Rickey Minor on music for directing Oscars: “It’s a big celebration”

Rickey Minor prepares for a performance. The esteemed music director is once more participating in cinema’s biggest night, the Oscars, and spoke to TheGrio about his approach to this yr’s Oscar night.

This Sunday, thousands and thousands of individuals will gather in front of their television screens to observe the Oscars. Celebrating the whole lot that film had to supply audiences this yr, the show will bring together Hollywood’s brightest stars for a three-hour ceremony. Minor returns for his fourth time in six years to music helmed the Oscars, fresh from taking the reins of music director for this yr’s Primetime Emmy Awards and December’s Kennedy Center Honors.

“I’m coming in with a clean slate,” Minor explained to us the day before his company headed to the Dolby Theater to start rehearsals. “I don’t come in with any preconceived idea of ​​what it should or could look like. It’s always a team effort.” Collaboration between different departments, the small details, is crucial to the success of a live ceremony just like the Academy Awards.

“I feel every department head should have a plan, an idea and a presentation of certain things which might be possible. I never say, “This is how it should be.” No, this shouldn’t be the way it ought to be. It must be what the collective agrees on, namely the producers, me after which my team.

Minor outlined the rehearsal schedule for the show: two six-hour days to rehearse all of the music, an unusually quick process for one among the largest nights of entertainment. “So, if you don’t already have all the music ready, printed and on a rack… overall we have about 160 pieces of music. That’s a lot of music to rehearse and even make some recordings.”

Minor also shared the story he hopes to inform through the show’s music. “We have to set the tone because music informs. It tells you how to feel, how to think and how to react.”

“This show is a celebration generally, so how will we rejoice that and still strike the best chord? And give people what they need? Generally, the music has such vibrations that it makes you should dance. It makes you should cry. It makes you should jump up and down. You know, it just makes you glad.

“Music can do that, it can change the molecular structure,” he added. “And I think we have a responsibility to make sure it is a celebration.”

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Minor called the job an “honor” for him, realizing the importance of music in storytelling. “I mean, you recognize, it’s like in silent movies, without music you do not know learn how to really feel. You just cope with it someway. At least that keeps them energized after they’re on business shows, fidgeting with people, but you recognize, we have a lot of stuff in store for this yr.

“I love it because it’s never necessarily better or worse, it’s just different,” he concluded. “Every year we try to give something different, a little bit of a twist. The show will start and end like everyone else, there will be speeches, there will be crying and tears, and it will be, you know, a big celebration. I’m glad I can be a part of it.”

The 96th Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air Sunday, March 10 at 7 p.m. ET, live on ABC.