When the Columbus Symphony takes the stage for a Star Wars Meets Harry Potter concert this Friday, they'll welcome a special celebrity guest conductor: ten-year-old Charlie Kirby, who's been lifting batons before professional symphony orchestras since he was only six.
A movie music buff from Georgia, Kirby is the son of a mother who's a music teacher and a father who's a band director; his grandfather and namesake was also a band director. The young boy, said to have perfect pitch, plays piano by ear and — shades of Schroeder — keeps a bust of Brahms in his bedroom.
In 2011, at age six, Charlie Kirby was tapped to conduct John Williams's Indiana Jones theme — dressed in character as Harrison Ford's heroic archaeologist — at a pair of children's concerts for his local LaGrange Symphony Orchestra.
Three years later, Kirby appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra — again conducting movie music. "Nine-year old ginger-haired Charlie Kirby strode confidently out," wrote a reviewer, "and did a bang-up job of conducting with what appeared to be a wand from Hogwarts."
Now, Kirby is slated to lead the Columbus Symphony in Williams's Imperial March from Star Wars.
He once saw Williams lead the Boston Pops, and has a signed photograph of his idol — well, one of his idols. "Beethoven was really his thing," his mother has said about Kirby's early years.
Where will this rising star's passion for film scores take him? To infinity, of course — and beyond.
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