Interview: Keith Lockhart Will Welcome Broadway Stars to Boston Pops Spring and Summer Seasons

Keith Lockhart was chatting with Tony Award winners Sutton Foster (“Anything Goes,” “Thoroughly Modern Mille”) and Kelli O’Hara (“The King and I”) following their sold-out “One Night Only” concert last summer at Tanglewood when he realized he wasn’t Foster’s only backstage visitor.

“Hugh Jackman and Sutton are a couple, and he was at the show and in her dressing room afterward. I had no sooner been introduced to him, when I realized I couldn’t help myself. I just said to him straight out, ‘We’ve been lucky to have Sutton perform here several times over the years, but you should really give a concert with the Pops at Tanglewood, too,’” recalled Lockhart during a recent telephone call from his car.

“He hedged a bit, but I could see that he was thinking about the idea and then he said ‘yes.’ Broadway is always popular at Tanglewood, and Hugh Jackman, of course, is not only a Tony winner (“The Boy from Oz” and a Special 2012 Tony Award), he’s also a major movie star and a Primetime Emmy and Grammy Award winner. I’m very glad that we’re going to have him in concert with the Pops. That’s going to be a night to remember.”

Lockhart – now beginning his 36th season as conductor of the Boston Pops, the 20th since the orchestra’s founding in 1885 – says that Jackman will make his Pops debut with the Boston Pops August 11 under the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood in Lenox/Stockbridge as part of a summer concert season that will also feature Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo (“The Color Purple”), in her Tanglewood debut, on August 21.

“We’d been trying to get Cynthia Erivo for years and the deal to have her make her debut with us last year at ‘Opening Night at Pops’ was finally completed before ‘Wicked’ was released. She is outstandingly gifted and she’s also a mega star so having her with us again, this time at Tanglewood, is something everyone is looking forward to.”

Before Lockhart and the world-renowned Pops move to the Berkshires for their Jackman, Erivo, and other summer programs, they’ve got big plans for their spring season at Symphony Hall, including guest appearances by Broadway bold-facers including Primetime Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner Leslie Odom, Jr. (“Hamilton”) on May 22, and Tony Award winner Alex Newell (“Shucked”), who will join the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus for the Pops’ third annual Pride Night on June 5.

Known for their television roles as Unique Adams on “Glee” and Mo on “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” Newell is a Lynn native and, with Harrison Ghee (“Some Like it Hot”), one of the first two openly non-binary actors to be nominated for and win Tony Awards.

Lockhart’s enthusiasm for Broadway is longstanding, having been sparked during his childhood in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

“I’ve been a musical theater junkie since I was a little kid. The Broadway repertoire is one of the goldmines of American music and Broadway performers are great for us,” says the conductor, a classmate of Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner Billy Porter (“Kinky Boots”) at Carnegie Mellon University.  

One Broadway-themed Pops program in particular lives on in Lockhart’s mind. “The semi-staged performance of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘On the Town,’ directed by Kathleen Marshall and featuring some of Broadway’s best including Brandon Victor Dixon, Andy Karl, Marc Kudisch, and Andrea Martin, that we did in 2018 is a highlight of my career with the Pops,” says Lockhart. “I still think about that one.”

The maestro will be making more memories for Pops audiences, and himself, this spring at Symphony Hall with the returns of Pink Martini (May 23) and Ben Folds (June 3), and the Boston Pops debuts of Grammy, Emmy, and Academy Award winner Jon Batiste for three concerts (May 12–14), Jacob Collier (May 27–28), and Saint Vincent (June 4).

Film nights – entitled “Williams on Williams” (May 21 and 22) in honor of five-time Academy Award-winning film composer and Boston Pops Laureate Conductor John Williams but now conducted by Lockhart – will celebrate the wonder of some of the legendary composer’s greatest film scores, including “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Superman,” and “Harry Potter.”

“At this year’s ‘Williams on Williams’ Film Nights, we will be showing exclusive videos of John discussing his creative process and commenting on the various film clips we’ll be showing,” says Lockhart. “John, who has 22 Grammy Awards to date, has acknowledged being inspired by Max Steiner’s music for 1938’s ‘Gone with the Wind,’ Franz Waxman’s score for the 1950 film version of ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ and Miklós Rózsa’s music for 1959’s ‘Ben-Hur,’ so we’ll be doing music from those films as well.”

Being presented May 30–31, “How to Train Your Dragon – In Concert” will screen the 2010 animated feature in HD, with composer John Powell’s Academy Award-nominated score performed live to picture by the Pops.

The Pops will round out their spring season at Symphony Hall with “Gospel Night” (June 6) with vocalists Tamela and David Mann, conductor Charles Floyd, and the Boston Pops Gospel Choir.

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