Oscar, Tony and Keith Lockhart

Theater-goers around the world are familiar with the overture to Lerner and Loewe's classic My Fair Lady.  It's been heard on recordings, in concert halls, in regional productions of the show, and in high school versions of the Tony Award winning musical.  Why, then, should it sound brand-new when heard on the Boston Pops' latest recording entitled "Oscar and Tony"?  The first eight notes are crisp and clean, heralding a performance that fills the piece with vivacity and encourage the listener to pay careful attention to the rest of the music.  What follows are romantic interludes that flow like honey and there is unusual perkiness in the selection's final moments. Conducted by Maestro Keith Lockhart, it's a true gem of a performance and one that beggars repeated hearings. "Really," comments the conductor, "that's my favorite cut on the album."   

Speaking in a phone conversation from North Carolina, the debonair Lockhart seems extraordinarily relaxed.  On October 7, 2007, he married Emiley Zalesky, a woman who Lockhart describes as "an absolutely wonderful, perfectly right person."  They had just returned from a honeymoon in Africa.  "It was very cool.  We were there for about twelve days in Kenya and Tanzania and it was truly an out-of-this world experience like nothing I've ever had before.  Right now it's very weird to be back in the urban jungle."   Lockhart has a four-year-old son, Aaron, from a previous marriage. 

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1959, Lockhart became the 20th conductor of the venerable Boston Pops in 1995.  He was 35 years old at the time and succeeded John Williams and Arthur Fiedler in the post.  According to most sources, he was the youngest conductor to hold such a position.  In 1998, he became the conductor of the Utah Symphony; a position he holds in tandem with his Pops duties.  The Brevard Music Center appointed Artistic Advisor of their summer institute in 2007.  Lockhart's televised concert of "Fiddlers Three" with the Boston Pops won the 2002 Emmy Award and he was the recipient of the Bob Hope Patriot Award for encouraging love of country, service to the people of the Unites States of Support of America's Armed Services in 2006.  All of this makes Keith Lockhart not only a recognizable figure on America's music scene, but a very busy man as well. 

When apprised of the fact that when Marin Mazzie was interviewed by this writer, she stated "Keith Lockhart is one of the biggest musical theater geeks I know," the conductor responded with a hearty laugh.  "That was very sweet of her. I'll take it as a compliment!! I've basically been in love with musical theater since I was a kid growing up in New York. I'd save my quarters so I could go down and see what was at the TKTS Booth.  In the early part of my career, after finishing my grad work in Pittsburgh, the symphonic world was not calling particularly frequently, so most of my professional work for the first decade or so was doing musical theater.  I did liaison faculty work with the drama department of Carnegie-Mellon, which is one of the biggest providers of Broadway talent.  The first show I did there starred a kid with a kick-over-his-head named Rob Marshall.  Rob and I have known each other since 1981. He was finishing his undergrad-work there at the point when I came in to do my grad work. My time at Carnegie-Mellon closed by doing a show at the Pittsburgh Public Theater in 1990 right before I went to Cincinnati and began the more symphonic experience.  The show ran for the whole summer and I was the musical director.  By then Rob Marshall was finishing his dance career on Broadway and was choreographing the production.  So I got to do very high level productions of Sunday in the Park With George, Sweeney, and Candide.  We also did some workshops and things like that.  Plus, a lot of my students went on and are now working on Broadway and other aspects of the theater.  I guess I really am a musical theater geek."

Under Lockhart's baton, the Boston Pops has recorded CD's of Glenn Miller's music, works of Richard Rodgers, Celtic music, Spanish tangos, two separate discs of American music and a couple of very popular Christmas collections.  What made the maestro decide to do an album of Broadway and film music?  "Well, we were looking for an attractive container for great American music.  We thought that the two resources that are richest and most uniquely American are the music written for the soundstage in Hollywood and the music written for the Broadway stage.  Then we basically set it off by naming our favorites.  The result of that was about 150 hours long.  To narrow it down we decided to look to the Oscars and the Tonys and trim it down by considering just the best of the best. We only recorded music from shows that won 'Best Musical' and only recorded music from movies that have won both 'Best Picture' and 'Best Score'. That narrowed it down a little bit but there were still tons of tough choices. My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music are the only two musicals that won both 'Best Musical' and 'Best Motion Picture'.  They did it in consecutive years in '64 and '65.  It was a great time for the Hollywood adaptation of the Broadway musical.  There are all sorts of ones that you would think would have; for instance West Side Story didn't win 'Best Musical'.  It won 'Best Motion Picture'. And the same was true with Chicago.  What we ended up with is an album of where something on the disc is just about everybody's favorite."

