Conductor Emily Marshall helps bring the music of Naruto to life at the Kauffman Center this Sunday

Naruto. // image courtesy Crunchyroll

Do you even anime if you’ve never randomly seen someone doing a Naruto run?

Fans of the long-running and iconic series will be pleased to note that on Sunday, March 16, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts will present Naruto: The Symphonic Experience. The performance not only features a live orchestra performing Toshio Masuda’s original score, but behind them will be a screen with a feature-length montage created from the 220 episodes of the series, allowing them to “relive Naruto Uzumaki’s journey to become Hokage, facing rivalries, challenges, and growth along the way.”

Ahead of Naruto: The Symphonic Experience’s Kansas City stop, we spoke with conductor Emily Marshall about her connection to Naruto and her experience conducting live tours for Avatar the Last Airbender and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as well as working with classic rock legends the Who.

The Pitch: Were you all that familiar with Naruto before you got this job?

Emily Marshall: Honestly, I was aware of the series, but I wasn’t that familiar at all until I started diving into the show and diving into the music and got the gig and all that good stuff.

Naruto ran for so long and it’s become this cultural icon for folks. Is there a bit of trepidation approaching this kind of music?

I would say, more than trepidation, there’s just a desire from the whole team to do the fans justice and make sure that everyone who’s coming into the show gets what they want, hears what they want, sees what they want–which is difficult to do when a show has 220 episodes, right? And we only have two hours of the show to do. But there’s a lot of thought given from the different teams who are coming together to put on this production to make sure that we’re doing justice to the original source material and being able to have everyone hear and see their favorite moments as much as we can and as much as possible.

Given that you have worked with other touring productions that have a deep back catalog, be it The Who or Josh Groban, I have to imagine that approaching something with a lengthy history is something with which you’re familiar at this point?

Totally. And I was just on tour with Avatar the Last Airbender in concert before this–last fall and winter and this winter–and that has quite a fan base, as well, and that was a similar thing to this, and those fans came away just thrilled.

I think there’s so many elements of these live to picture shows that you have to think about going into them and make sure that all the music works together with all the visual elements and everything like that, but that’s why we have teams who are on the ground floor creating this and getting deep in the weeds in it and getting to know it so intricately–so we can make sure the show that we create is is giving everyone what they want.

Emily Marshall. // photo courtesy the artist

What does your preparation process look like for a tour like this or The Who or something like that? Are you watching episodes? Are you listening to music so that you have an idea of what you’re doing or are you just working from the pages that are in front of you?

That’s really interesting, because it’s been different for each one of the processes I’ve done. This is like, my fifth one of these live to picture ones I’ve done. I did Netflix’s Our Planet, Into the Spider-Verse, Avatar, Demon Slayer, and now Naruto. I would say, as the shows have progressed, I’ve gotten more involved in the creation process of them because now I know what it takes to make these shows work and what you want to hear and see on stage and just all the little intricate elements of technically making this production able to tour and able to pack up every night and go to the next city and sustainable for the musicians and for the team and just what works artistically.

The first shows that I did with Spider-Verse and Our Planet, I was handed a score and I learned the score and then I go conduct the show. This one, me and the rest of the U.S. team have been collaborating with a French production team, a team from the Netherlands, and the original Japanese production team to create our show. There wasn’t a score to hand me when this started.

This is where me and some of the other producers and orchestrators and everything have been at our computers, at our laptops, in meetings, figuring out how the show is going to be put together. It’s very different than just going in and learning a book and then doing it. I’ve been very immersed in this one, even more so than others, but it’s kind of been an upward trajectory in my involvement in these shows, which I really love because that gives me a lot of artistic fulfillment.

That’s why I got into music in the first place, was because of the collaboration and because of the creation of it. You feel like the show is partially yours in that way, too. You feel like you really played a role in making this show come to life when you are in on the ground floor of it. That’s been really cool as, as my involvement has grown with each one of these.

When you’re on stage conducting, there are the trappings of traditional orchestras, but they also all have instruments that are not usually part of things. There’s harp, there are multiple electric instruments, Into the Spider-Verse has a live DJ doing scratching–I gotta imagine that presents some unique challenges for you up there at the conductor’s stand.

Totally! I mean, for Naruto, there’s shakuhachi and shamisen, which are traditional Japanese instruments that we are using in the show. What’s another cool thing with this one is that it’s an orchestra plus a rock band, so we have guitar, bass, drums there happening, too, and it is a trade-off between some more orchestral moments and some really rock moments which–since I’m from the rock world, as well–it’s really cool to be able to meld those and combine different parts of my musical interest as well in one show.

As part of this show, as well as all the other tours you’ve done, you get to travel the country and the world. Does getting to tour the world and be in all of these different countries help in your approach, being as how you get to visit places and interact with folks who are involved in different musical genres and scenes?

Yeah, totally. I mean, traveling in itself, I think, is just such an important part of a life and learning about how other people work and how other cultures work and everything like that. I’ve always loved traveling, so it’s really awesome that I’m able to incorporate that into my job and into my work life as well.

I remember when I did the European tour with the Who, and I was conducting the orchestra rehearsals, we’re doing them in Spain and in France and in Germany and everything like that and besides just making sure everybody knows what’s going on musically, I had to make sure that everyone was understanding what I was saying and there wasn’t a language barrier between people knowing what was happening on stage. What a cool experience that is–to figure out ways to be able to communicate, ’cause music is this universal language, right?

But, I was doing Avatar in the UK a couple of weeks ago. I was supervising that as the UK tour was going up and in England, they call different notes. They have different names for the notes than they do in the U.S. They call notes, crotchets and semi-quavers and everything like that. I was speaking to one of the contractors there who wasn’t an English speaker and he was even calling the notes a different thing. We were figuring out ways to communicate.

Even with this universal language, people have different ways of interpreting it and have different ways of speaking about it. I think just learning things like that is only beneficial and only helps my own musical knowledge and my own ability to communicate with different orchestras and communicate with different musicians all over the world. I think that only furthers your own ability as a musician and as a leader and a communicator.

Naruto: The Symphonic Experience takes place at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, March 16. Details on that show here.