Picture this: The stage is set for an orchestra but lined up along the front of the stage is a vast assortment of non-musical (?) stuff: tinsel, boots and balloons, various cloths and blankets, fluids, a helmet, a whip and a wind machine, an umbrella, a sandpit and a half-filled sack, a celery stalk … and much more.

They were assembled for the world premiere of Hollywood Parsifals – a concerto for orchestra and Foley  (sound effect) artists by Australian composer Thomas Meadowcroft.

Eugene Ughetti and musicians of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Samantha Meuleman

Meadowcroft’s concerto turns the soundtrack inside out: he has made a musical feature of the sound effects and placed the Foley artists in the limelight. And in so doing, the composer has flipped the way the soundtrack is scored and heard.

Thankfully, he was there in person to explain his complicated compositional journey. Instead of adding sound effects to amplify the action, Meadowcroft – aided and abetted by the Foley artists – developed the score around six popular film genres: War, Western, Thriller/Horror, Rom-Com, Crime and Science Fiction.