"One of the things we did was to research and dig out the original Hollywood orchestrations for those selections," continued Lockhart, "and they were orchestrated by great people--people like Andre Previn worked on those projects—and they have a richness that you can't get from the Broadway cast album because the Broadway orchestrations were written for 33 or 35 people, not 85.  We took full advantage of those.glory days of the Hollywood soundstage when they'd have hundreds of musicians performing their scores.  I think it really paid off on this project."

"Oscar and Tony" is a CD filled with many marvelous treats for lovers of musical theater.  The final cut is the title tune from the musical Forty Second Street, which was based on the vintage Ruby Keeler film.  A careful listener will detect numerous themes from other Broadway musicals that are woven into the orchestration..  "Oh yeah," Lockhart comments, "Don Sebesky is the master of musical quotation.  There was a contest down in the recording booth where the guys who were assisting the producers were keeping a running tally of how many different quotations from how many different were part of the piece.  It's a great arrangement and really virtuosic." 

For many aficionados of the Boston Pops, the covers of their CD's have always been something to look forward to because they were never sure what rigors the handsome maestro would be put through for the photo shoot.  He was bouncing on a trampoline for the cover photo of "Running Wild", he was decked in kilts for the "Celtic Album", he was poured into leather pants for "The Latin Album", tucked into a sleigh with Santa Claus for "Sleigh Ride" and was apparently dropped into a swimming pool while decked in a tuxedo for the "Splash" recording.  "Actually I spent four or five hours of my life energetically throwing myself backwards onto a mattress that was canted at a thirty degree angle.  Then they computerized a pool underneath me."  The result is a striking example of cover art.  However, "Oscar and Tony" features a movie marquee emblazoned with the album's title.  Missing is the good-looking visage of the conductor.  "The honest reason is that it is a lot more expensive to do a photographic cover session.  It adds thousand of dollars in just the taking of the photographs.  They involve studio space and make-up and hair and assistants and lighting and all that stuff.  It's much cheaper to something that's more abstract because that's all done by computer.  I'd like to be on the cover again.  I miss that!" 

What's the difference between leading an orchestra in a concert hall and conducting in a recording studio?  "We actually do our recordings in a concert hall.  We do them right in Symphony Hall because that's part of the 'sound' of the Boston Pops. But it's a lot more fun to do live performances than to do recordings.  In recordings you're stepping on eggshells and you have that concept of 'permanence' hovering about you.  Music isn't really about 'permanence', it's about the live experience.  It's kind of like having zits on it a little bit so that you know it's live.  In a recording everything's got to be perfect.  If you make too much noise turning a page you blow a take.  It becomes a little precious and small because you try to get everything right.  I have to say I'm fine with conducting recordings but it's a lot more fun to engage people in a live concert.  Another thing about recording sessions is that there's no audience and that means you've taken out that whole interaction."   

Collectors of CD's know that for the longest time the Boston Pops recorded their albums on RCA Victor.  More recently, though, the orchestra has been recording on their own label. The reason is simple; "RCA/BMG stopped recording orchestras altogether.  They didn't just kick us out; they kicked every orchestra out because there was no money in it for them.  It's part of the decimation of the big labels, especially in terms of their responsibility to classical music or anything other than flavor-of-the-month pop music. They had pretty much given it all up and at that point they really weren't doing anything for us anyway.  They'd become very restrictive because they were trying to save money at the expense of product that we felt we could do it better on our own.  With Internet distribution and all that it's really true.  It used to be that you needed a major label to get product placement but, as you know, the way people buy products is different than it was just a decade ago.  The great thing about Internet sales is that we're not paying labels or distributors of middle men.  Consumers go straight to it, which makes it much more feasible." 

