THE POPS PULL OUT THE STOPS 
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of May 25-June 4, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 106
           BOSTON--- Massachusetts is big on patriotism. Boston had the 18th-century tea party and the Boston Massacre of civilians;  its surrounding towns with marching Minute Men and riding Paul Revere were the cradle of the Revolution; and the current regional football team is even named the Patriots. 
            So it was only natural for the Boston Pops to go that route in its multiple orchestral program May 18-10 to honor heroes: The firemen who worked on 9/11, as well as veterans of the wars. And it assembled a special sentimental tribute to the Kennedy brothers, who are as integral to Massachusetts as Plymouth Rock (even if they did not all achieve equal stature in their political careers). 
            The Pops pulled out all the stops. They assembled an array of show-business stars, uniformed colonial-era gentry, and an amazing audio-visual display including the huge, battle-damaged 9/11 flag on display above, probably the most famous Old Glory since the Ft. McHenry classic.
           The Boston Pops have been around for 125 years, playing lighter music from May on. If the players at Symphony Hall look slightly familiar, most of them are regulars in the Boston Symphony, which finishes its season earlier. 
            The event was part pageant, part spectacle, part testimonial, part audio-visual explosion. With pricey tickets ($500 and up) to match. And still it was a near sellout---impressive when you consider that the May 19 concert coincided with a home Red Sox game, which is itself as close to a religion throughout New England as a sports team can ever emulate.
            A commissioned world premiere by Peter Boyer also came up on the program, "The Dream Lives On: a Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers." The 16-minute score was of the conventional stirring-tribute mold, all too familiar with soft strings and muted trumpets, and soft-focus ooh-aah vocalise by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The thrust was clearly on the visuals, with vintage films from the careers of John, Robert and Ted Kennedy, icons of the commonwealth. Plus recitations from their speeches, delivered by high-magnitude  stars Ed Harris, Cherry Jones, Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro. 
            This ambitious twin-barrel volley of  “Heroes” and “Presidents at the Pops” will appear on television sets in your neighborhood before many months go by. 
            In the “pops” format, you expect lively toe-tappers from Sousa, Broadway and even Vienna, flying off the stage toward you with spirit and abandon. But Keith Lockhart, who has reigned as the Pops conductor for 15 years, offered a very pleasant surprise with a particularly eloquent reading of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” played by the sublime BSO strings. This was an apt tribute, marking the centennial of Samuel Barber, lingering in memory long after the final cadence faded.          
            Otherwise there were patriotic and military songs, colonial-era fifes and drums, John Williams’ “Liberty Fanfare,” and solo turns by Arlo Guthrie, Patti Austin and Brian Stokes Mitchell.  All followed by the mandatory closer for such events, Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” with a predictable standing ovation. After which the visibly moved and exulted patrons exited, and the only remaining question was whether the Pops and Red Sox would finish up simultaneously, less than a mile apart, causing traffic jams.          
            MUSIC NOTES---The “Pops” format calls for mid-concert encores inserted into the mix, announced from the stage. On normal nights at the Symphony Hall, the management actually keeps abreast of balls-and-strikes progress at Fenway Park, adjusting the number and length of encores so as to minimize the post-concert traffic tie-ups. In Boston, Pops programs are astutely timed and programmed---but not the slugfests and  rallies at Fenway…In the summer, the Boston Pops move outdoors to the shell by the Charles River, where a whole new team of players enter the fray, while the regulars travel off to Tanglewood in western Massachusetts to perform under their more familiar rubric of Boston Symphony Orchestra.
            Boston Pops in Boston, an extended series of lighter classics and diversions for orchestra, Keith Lockhart conductor. For info:  (617) 266-2378, or go online.

        ©D. Rane Danubian 2010
                                       #
            D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
                      #
                 Return to main menu