Review: Orville Peck Celebrated PRIDE NIGHT AT POPS

Orville Peck didn’t put his feet up on a recent night off from “Cabaret” – instead he planted them firmly onstage with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, to headline the orchestra’s second annual Pride Night.

Peck also packed the house with his fans – many clad in sartorial homages to the mask-wearing, South African-born country singer – who came eager and ready to be entertained by Broadway’s current Emcee. And, dressed in a black tailored leather suit and rhinestone-encrusted cowboy hat with matching mask, Peck did not disappoint.

Just the opposite, in fact – after opening his set with a sweet, smoothly seductive cover of Ned Sublette’s “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” which he recorded as a duet with Willie Nelson for his third studio album, 2024’s “Stampede,” Peck segued to a composition of his own, “Kalahari Down,” a song about young queer love with regional references to his homeland.

The openly gay singer then strapped on an acoustic guitar for a spirited take on his “Any Turn,” detailing the ups and downs of a touring musician on the road, and the hardcore country “Outta Time,” which he co-wrote with Kyle Connolly. His ode to the challenge of finding love, “Let Me Drown,” and “Dead of the Night,” used in season 10 of FX’s “American Horror Story,” rounded out Peck’s lean set. He wasn’t quite done, however, returning for an enthusiastically received encore rendering of “Pink Pony Club,” the queer party anthem by singer/songwriter Chappell Roan and Daniel Nigro.

The first half of the Pops program opened with a rousing “To Lenny! To Lenny!” – a salute to Leonard Bernstein – accompanied by a film referencing “On the Town,” “West Side Story,” “Candide,” and many of the Lawrence native’s other contributions to American music. Staying with the theme of landmark American composers, Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown,” from the 1942 Agnes DeMille-choreographed ballet “Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo,” came next. Lockhart kiddingly described “Rodeo” as “that music about beef,” referring to its use as the background theme for the “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” advertising campaign.

Following richly orchestrated and gorgeously performed full-orchestra treatments of “Reminiscence in Blues” and “La Grande Parade du Funk,” from Chris Brubeck’s “Convergence” – commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the centenary of Symphony Hall in 2000 – Lockhart changed things up. The maestro next introduced female impersonator Peter Mac as Judy Garland for a tribute set that included Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin’s “The Trolley Song” and the Harold Arlen classic, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Pops were in fine form as Lockhart conducted the world premiere of “From Sea to Shining Sea” by Tony Award-winning composer Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”), who was in the Symphony Hall audience, arranged by frequent Pops collaborator Bill Elliott and based on director John de Graaf's film "From Sea to Shining Sea: Katharine Lee Bates and the Story of America the Beautiful." Respected Boston actress Paula Plum movingly narrated the story of Katharine Lee Bates, the Falmouth native and Wellesley College graduate who wrote “America the Beautiful” and inspired the Pops’ newest commission.

Capping a Pride Night to be proud of, Lockhart chose to close the festive evening with Freddie Mercury’s rousing Queen anthem “We Are the Champions,” complete with rainbow-colored confetti fired from cannons.

Photo caption: Orville Peck in concert with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Photo by Michael J. Lutch.