To listen to the Boston Pops when Lockhart is conducting is always a pleasure, but to WATCH the man on the podium is a rare treat.  He sways with the more romantic passages, he hops with the more percussive sections and he virtually mambos when conducting what are called "The Symphonic Dances From West Side Story"  As one concert-goer remarked, "It's like watching the music pour out of him."  How, much of a workout does a symphonic conductor get when he's leading a major orchestra?  "It's a great workout for someone who's not disciplined enough to end up in the gym every day.  It's a wonderful way to stay in shape.  It takes its toll, though.  I've been conducting these past couple of weeks with two braces on my arm:  one up on the bicep tendon, which I strained, and another on the forearm.  The basic thing is that I've been doing 140 concerts for the past 15 years or so—I've been in the business for about 25 years now—and it's not as easy as it was when I was 25! The problem is that there's never any time to stop and heal.  The analogy is with the baseball pitcher, the thing is you're using that arm and people will say, 'Well, you're not throwing as hard as a pitcher does, "and I say 'No, but a pitcher throws 130 pitches in a game and they take him out.  Think of how many beats there are in a concert and there are between 125 to 140 concerts in a year, as opposed to pitching maybe 30 games in a season.'  The other thing is that I'm older than the oldest player in Major League baseball.  It does wear on the tendons and the joints after a while. The flip side of it is that I don't need a personal trainer," he remarks with a chuckle. 

It's apparent that Keith Lockhart enjoys being in front of an audience.  "Yeah," he agrees, "I think performers should enjoy their time in front of an audience or they shouldn't be performers."  He's articulate, poised and extremely photogenic.  With those traits, one would think he'd be a perfect fit to host a musical variety show, not unlike the old legendary Ed Sullivan.  "Oh, the idea's been floated a couple of times, The problem is coming up with a major purveyor of network content who's vaguely interested in a classical music show or even a Broadway show, I'd be glad to do it.  There's just not a lot of interest in it" 

For those who are interested in judging for themselves how well Keith Lockhart comes across as a television personality, there is a special site entitled, appropriately enough, Oscar and Tony on TV (www.bostonpops.tv). .  This is an innovative venture, in which the viewer not only gets to sample the CD, but gets marvelous footage of rehearsals and is hosted by Lockhart himself. "I wish I could take credit for the idea, but about a year and a half ago when someone in Pops management mentioned it to me, I responded that I'd never heard of 'Web TV'.  I didn't realize it existed.  They explained that this is a new medium and that there is a lot of excitement about.  We looked at it and said that this had a lot of possibilities for us.  It fell somewhere in between doing TV and doing a DVD.  There were lots of possibilities for behind-the-scene back story.  The people seem to be really attracted to this sort of thing and we decided to try it.  It was perfect to do it with "Oscar and Tony" because then we'd have a story to tell and it wouldn't be just another concert.  It kind of took off from there.  The response has really been strong considering not only the number of hits the site receives, but coverage it's received in the media."  One of the nicest features of this particular production is that while the orchestra is playing various musical selections from the album, a discrete visual commentary appears beneath the video to call attention to various aspects of the music to listen for.  It's a wonderful feature for people who want to deepen their understanding of orchestral music.  There is also the opportunity to receive a lesson in orchestral conducting from Lockhart himself, just by clicking that feature on the site. 

As exciting as it is to hear a recording or to view a concert on-line, the best way to experience Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops is in a live concert.  The orchestra is currently winding down a tour with their Holiday Concert, which includes a sing-along and a visit from Santa.  As of this writing, the stops are at the Ryan Center at the University of Rhode Island on December 7, at Bridgeport, CT's Arena at Harbor Yard on December 8; and at Worcester, MA's SCU Center on December 9, at Augusta ME's Civic Center on December 14, at Manchester NH's Verizon Wireless Arena on December 15 and Newark New Jersey's Performing Arts Center on December 16.  From there, the orchestra and their conductor settle into their home at Boston's Symphony Hall for a month of Holiday Concerts that run until December 31 which is a special New Year's Eve Concert starting at 10:15 PM.  For anyone who misses these concerts, there is always the opportunity to attend the Boston Pops' regular spring season, where they very well may hear the vibrant rendition of My Fair Lady's stirring overture performed in Boston's Symphony Hall, which is not only an acoustic marvel, but one of the most elegant concert venues on the East Coast of America. 

For more information about the Boston Pops' concert schedule, go to www.bostonpops.org
To visit Keith Lockhart's website, where you can purchase copies of Oscar and Tony, go to www.keithlockhart.com

(top to bottom) Headshot photo by Christian Steiner; Wedding photo by Robert Mirani; Maestro photos Michael Lutch