Keith Lockhart is leading the Boston Pops in a 10-concert, nine-city tour of the Southeast United States that includes a Mar. 5, 7:30 p.m., stop at the Arsht Center in Miami.
The tour features a tribute to The Barbra Streisand Songbook with celebrated vocalist and award-winning songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway, whose songs are featured on six of Barbra Streisand’s recent albums.
The Boston Pops’ 2013 Southeast USA Tour is sponsored by Fidelity Investments.
Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops will open their tour program with some of the most beloved themes from musical theater and film, including Marvin Hamlisch’s Through the Eyes of Love from the film Ice Castles and the overture to A Chorus Line, as part of a special tribute to the late composer and his most celebrated music.
Lockhart also will lead the Boston Pops in such musical theater masterpieces as Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music, the title song from Jerry Herman’s musical Hello, Dolly!, and Jule Styne’s overture to Gypsy, as well as John Kander’s theme song to Martin Scorsese’s film New York, New York.
Ann Hampton Callaway, whom Keith Lockhart describes as having a “gorgeous voice and an unmatched musical intelligence,” takes center stage during the postintermission set to sing The Way We Were, Don’t Rain On My Parade, and a medley of People and Being Alive also featuring American jazz pianist Ted Rosenthal.
Affectionately known as “America’s Orchestra,” the Boston Pops is the most recorded and arguably the most beloved orchestra in the country, beginning with the establishment of the modern-era Pops by Arthur Fiedler and continuing through the innovations introduced by John Williams and the new-millennium Pops spearheaded by Keith Lockhart. With the 125th anniversary season in 2010, the Boston Pops reached a landmark moment in a remarkable history that began with its founding in 1885 by Civil War veteran Henry Lee Higginson, who founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra (sister organization to the Boston Pops) four years earlier in 1881. From the start Mr. Higginson intended to present, in the warmer months, concerts of light classics and the popular music of the day. From a practical perspective, Higginson realized that these “lighter” performances would provide year-round employment for his BSO musicians. The “Promenade Concerts,” as they were originally called, were soon informally known as “Popular Concerts,” which eventually became shortened to “Pops,” the name officially adopted in 1900. Some people may not realize that there were 17 Pops conductors, beginning with the German Adolf Neuendorff, who preceded Arthur Fiedler, the first American-born musician to lead the orchestra.
Having led more than 1,400 Boston Pops concerts, Keith Lockhart (1995-present) has served 18 seasons as Boston Pops conductor. In response to the ever-diversifying trends in music, Keith Lockhart has taken the Pops in new directions, creating programs that reach out to a broader and younger audience by presenting a wide range of artists — both established performers and rising stars — while maintaining the Pops’ appeal to its core audience.
