Interview: Conductor Keith Lockhart Talks His 30th Year With BOSTON POPS

The Boston Pops will once again turn to the music and stars of Broadway when the orchestra opens its 139th spring season at  Symphony Hall on May 8 with Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo (“The Color Purple”) as special guest.

An Academy Award-nominee for Best Actress for 2024’s “Wicked,” British actress and singer Erivo is having a very big year, a fact not lost on Keith Lockhart, celebrating his 30th year as conductor of the Boston Pops.

“It may look like we’re hitching our wagon to a star, but we’ve actually been trying to get her for years and the deal was finally made before ‘Wicked’ was released,” explained Lockhart by telephone recently from his home in Brookline. “She is an outstandingly gifted performer. And with the huge success of ‘Wicked,” she has become a mega star. I’m really excited that she’ll be making her debut with us on ‘Opening Night at Pops.’”

Lockhart’s enthusiasm for Broadway began during his childhood in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

“I’ve been a musical theater junkie since I was a little kid,” he acknowledges. “The Broadway repertoire is one of the goldmines of American music and Broadway performers are great for us.”

Indeed, the conductor – a classmate of Tony Award-winner Billy Porter (“Kinky Boots”) at Carnegie Mellon University – says one particular Broadway-themed Pops program has left an especially lasting impression on him.

“The semi-staged performance of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘On The Town,’ directed by Kathleen Marshall and featuring top-notch Broadway performers including Brandon Victor Dixon, Andy Karl, Marc Kudisch, Andrea Martin, and Laura Osnes that we did in 2018 is a highlight of my career with the Pops,” says Lockhart. “I still think about that one.”

In addition to Erivo, other Broadway performers joining the Pops this spring will include “Star Trek” actor George Takei. The beloved performer, whose early life in a World War II Japanese Internment Camp inspired the 2015 musical “Allegiance,” will narrate “Music of the Cosmos,” May 23-24, with guest, astronaut and Needham native Sunita Williams. Singer Orville Peck is set to headline the Pops second annual Pride Night on June 5.

“Orville Peck is a very interesting talent. He’s an award-winning South African country musician – a singer and instrumentalist. And his activism as a gay man has made him a hero to the LGBTQ community,” says Lockhart. “He is also making his Broadway debut, as the emcee in the amazing revival of ‘Cabaret.’ We’re really looking forward to welcoming him to the stage of Symphony Hall.”

On June 6, singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, who has done a series of in-concert Broadway shows over many years, and Mandy Gonzalez (“In the Heights,” “Wicked”) will be guest artists for “The Keith Lockhart 30th Anniversary Concert,” with assistance from award-winning actor and director Jason Danieley (“Pretty Woman,” “The Visit”) which looks back at Lockhart’s three decades with the Pops and celebrates with the music of his favorite American composer, George Gershwin. Video tributes and archival film will also be shown during the concert.

Other programs slated for the Pops spring season include “JAWS in Concert,” May 9-10, “Star Wars: The Story in Music,” written by Lockhart and featuring John Williams’ music from all nine “Star Wars” films, May 15, in his Pops debut, singer-songwriter, producer, and arranger Cody Fry, May 28,“Disney’s Frozen in Concert,” May 24 and 31, “John Williams’ Playlist,” May 29 and 31, and “The Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration,” June 3-4. The season closes with the 31st annual “Gospel Night” on June 7.

When it comes to the subject of his 30th anniversary in Boston, Lockhart is humble even though he is the second longest-serving conductor, after the iconic Arthur Fiedler, since the Pops was founded in 1885, and has conducted 2,250 concerts featuring more than 300 guest artists from the worlds of classical, jazz, popular, and rock music, politics, science, Broadway, and Hollywood.

“Truthfully, I don’t like to look back. If you stay around long enough, however, you start hitting milestones. I first found out that I had been chosen for this position just before the holidays in 1994 when they called my manager to make the deal,” recalls Lockhart. “After the holidays, I had a months-long tour with the Cincinnati Symphony, for which I was associate conductor. I was in Vienna when the news broke, two weeks before the formal announcement was made. When I came back, they had me sequestered at a hotel in Waltham before I had to face the press. It was a very exciting time for a kid from Poughkeepsie.”

Both Marvin Hamlisch and Quincy Jones were also finalists for a post that involved toiling in the shadow of two towering figures, Fiedler and legendary film composer John Williams, according to Lockhart.

“Arthur passed away in 1979, after 50 years as conductor of the Pops and before that as a violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He still casts a shadow and so does John, who is 93, but very much alive,” says Lockhart. “When you follow people like Arthur and John, you just have to put the blinders on and move forward.”

With Williams staying on as Pops’ laureate conductor, Lockhart has forged a lasting relationship with the 26-time Grammy, five-time Academy Award, and three-time Emmy winner that dates to their first meeting.

“I had dinner with John the night before my appointment was formally announced. He’d stayed out of the search process, so we’d never actually met before,” says Lockhart. “He told straight away to respect the tradition of the orchestra and be the best steward possible and he said, ‘Don’t try to change everything all at once. Don’t try to make to make it your organization right out of the gate. It’s been around longer than either of us and it will be around after we’re gone.’”

With that in mind, Lockhart, whose current contract has been extended to 2027, is clear that his role with the Pops will one day come to a close.

“No way, do I want to be doing this job when I’m 95-years old. I love what I do, but I can promise that I won’t still be doing it in 30 more years. I have other things to look forward to – like going to a barbecue on the Fourth of July,” he says with a laugh.