Dattebayo! A Chat with Naruto: The Symphonic Experience Conductor Heidi Joosten

One of the most iconic anime series of the last few decades has to be Naruto, which exists in the mythic big 4 for fans – alongside the likes of Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Bleach. It’s the familiar Shonen story of a young outcast, Naruto Uzumaki, who lives in a village of ninjas who must overcome the odds and go from being a “cursed” child who was cast aside, to the best warrior in the village, and earn the title of Hokage, or the leader. The OG run, which featured Naruto as a feisty 12 year-old ran for about five years (2002-2007), with a somewhat solid run of about 220 episodes. Given the show’s popularity and weekly slot, it quickly caught up to its source from time to time resulting in a fair amount of filler, but not enough to stop a run that is going on today with a new series following the exploits of Naruto’s son Boruto. 

Needless to say with the booming popularity of pop culture musicals and anime in general, Naruto seemed like a perfect candidate for a full orchestra adaptation, and it is currently touring as Naruto: The Symphonic Experience. This two and a half hour event, which will be in my hometown of Philly – May 13th and 14th at the Miller Theater presented by Ensemble Arts Philly, features a montage of iconic scenes from the OG series original 220 episode run, synchronized to a live orchestra performing Toshio Masuda’s original score with all dialog Japanese no less. In anticipation for the event I got to chat with conductor Heidi Joosten as to what fans could expect from the show and what it’s like conducting such events as Barbie: The Concert, Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert, and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse. 

Looking at your body of work it seems like films and pop culture have long been part of the equation. Did you always want to be a conductor and when did you find this niche that combines these two passions?

So both my parents are conductors. They were music teachers that retired into professorships and everyone in my family at one point picked up a baton, so I think I was destined to do it at some point. But both of my degrees are in composition, I started writing when I was really young and really followed that passion through my degrees. But I’ve always had an interest in musical theater and so music directing and musical theater is something that has naturally been a huge part of that. You end up becoming a conductor. And I’ve just been very fortunate to be able to work in that vein and I love it very, very much. 

I just attended the Sailor Moon musical recently and what surprised me the most was it was as much an Anime convention as it was a Broadway show, what surprised you the most when you start tackling these more niche genres and properties?

I mean, I think of the things that have surprised me the most, especially when you get under the hood of the music that accompanies a live picture or, like a television show or a film is just how nuanced and how rich all of this music really is. So, when we’re able to shine a spotlight on it, specifically with these concerts that are live to picture. It’s a really rare experience to be able to focus in on this music, create it live every single night and just bring it to life in a whole new way for fans that have been with this material for three days to 20 years. 

Now unlike Sailor Moon, which was a Japanese production, this is an American production. You’ve conducted Barbie: The Concert, Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert, and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse can you shed some light on how this production differs from some of your western productions? 

For this particular show, the dialogue is all in Japanese and the songs that we’re singing as a part of it are sung in the original Japanese. So we are honoring the tradition as well as we can when it comes to keeping the languages as a part of it. We aren’t doing the English dub, we are doing the original Japanese. Even along those lines, we have the traditional Japanese instruments such as the Shakuhachi, which is the Japanese flute, the Shamisen, which is like a Japanese lute, sort of like a guitar, but along those lines, we also have American western rock and roll instruments. It is a rock and roll concert. We’ve got a bass guitar, drums, a horn section, a string section, reeds. It is just meant to be a live concert experience. 

So you’re going to be covering the openings and and and closings as well as the score? 

Some of it, yes. The material that we’re covering in this particular concert happens to cover the first 220 episodes of Naruto, and there are over 700 episodes. So, the producers that designed this particular concert had to be picky. We obviously can’t cover all of it, but I think we did a pretty great job and at least put it together as much of it as we could in a 2 and a 1/2 hour experience. 

In preparation did you do any research and by research I mean watch the OG run of Naruto? 

I watched some of it, yes. My brother-in-law has seen all of it, so he sat me down and walked me through all that I needed to see to be sure that I knew where everything was coming from when we were telling this particular story. 

But even in that sense, with this concert, even if you haven’t seen Naruto, from the start of the experience through the end of it, you get a solid idea of the beats of the 220 episodes that we’ve covered. So, for example, my parents came to the Milwaukee show and they understood what was going on. We may not hit every single detail, but there’s enough that you’re getting the through line story. 

Were you an anime fan before taking on the property?

You know, I may be slow coming, but I am becoming a fan. My first experience with you know, anime inspired was when I worked on Avatar last fall, which I came to when I was in grad school. So I understand the art form. I recognized it as being incredibly beautiful, but I’m coming to it now.  When I get to One Piece everyone will know. (Laughs)

Oh goodness, I am even too intimidated to start that one. That makes Naruto look like a light novel. 

So you’ve worked on over 125 different productions. Everything from Barbie: The Live Concert, which I sadly missed, to the musical of American psycho. What would be your dream property to do a symphonic experience if you just got a blank check? 

So like my bucket list item as a conductor, which already has been created, but it’s like hitting the market this fall is How to Train your Dragon. 

I love it so very much. 

Conductors and ninjas both use their hands to summon something, Naruto summons a sexy clone of himself and you summon an orchestra to play music. What’s something ninja’s can’t do that conductors can that might surprise people?

I often describe conducting as having the best seat in the house, because I just get to watch all of these world-class musicians who are my friends do their thing night in, night out; and make incredible music. The conductor’s responsibility is to help shape all of that, but also have a bird’s eye view of how it all gets put together.  So, for me, it very much feels like a coach of a football team.  Not only are you putting it all together and making sure you’ve got everything in place to play defence against whatever you need to play defense against, but also making sure that people aren’t getting injured. You’re making sure that as we’re looking at things we’re always keeping a fresh pair of eyes on it, because this particular tour, especially, you know, we’re in a different city every night. 

We were in Reading, Pennsylvania last night. I’m talking to you right now from Washington, DC. We don’t really get a whole lot of time to get super used to the theaters that we’re playing in, because we have a different theater every day and we have the greatest crew in the world just setting us up and taking us down every single night in these theaters. From a conductor perspective it’s how can I best be helpful? How can I best be helpful in navigating, making sure that every single night, not only are we having a great show but we’re having fun? 

Finally, like you mentioned before Naruto has been going for over 20 years, why do you think people are showing up and still discovering this property? Why do you think it resonates so much with its fans? 

You know the story is timeless. The lessons that are taught are timeless, it’s such an effective medium to get the messaging out that we’re finding this is becoming cross-generational. You know, some people that have watched it are now introducing it to their children. So we have people of all different ages coming to the show and on top of that, the participation culture that comes with anime, comes with cosplay, that comes with Comicon, is so welcomed in our concerts that I think that has a lot to do with it. 

The name of the show is Naruto: The Symphonic Experience, but it is not a stuffy orchestra concert. If you’re seeing something on screen that makes you excited, we want you to cheer, we want you to laugh, we want you to cry with us. Have a great time and participate. Come and live your best life with this series that previously you were only able to watch in your living room. Now we’re bringing it to you live where you get to experience it with 1500 people.

That communal aspect is something that’s really special and it’s something you don’t appreciate until you’re there in that group of people and it’s a shared experience. It’s great. 

Agreed.