The first round of applause came almost immediately. As the iconic Walt Disney castle logo appeared on a giant screen, the CSUN Symphony Orchestra played the timeless melody from “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

The audience — filled with K-12 students, CSUN students and nostalgic adults, many of them wearing cowboy hats — showed its appreciation. The orchestra hadn’t even gotten to the opening clarinet lines of “You’ve Got a Friend In Me,” and the crowd was into it.

The reactions were similar at two live-to-film orchestra concerts for the thirtieth anniversary of the Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story.” More than 70 student musicians in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication played Randy Newman’s score Oct. 11-12 at The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts.

“It was really exciting to hear how excited everyone was at the beginning,” said violinist Alizah Chao ’24 (Music Industry Studies), who’s now pursuing a master’s in violin performance. “It makes you want to do better.” 

Live-to-film concerts have grown in popularity over the last decade — and have special resonance in Los Angeles. But due to the degree of difficulty, playing film and TV scores is generally a job for advanced professionals, said John Roscigno, the director of Orchestral Studies in CSUN’s Department of Music. 

“It’s very, very rarely done with a college orchestra,” he said. 

The special opportunity for students provided by the “Toy Story” concerts highlight the integral link between the academic programs of the Mike Curb College and The Soraya. The connection began with a $5 million contribution toward the construction of the performing arts center in 2006 from music industry mogul, alumnus and former California Lt. Gov. Mike Curb ’09 (Hon.D.).

The CSUN Symphony Orchestra began playing live-to-film concerts as part of The Soraya season about 10 years ago — most recently, they played to excerpts of Disney’s “Fantasia 2000” in 2021 and “Silly Symphony” shorts in 2019. The “Toy Story” concerts differed from those shows because the Mike Curb College students played along to the full movie. 

‘We Play Extremely Fast’

Before both shows, which were generously underwritten by David and Joyce Primes, Roscigno explained to the audience the challenge of the performance. He noted that orchestras normally record the music for movies in a studio, capturing short, one- or two-minute sections. 

“What we’re doing here today is sort of an extraordinary feat,” Roscigno said on Saturday. “We are going to be playing every single second of the original soundtrack exactly in sync with the movie.”

To keep up with the movie, Roscigno wore a headset with a clicking metronome, and he waved his hands in time with the clicks. Students had to keep up — or they would be out of sync with the movie.  “We play extremely fast…especially for the first half-hour,” Roscigno said. “Hopefully, you’ll have a new appreciation for the movie once you see what the orchestra actually has to go through while playing.”

Condensed Rehearsals

“Toy Story” was the first completely computer-animated feature film. The 1995 movie centers around a cowboy doll named Woody whose status as the favorite toy of young boy Andy is threatened when a new toy arrives — a cool astronaut named Buzz Lightyear who believes he’s a real space ranger. It still resonates because of its themes of friendship, jealousy, and finding your purpose. It’s also hilarious. 

The Oscar-winning and Grammy-winning “Toy Story” score was written by Randy Newman, who attended The Soraya’s 2024 production of an original performance based on his musical “FAUST.” (He was reportedly working on the score for “Toy Story 5” the weekend of Oct. 11-12.) 

The original “Toy Story” score was written to be played by 56 musicians, Roscigno said, but he decided to use CSUN’s full orchestra to give everyone the opportunity — 75 students in all. Roscigno also hired a handful of guest performers to round out the sound. The score also calls for a few rock musicians who normally aren’t included with CSUN’s orchestra, Chao said. 

The film includes about 20 pieces of music — known as cues — totaling about 40 total minutes of the movie’s 81-minute runtime. The orchestra played songs including “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” — one of Newman’s most iconic works — as well as all the orchestral music that underlines the movie’s emotional core. 

Learning so much music added an extra layer for a packed semester schedule. The CSUN Symphony opened the semester Sept. 28 with an orchestral performance at The Soraya (which was not part of The Soraya’s season). On Nov. 20-23, they’ll accompany the CSUN Opera for “The Marriage of Figaro” in the CSUN Theatre production at the Campus Theatre. And Dec. 9, they’ll close the semester with a concert featuring the winners of the 2025-2026 CSUN Concerto and Aria Competition.

Students received the “Toy Story” sheet music at the beginning of the semester, but they didn’t have space to focus on it until a couple of weeks before the show. The orchestra had approximately eight rehearsals, including just four during regular class time, plus cramming the last three days before the show, Roscigno said.  

Chao, who earned the leadership role of concertmaster, said she and a group of friends gathered at a friend’s house one day earlier in the semester to watch the movie to see and hear how the scenes worked with the sheet music. She later made time to chip away at the most challenging parts in between learning music for the other shows — but she said most of the pieces were challenging in their own way. 

A particularly daunting piece, Chao said, was “Infinity and Beyond.” Chao could see how hard the instrumental is just by looking at the flurry of notes on the sheet music.

To Infinity and Beyond

“Infinity and Beyond” plays beneath the early scene when Buzz tries to impress Woody and the other toys by proving he can fly. Buzz accidentally bounces off a rubber ball, loops a Hot Wheels track, launches into a suspended airplane toy, and very much does appear to fly. 

“It’s a very epic part,” Chao said. “So I get why the music’s all crazy and hard. There’s a very big hurrah kind of chord at the end when Buzz lands.”

It turns out, that part was especially fun to play for an audience. 

“We hit the gas,” Chao said. 

A Wish Granted

University leaders and donors who made The Soraya possible always planned for exactly this type of experience — Mike Curb College students stretching themselves musically while playing to appreciative audiences in a world-class performing arts center. 

By bringing in K-12 students and other fans of the movie, the “Toy Story” concerts widen the audience for performers with the CSUN Symphony and the Mike Curb College, Chao said. Approximately 1,400 students from 20 LAUSD K-12 schools were in attendance for both shows, bringing a different atmosphere than the typical classical music concert. Chao heard “ewws” from kids at the Sunday show when — spoiler alert — Woody kissed Bo Peep at the end. 

“There’s nothing like hearing the giggles from the kids,” she said. “This is probably the most fun concert I’ve done here at CSUN.”

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The post ‘Toy Story’ Live-to-Film Soraya Concerts Are Rare Opportunity for Mike Curb College’s CSUN Symphony  first appeared on CSUN Newsroom.