Musicians will be unchained from their chairs, and as energized as marathon runners.
“Our ethnic-woodwind player, for example, has 15 different types of flutes and special instruments that he changes [among],” Djawadi says. And it will be hard to miss the specially built 12-foot-long “Wildling Horn.”
The composer will be conducting at every performance, and picking up instruments for some songs. As for balancing his road schedule with his music duties for the new season, Djawadi is as cool as a Lannister.
“It happens to work out that I can do it when I come back,” he says. “The show, as we know, is not coming back this spring. I don’t even know the exact schedule yet.” Now, the massive, 24-city tour is his main focus. “We really wanted to create something new that’s never been done before,” he says.