Return trip to La La Land.

Let’s connect your pre-pandemic life with your post-pandemic life, and wake up those carefree feelings.

It was October 2019, when we had never known a pandemic. I happened to read on the online news that a one-night concert of the film Rocketman, which I had loved that year, was to be held in Hollywood, and I suddenly bought a ticket even though it was an overseas concert! And lucky for me, my client lived in L.A. and could join me at the outdoor theatre where the Rocketman Concert in Hollywood was taking place! So to Hollywood, I went.

The film Rocketman was screened with a live orchestra and finally, Elton John, Taron Egerton, the director, and key members of the film came on stage. I lost my mind. I heard Taron singing live, a dream come true!

The next day, I was also taken to the location of the film La La Land. I love this film too. I practiced singing “Audition” by Emma Stone in my singing lessons. I listened to the soundtrack as much as Rocketman.

August 2022. I was at the Tokyo International Forum. A client from my online community told me that La La Land live in Concert was going to take place in Tokyo. Again, unexpectedly, the information came to me.

The composer and pianist of music for La La Land were coming to Japan from Hollywood to collaborate with a Japanese symphony orchestra and Jazz players. The composer himself conducted the performance, and the film was shown on a big screen on the stage while the music was played live, in the same way as the Rocketman concert. Scenes from the film’s JAZZ BAR gave the illusion that I was there too. I was speechless.

Flute, harp, maracas, violin, cello, guitar, electric guitar — I could not find these sounds just by listening to the soundtrack, but now I could see them visually, and I was so moved by the way the sounds traveled through my body!

The film is a Jazz film, and the solo parts by drums, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and piano gave me goosebumps. Sometimes I was so focused on the story that I couldn’t listen to what kind of music was playing, but watching a film with music as the main attraction was another emotional experience.

The idea of watching a film with music as the main attraction was wonderful. Moreover, it was a luxury to listen to the composer conducting, the soundtrack pianist performing in the La La Land Concert and the main vocalist in the film singing live in the Rocketman concert.

The similarity of the impact of those two experiences formed a wormhole in time and space between the two concerts. It was like everything between them was pushed out of the timeline, it was like the Rocketman concert could have been yesterday. I was transported back to a time before the pandemic. I remembered a feeling, I didn’t know I had forgotten. I cried up my mask.