The Pivot: Sphere Ent. Releases ‘Wizard of Oz’ Sdtk, Judy Garland’s Daughter Calls A Cappella ‘Over the Rainbow’ ‘Breathtaking’

“The Wizard of Oz” is having quite the moment, which is impressive for an 86-year-old film adapted from a 125-year-old Frank Baum novel. The beloved story has helped drive Sphere Entertainment’s revenue growth reported in the third quarter with the success of “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” an immersive film experience designed for the iconic Las Vegas venue, and fans can take a piece of that experience with them wherever they go.

Sphere Entertainment and WaterTower Music released “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere: The Soundtrack,” a 41-track album that features the original film score that was rerecorded for the experience at Sphere, as well as a never-before-heard a cappella rendition of “Over the Rainbow” by Judy Garland.

The painstaking process of separating the original vocal stems and rerecording the score with an 80-piece orchestra on the same scoring stage where the music was originally recorded in 1939 can now be appreciated by everyone on all digital platforms.

“It was so wonderful because it was done with such love and respect and honor, and it was everything that I wanted,” Lorna Luft, Garland’s daughter, tells Pollstar. “What [conductor] David Newman, who’s my friend, did with putting together a new orchestra and playing that incredible score and putting it on the same stage as the original score, he just gets it. I was blown away.”

Luft was especially blown away by the efforts made by Sphere Entertainment in separating the vocal stems to get an a cappella version of her mother’s classic song, which not only showcases the singer’s range but also adds an emotional depth that she understood well before photography on “The Wizard of Oz” began. The sound engineers at Sphere didn’t touch any of the vocal stems throughout the process of redesigning the music for the venue.

“What’s extraordinary about this, and I guess the only word that comes to mind is breathtaking, about the a cappella version of ‘Over the Rainbow’ on this is that she was just 16. She put all of that emotion and care into that lyric and that melody, and she didn’t know where it was going to be filmed. There were five directors [who worked] on ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ and every time it changed, it didn’t matter. It was her talent and the real honesty of what that song meant [that persisted].”

Paul Freeman, a Grammy-nominated producer and engineer working at Sphere Entertainment, began working on the “Wizard of Oz at Sphere” music over a year ago, going every which way to figure out how to recreate the music in full spatialized sound.

“It’s tricky because you have the world’s most high-tech, spatial venue on the planet, and then you have a soundtrack that was recorded with a smallish studio orchestra close to about 100 years ago,” says Freeman, whose role at Sphere is VP audio artist. “One of the things that was most difficult throughout this whole entire process in the beginning was approaching this as something modern, new, clean and spatial, and using all of today’s technology. But as soon as we started doing that, it didn’t sound right.”

Given the popularity of the film and its music, fans would have noticed the differences, and it could have taken those attending “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” out of the film and the emotions its music conveys.

“The trick to all of this was to be able to record an orchestra in the same style with the techniques they did back then. Different vibratos, different mutes, just a whole different concept,” Freeman says. “Regardless of how high-tech we were going to record it, the performance still had to sound legitimate, and the notes had to be right. And I’m not just talking about structurally right on the page, but they had to perform emotionally correctly and then be able to pull things apart to put them in the venue where we could make it as wide and as warm as possible without falling apart.”

That meant recording dozens of instruments, a much more complex process compared to prepping a rock band like U2 or the Eagles. Freeman says the process differs from mixing sound for all movie theaters.

“One thing that Sphere does is it’s very sonically comfortable,” Freeman adds. “…When you plug in and you start to mix, very little processing goes into it. It’s more in understanding how things physically work in the venue, how it physically sounds and how to place things in the venue to accentuate all those things without losing the character of the original recording. I don’t want to sound smug, but it’s art.”

Sphere’s immersive reimagining of the iconic film and the music has helped the venue and its company see growth, with more than a million tickets sold through October. A release from the company about the earnings stated that revenues related to The Sphere Experience saw $28.3 million uptick compared to the prior year quarter, which means “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” which debuted Aug. 28, has increased the venue’s per-show revenue.

Venturing into film and releasing a soundtrack is uncharted territory for the company, and Freeman didn’t hesitate to refer to “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” as a definitive experience of the venue.

“If that’s your entrance into [Sphere], it gets you the entire experience,” Freeman says. “You get the visual, you get the sound everywhere. It’s not like you’re sitting there and going, ‘Dang, I wish I had seen a concert first.’ That’s not what this is. If you go see ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ you may not hear a bunch of smash-your-face guitars, but you’re going to get the experience. You’re going to walk away going, ‘I get it now. Let me go see something else.’”

Baum’s novel continues to resonate with audiences today, especially with filmgoers, with not only the multisensory, 4D experience of the film at Sphere, which runs through February 15, but also in movie theaters, with “Wicked,” prequel films inspired by “The Wizard of Oz,” thriving at the box office.

How is it that a 125-year-old story continues to resonate with audiences today and boosts revenue for Sphere and cinemas across the globe?

“Because it’s about hope,” Luft says. “The whole move’s about hope, and we’ve gone through certain times in our history when that’s what we all want, and that’s what we all need.”

Luft attended the premiere of the Sphere experience along with her grandchildren, and James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment, was on hand and stepped into the role of the Wizard.

“I loved the fact that he came as the Wizard because he is the Wizard. He did this,” Luft says. “And it was so wonderful for my whole family. … It’s an experience of wonder, and the message behind the novel Frank Baum wrote is very simple. It’s about home, it’s about courage, it’s about love. … It’s just a perfect film, and seeing the perfect film at a perfect venue was a great marriage.”