Bruce Kiesling

Bruce Kiesling is a conductor appearing with the San Diego Symphony at the Rady Shell, leading live orchestral accompaniment to screenings of "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York." These film-in-concert programs pair the orchestra's live performance of the film score, including music by John Williams, with the movie projected overhead.

These two concerts belong to the "film in concert" format, where the orchestra performs a movie's musical score live while the film plays on a screen above the stage, with dialogue and sound effects still coming through the speakers. For "Home Alone 2," listeners can expect John Williams's score, built around a warm, sweeping main theme and playful, quick-footed passages that underline the film's chase scenes and comic mishaps. "Sleepless in Seattle" draws on a mix of orchestral underscoring and the film's well-known popular songs, arranged for orchestra to sit alongside the on-screen action. In this format, a conductor's main job is precise timing, keeping the orchestra locked to the picture so musical cues land exactly when they do on screen, rather than shaping a personal interpretation of the piece from scratch.