Somtow Sucharitkul and Siam Sinfonietta come together for The Maestro

How Thailand’s leading youth orchestra took to filmmaking during the lockdown

“Stupid boy! There is no free pizza. There’s never free pizza,” announces the maestro in delightfully hammy vein, closing his eyes in triumphant disdain. We see the said boy, presumably, sitting tied up on a settee and being fed a slice of pizza by another lad. A pair of flautists, flanking them, play on. The scene is from the trailer of a new Thai film, The Maestro, in which the eponymous character, a down-and-out composer, lures a group of musicians, who are unemployed thanks to the pandemic, to his country mansion. He assembles them into an orchestra and forces them to play his latest and greatest symphony, but they are his captives and must live in terror of his baton as he descends into madness. Going by the trailer, the maestro is indubitably the star of the show. He emotes, he cajoles, he explodes. And for followers of the classical music scene, he may well be a familiar face. The role is played by Somtow Sucharitkul, 68, Thailand’s star composer. The rest of the cast is a mix of professional actors and musicians from the Siam Sinfonietta, a youth orchestra founded by Somtow in 2010, as a way to train young musicians professionally. They’ve all come together to produce this homage to horror B-movies, and it serves as a vehicle for bored performers to flex their musical muscles and reach the public during the lockdown.