Chris Van Allsburg has likewise taken all the basic elements of Christmas - Santa Claus, presents, etc. The program will begin with an interaction, where I ask kids, 'What has your family added to traditional holiday activities that make them your own.' Then we show how John Harbison takes one of the most traditional songs in the world, 'The Twelve Days of Christmas,' and reinvents it as a virtuoso brass quintet.

We decided to create a concert that does that too.

The idea behind the concert is that holidays survive because they get reinvented, not replicated. The Polar Express is ambitious for sure, but the fact that its most sincere pieces are the six classics that make up its caboose is telling.Coordinated projections of the iconic images from the original book are now available for live performance with this piece.ĭazzle children and their families with larger than life illustrations of the Express, Santa Claus and his reindeer, and the endearing Billy who learns the spirit of Christmas through a series of snowy adventures to the North Pole.

Silvestri's orchestral pieces are effective in tone, yet ape Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhands theme so shamelessly that lawyers on both sides must have had words early on in the production. Tom Hanks does his best Gene Wilder on the whimsical and strangely unnerving title track, a wonderfully unhinged performance that will have Willy Wonka fans clamoring for more, and the winsome vocals of preteens Matthew Hall and Meagan Moore give the ballad 'When Christmas Comes to Town' a real sense of wonder. Tyler struts his stuff on the amiable but derivative 'Rockin' on Top of the World,' a three-chord rave-up that finds the Aerosmith mouthpiece channeling a pack of howler monkeys, but it's Groban's syrupy, future American Idol favorite 'Believe' that serves as the soundtrack's commercial centerpiece. Composers Glen Ballard and Alan Silvestri provide the latter, relying on swelling choral arrangements, tender ballads, and polarizing yuletide offerings from Stephen Tyler and Josh Groban. The soundtrack to Robert Zemeckis' groundbreaking film adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's popular children's book The Polar Express celebrates the season with both classic and contemporary holiday flair.

The polar express soundtrack informatin