Candlelight Concerts Offer a Unique Way to Experience Your Favorite Music

You’ve probably seen ads for them all around the internet: Candlelight Concerts. They offer a wide variety of music, from classical standards to modern pop songs, all arranged for string quartet and played on a stage surrounded by candles.

I saw one of these advertisements a few weeks ago, for a concert entitled The Best of Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi is perhaps the best-known Japanese composer today, made famous worldwide for his scores for the films of Studio Ghibli. As a fan of the films and the music, I decided to buy a ticket.

Candlelight Concert performance on December 4, 2024, at the Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis.

I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect out of the concert, which was held at the Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis. A former warehouse that was converted by the Guthrie into a lab theater space, it was acquired by the Minnesota Opera in 2022 and has hosted Fringe Festival productions in addition to these Candlelight Concerts. It’s a very cozy venue, with room for fewer than 250 audience members. The audience sits close to the stage, and with the stage lit only by the dim flickering glow of the (LED) candles, this show was an intimate experience.

A string quartet played selections from a variety of Ghibli films, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, and director Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent “final” film, The Wind Rises. They also featured one song from Kikujiro, a live-action film for which Hisaishi wrote the score. The songs were skillfully arranged for strings, and the group (from the LISTESO Music Group) performed them well. The concert was made extra enjoyable by the first violinist, who was a great fan of the Studio Ghibli films and shared lots of interesting information between sets.

Fever, the company that produces these concerts and many other live shows across the country, stages events in several locations around Minneapolis. The music of Joe Hisaishi returns to the same venue on January 10, 2025, and other upcoming themes include Christmas, Bridgerton, Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones, and hip-hop.

If you find that they’re playing a kind of music you like, give them a try—it’s a nice, relaxing way to spend an evening.