Conductor Emily Marshall enters her element with ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert’ at the Smith Center

Fri, Oct 31, 2025 (11:30 a.m.)

It goes without saying that Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best animated fantasy series of our lifetime. The Emmy Award-winning Nickelodeon exclusive follows Aang, a long-lost Avatar and airbender, as he strives to overcome an evil fire lord and master all four elements. The journey Aang and his friends—Katara, Toph, Sokka and Zuko—embark on is paved with progressive story beats and heartfelt moments of humanity. Those scenes came alive under the music composition of Jeremy Zuckerman.  

Now, music director and conductor Emily Marshall will resurrect them for Avatar: The Last Airbender’s 20th anniversary with a live orchestra at Reynolds Hall on November 8. Marshall, who also conducted Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse in Concert, led more than 200 performances of Avatar for last year’s tour and teases this one will be even better.  

Why do you think the music of Avatar has such a global draw compared to other films and TV shows you’ve conducted?  

The fans of Avatar have just been so lovely. There's such a special place in their heart for this show because so many people grew up with it. But then also the generation who grew up with it is introducing their friends and their kids to it now. So, it's really spanning generations, which I think is very special too. And there's something special about getting to hear the score live and just being immersed in the music as it's happening. Jeremy Zuckerman is the composer of Avatar, and I've worked closely with him. They've just put so much care into the creation of the show that I think it really comes through from the audience's responses and from how much everybody loves going to see this show.  

Another cool thing about this Avatar show in comparison to something like Spider-Verse ... you know the movie and you know what you're going to see. With Avatar, because there's been so many episodes over so many years, people have an idea of what they might get to see, but they don't really know. The way the show is built, I kind of call it Avatar's greatest hits. There's title cards of what character you're going to see in the next scene, or what book it's going to be in, and then the audience gets so excited when they see one of their favorite character's names on the screen.  

They did an exit survey on our last tour and the amount of people who wanted to come back and see the show again was like 70 or 80%. I think that's a testament to how well the show was built and how much there has gone into putting this whole thing together.  

It’s cool to hear you worked closely with Jeremy because the score he composed has a fusion of Eastern and Western musical elements in it. How will that translate to a live orchestra experience? 

There's a lot of very rare instruments in this show. There are all these different Asian flutes that our flutist plays. There's only a few people in the country or in the world who play all these different flutes. And then there's the Taiko drums that are the big drums that reverberate through the whole theater. Then we have the Guzheng, which is a very specialized string plucked instrument, and a Pipa, which is a little guitar-like instrument. Besides hearing them, you get to see these instruments performed in front of you, which is really cool because I hadn't had that much experience with some of [them]. It's really fun to watch them being performed so well and so beautifully, and in a show where you might have heard it before but hadn't had any idea what the instrument looked like or how it was performed.  

Are there particular pieces in the composition of these songs that you find most challenging or rewarding to conduct?  

I think the show and the pace overall is one of the [tougher] parts of it, because it's music nonstop. There is not a break. I don't put my arms down for 90 minutes. It's divided into two acts, and so the first act is the first two books. It's about 85-90 minutes throughout and there's so many highs and lows. There's so many big moments and emotional moments. So I think it’s the arc of the show and just having the wherewithal to figure out when you have these moments to breathe, and when you have the huge moments you want to make everyone feel in the theater and just figuring out the pace of that.  

Everyone on stage is really doing their job for a good three hours every night. But I think that intricacy makes it even more special for the audience to hear. If they come back again, they'll catch things they hadn't before. There's so much happening. It's a big show, and it's a lot of work, but it pays off. 

 What do you hope Avatar fans take away from this experience?

I just hope they get to enjoy it and relive that part of their life that the show has meant so much to. I've had people who've gotten engaged at the show, gotten messages of how this was their favorite concert they've ever been to, because the show is so special and because the music has this relationship with the show, and it's such an essential part of the Avatar world. … There’s so much riding on the show for a lot of people. I just hope we can do justice to the fandom in that way and also give people a really beautiful, wonderful show to come and spend three hours with us.  

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER IN CONCERT November 8, 7:30 p.m., $45+, Reynolds Hall, thesmithcenter.com.