It's not exactly the Quidditch World Cup, but it's close.
The West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) will be performing the next instalment of their beloved film-concert series, 'Harry Potter & The Prisoner Of Azkaban'.
Relive the wonder and magic of JK Rowling's third Harry Potter story in concert as WASO perform the score live as the film plays in high-definition.
For WASO French horn player and avid 'Harry Potter' fan Julia Brooke, it's an opportunity to form a closer relationship to the text she loved growing up.
“I grew up with the books so I was one of those people who started reading them in early high school then would line up for the books every year that they came out,” Julia recalls.
“When I was in university I was part of the Australian Youth Orchestra and one of the programmes we did was an international Europe tour in 2007. That was the year that the last book came out and we happened to be in Paris.
“So there was a bunch of Australians traipsing around Paris trying to find a bookshop that sold the English version and we found it. On a bus trip from Paris to eastern Provence, so it was about seven hours, and there's all these photos of us trying to frantically read it before the next person so we didn't get any spoilers.”
WASO have already performed live concerts for the first two Harry Potter films, as well as a number of other popular films. The 'Harry Potter Film Concert Series' is another product of JK Rowling's Wizarding World and brings to vivid life composer John Williams' incredible score.
The WASO performance of 'Harry Potter & The Prisoner Of Azkaban' will be conducted by concert series creator and producer Justin Freer.
“I've never worked with Justin before,” Julia says.
“The first two [concerts] were conducted by Nicholas Buc so I'm looking forward to it. It's always interesting to see what people have to bring to these kind of productions because it is quite a difficult task having to keep a 100-piece orchestra in time with the movie for two-and-a-half hours, so Justin's got his work cut out for him, for sure.”
German-born and raised in Sydney, Julia has been member of WASO since 2014 and says that out of her four-year tenure, her greatest highlight has been working with chief conductor Asher Fisch who is known for his command of German and Italian works from the Romantic and post-Romantic eras.
“The repertoire he's really known for is Romantic German music,” she explains.
“So we've got to play some really big symphonic repertoire and opera works as well, like Wagner and Strauss. We got to tour in 2016 to China and Abu Dhabi, and that was just a real delight to take the orchestra international and do a bit of a showcase.”
Being a true Harry Potter fan, it seems there's only one truly relevant question left for Julia to answer: which Hogwarts house she'd be sorted in to, and the answer may surprise you:
“I think I'm Ravenclaw. They're obviously very intelligent and I think they're the silent achievers through the books because they have to use a riddle to get into their common room and how hard is that? Plus it changes every day. Hufflepuff's pretty good as well but they get a lot of shtick for being nice people.”
