BWW Interviews: Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart Bring Christmas Cheer

"Holiday Pops": A Conversation with Keith Lockhart

This time of the year can be extremely challenging for those who appreciate good music. Not only are radio stations blaring what they call "holiday favorites" but that same kind of music is heard in waiting rooms, delis and certain restaurants. Repeated hearings of songs about grandmothers getting run over by reindeer and dying women who can't get into heaven because they don't have proper shoes, grow more irritating with every hearing. Really, who is it who decides what a "holiday favorite" is?

There is an excellent alternative to this proliferation of this musical madness and it comes in the form of the newest CD by the world famous Boston Pops under the baton of Keith Lockhart.. It's a recording that captures the true Christmas spirit with selections of both secular and religious nature. Included is an ingenious arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" which was arranged by David Chase and orchestrated by Don Sebesky. It incorporates a mélange of musical quotations throughout the piece: works that range from Offenbach's "Gaite Parissiene" to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" It all works marvelously well to comic effect. When performed in Pops' concerts, it stops the show solidly. One radio show on Long Island is playing the selection regularly and running a contest challenging the listeners to name all the musical quotations in it. So far no one has named them all.

"What a great idea!" remarked Maestro Lockhart when apprised by phone of the contest. "That's great! Let me know who wins!"

The CD, titled A Boston Pops Christmas, live from Symphony Hall includes excellent renditions of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing", "The Christmas Song", "Sleigh Ride" , "The Prologue from Hodie (This Day)", a musical setting of How The Grinch Stole Christmas and a spirited sing-along, among other delights. Some of the most impressive moments on the recording are three Christmas Spirituals and a robust performance of "Children Go I Will Send Thee"-all contributed by Melinda Doolittle.

"Melinda first came to the public's attention as a finalist on AMERICAN IDOL," explains Lockhart. "We got to meet her when she was involved in our Gospel program at the Pops a few years ago. We really liked her both personally and for her voice and what she did with it. We thought she'd be a great addition to the project. She's actually sung that repertoire on tour with the Pops. It's always great to just change texture on the album and have a solo voice in there for a while. I mean there's so much orchestra and chorus that it's good to mix it up a little bit and that's what she provides."

Another musical soloist featured on the recording is bass Reid Bruton. "He's featured in our immortal version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas," Lockhart comments. "He sings the Boris Karloff role and performs 'You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch' Bruton has opera credits that include Billy Budd, Salome, and La Boheme. He's also sung back-up for Barbra Streisand, Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers and rapper 50 Cent. Needless to say, he's very versatile.

The Boston Pops are embarking on their annual Holiday Tour which will take them to at least one new venue and visiting others they haven't played in for some time. "It's a sense of 'old friends and new opportunities'," Lockhart explains. "This year we're going to Queens College for the first time, which will be exciting for us. Then we're going back to the West Point Military Academy for the first time in a long time. It'll be strange to have a Christmas without playing at Newark's NJPAC and we'll miss it. We'd been visiting there since they opened eighteen years ago. We'll be playing many of the usual places: Manchester, Providence, Worchester, Stores, UConn-those are places we've been going to for years."

Lockhart continues, "We're bringing a wonderful bass, Justin Hopkins with us. He's singing Vaughn Williams' 'Fantasia on Christmas Carols'. He's a voice I first heard in London with the BBC Concert Orchestra [which Lockhart also conducts] on a program of Kurt Weill on Broadway. I was blown away by his stage persona and his 11 o'clock number was 'Lost in the Stars' which stopped the show cold. It was amazing."

For the first time in a few years the Pops will be bringing a full chorus on their holiday tour: the Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline. "They are great and we're looking forward to working with them," Lockhart adds. "We'll be performing music by Tchiakovsky, Handel, Mendelsson...all the way to 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' and 'A Holly, Jolly Christmas. Of course, we'll include 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'."

Another tune that will be featured in the Pops concerts will be Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" which was composed for the Boston Pops, "It was written in, I believe , in 1957. It was written. Like all good Christmas songs, in July. It was the same time of year that "A Christmas Song" (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire..) was written. It was written as an instrumental for the Pops. The lyric was added by Mitchell Parrish later on. It's one of the most performed Christmas tunes in the world. It's amazingly popular."

At Boston's Symphony Hall, the concerts will feature music from the new album as well as the Pops' own version of The Polar Express. "This includes a narrator, chorus and orchestra, along with marvelous illustrations and Silvestri's score from the movie. We first performed it in 2008 and it was a big hit. We're bringing it back for the first time."

The in-house concerts will include a new arrangement called "Zat You Santa Claus?", a jazzy version of the sleigh ride from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije and the perennial favorite "Snowfall"....and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" All of the Pops Holiday Concerts will feature an appearance by Santa Claus himself and his visit to the orchestra brings squeals of delight from the younger members of the audience. All of which make a visit to the Boston Pops' Holiday Concerts such memorable experiences for the audience members.

To order tickets for the concerts at Symphony Hall, to learn more about the tour dates or to purchase the BOSTON POPS CHRISTMAS CD, go to www.bso.org and click the Pops tab.