‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ live in Concert puts music front and center

Water, earth, fire and airbenders are all deeply rooted characters in the lore of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” but a component of the series not visible on screen is now getting the spotlight.

An 18-piece orchestra, including choir singers, brass, woodwind, and string instruments, will bring the score of the Nickelodeon animated series to life for an epic musical journey. The live ensemble will play an over two-hour show with clips from the series that capture the greatest hits from seasons or “books” one through three.

Fans can expect the show to musically illustrate the expedition of Avatar Aang’s endeavors to master all four elements alongside friends Katara, Sokka and Toph to defeat Fire Lord Ozai and stop the Fire Nation’s war, all while avoiding apprehension by Prince Zuko and his uncle Iroh.

The North American leg of the tour includes Southern California stops at the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside on Friday, Nov. 15/Tuesday, Nov. 26, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on Sunday, Nov. 17, the San Diego Civic Theatre on Thursday, Nov. 21 and the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 22 and Saturday, Nov. 23.

“It’s a big show, and the music’s beautiful,” said Emily Marshall, music director and conductor for Avatar the Last Airbender in Concert. “I fell in love with the show the first time I performed it for the U.S. premieres in California and New York. People come in and get so excited because they don’t know what they will hear or see next. It gets the crowd going differently than I’ve ever seen with other projects I’ve been a part of.”

Composer Jeremy Zuckerman, a California Institute of the Arts alumni who produced television commercials before joining the animated show’s team, composed the score for the television show. In college, he met Benjamin Wynn, who would become the series’ sound designer and who would introduce him to Bryan Konietzko, the co-creator of “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

Konietzko had an idea for how the Eastern Asian-influenced animated series should sound, but he didn’t want to bring in any seasoned composers or sound designers. Instead, he tapped his college friends Zuckerman and Wynn, who produced the music for the pilot and proved to Nickelodeon that they could produce the sounds to match the visuals of Konietzko and his fellow co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino’s vision.

“I knew it was amazing from the moment Bryan and Mike were telling me about it,” Zuckerman said in a Zoom interview. “Bryan would show me some character art he’d make on his light board and tell me some incredible details about the story and the world-building. I just knew it would be really special, but I had no idea it would be enduring like this.”

In 2021, GEA Live reached out to Zuckerman about doing a live rendition of the show. He and his assistant, orchestrator and arranger Brian Herald, then got to work rewatching all 61 episodes on their own time and taking notes on the most pivotal narrative scenes of the series. Herald was then tasked with rebuilding recording sessions that were 18 years old and stopped functioning over time.

When he was finished compiling the track list, he made charts for the musicians for a live performance. The team, who had also received feedback from co-creators Konietzko and DiMartino, brought in the original editor of the show, Jeffrey Adams, to help piece together the visuals.

“Jeff took it from there and built this beautiful thing that turned out to have a lot more visual material than I originally anticipated,” he said. “He wouldn’t use the exact scene from a cue, but narratively, it was a theme that was happening throughout the show, and he would combine them into that cue to create beautiful and poetic-like sequences.”

Part of what’s made the series so beloved by fans is the musical score’s incorporation of a variety of instruments. In a December 2023 interview released on the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” YouTube channel, Zuckerman said he first began crafting the sound using a combination of an early Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) library, along with other orchestral instruments and non-western ones such as the duduk, an Armenian reed flute, beautifully featured in “The Blue Spirit,” one of the series’ most pivotal episodes.

He also used the pipa, a pear-shaped wooden plucking instrument and the guzheng, a Chinese zither, which have both become signatures in the series associated with emotional undertones within a character’s story arc. Although marketed as a kids’ show for ages six to 11, the series contains many universal themes, such as love and acceptance, that shine through complex subjects such as war, genocide and death. Music is an important vehicle of that, and it is what Zuckerman wanted to honor in his contributions and the live show.

“The emotional stuff was my favorite stuff,” he said. “It’d be very important for me to feel what was going on. I would lose myself in what was happening and feel it deeply. Then, I’d get ideas for a melody, harmony, or sound. That was how I would tap into the emotion. Those emotional moments are a big part of the show, which is why it’s endured all this time.”

Following a series of sold-out shows in New York, San Francisco and Rotterdam and the global premiere at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Jan. 21, Nickelodeon and GEA Live announced a world tour spanning more than 100 cities across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. According to GEA Live producers, the tour has sold over 350,000 tickets live globally.

The original orchestra in London comprised 62 musicians, then reduced to 36, and now it is at 18, which Zuckerman and Marshall said sounds tighter and neater on stage. When the tour is finished in North America, a new set of musicians will hit the road in Europe. Guzheng player Luffy Lilly is one of the musicians who’s been enjoying the opportunity to be a part of the show, documenting each city on her Instagram page, which Zuckerman feels is on par with the Avatar community showing each other love.

“When I first met her, she seemed really shy, and she’s come out of her shell,” he said. “I feel like this tour will be a special experience for her, and that’s one of the things that makes me happy. Many of the musicians in this ensemble are very young; some have never toured before or watched Avatar. They get to be rock stars, playing to sold-out audiences, and people come up to them and ask them for their autographs. It seems like amazing vibes on the tour.”

Zuckerman is also excited to provide a social gathering for fans of the series to enjoy something that continues to bring them joy, whether it was from their childhood or because of the live music ensemble.

“A really beautiful thing happened that I hadn’t anticipated, which is that there’s this community element to the concerts,” he said. “I see a lot of people posting about how they’re surrounded by love at these shows. That positive and social aspect is super special and better to me than anything else.”

Avatar the Last Airbender in Concert

Where: Fox Performing Arts Center, 3801 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside.

When: 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15.

Tickets: Tickets start at $69 at Livenation.com.

Also: 2 & 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17, at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Sold-out but resale tickets available at axs.com; 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, at the San Diego Civic Theatre, 3rd & B St., San Diego. Tickets are sold out but available for resale at Ticketmaster.com; 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22, at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Tickets start at $136 at Ticketmaster.com; 2 & 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, performances are also available at the Dolby Theater. Tickets start at $150 for the afternoon show and $129 for the evening show at Ticketmaster.com; 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 26 at Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside, 3801 Mission Inn Ave. Tickets start at $56 at Livenation.com.