It’s a no-brainer that True Concord Voices & Orchestra tapped a veteran of the hit TV series “Star Trek” to help them with the Southwestern premiere of Timothy Takach’s universe-exploring work “Helios.”
In three performances this weekend, John de Lancie (Q from several iterations of the “Star Trek” franchise dating back to 1987) will narrate the beginning of “Helios,” a 45-minute voices-only work that, per the description, “spins the tale of the planets, the sun, the sheer enormity of the cosmos.”
“This is a pretty rarified and really beautiful kind of sonic experience when you consider that it’s just voices,” said de Lancie, who has worked with a number of orchestras throughout his 35-year acting career.
“Helios” was composed by longtime True Concord vocalist Takach, whose wife, composer and vocalist Jocelyn Hagen, will be in Tucson in January to premiere “Here I Am.” True Concord commissioned the work for vocalist Susanna Philips, whose premiere performance at the 2022 Tucson Desert Song Festival was postponed due to the pandemic.
De Lancie said his job this weekend is to bring the audience into another dimension that doesn’t concern itself with parking and babysitters and other daily life matters, he explained during a phone call from his Los Angeles home in early September.
“We’re going to be taking a journey here, and it’s a 45-minute sound journey that takes us through our solar system,” said the 74-year-old father of two.
It’s easy to connect the dots from de Lancie, a Philadelphia native and Juilliard-trained actor, and the wide expanse of space.
De Lancie’s introduction to TV was landing the role of Q, the often mischievous and sometimes malevolent chaos-creator with extraordinary powers to manipulate time and space. He continued playing the character through several “Star Trek” series including the second season of “Star Trek: Picard” that aired this year.
But what many of his “Star Trek” fans might find harder to connect is de Lancie’s classical music ties.
The son of a longtime Philadelphia Orchestra principal oboist, de Lancie grew up surrounded by symphonic music. He even took a stab at oboe lessons but realized that being in an orchestra probably was not in the cards.
But de Lancie has never strayed far from his father’s world. Throughout his career he has worked with a number of orchestras doing narration. He also put together a series of so-called “Symphonic Theater” pieces featuring orchestras and actors performing his self-penned theater works focused on some key musical moments in history. An early work imagined what it would be like to be in the audience for the first performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and another followed a desperate Beethoven as he searched for a trombone player for his Symphony No. 5 premiere.
In addition to “Star Trek,” de Lancie also is known for voicing the very Q-like character Discord in the animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” which ran from 2010-19. The show has a cult following, especially among adults and young men, who call themselves “Bronies.”
De Lancie was part of the 2012 documentary, “Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony,” that explored the phenomenon and the community of Bronies worldwide.
“Helios” opens True Concord’s “Out of This World” 19th season. For details and tickets, visit trueconcord.org.
