Pops has inclusive celebration on lock
Celebration reflects American experience
Keith Lockhart has always wanted every American to find something to love in the Boston Pops’ annual July Fourth celebrations. A look at the Pops’ recent work, both its Independence Day concerts and throughout its seasons, proves Lockhart’s commitment to the cause with collaborations with Melissa Etheridge, Amanda Mena, Leslie Odom Jr., Rhiannon Giddens, Rita Moreno and Queen Latifah.
“(On Independence Day) we are celebrating a dream that has not been fully realized and can use our program to celebrate not just what we have done right but also to commit ourselves to working on the challenges that are still there,” the Pops conductor said. “If we do that, the holiday has meaning, it has resonance for a wider group of people.”
“We can be patriotic and optimistic without being jingoist and exclusionary,” Lockhart added.
This July Fourth will be the most memorable in a generation. Sadly, for some dark reasons.
With Lockhart and the Pops unable to perform live for its traditional audience of thousands on the Esplanade, they needed to get creative to reach the city and nation. This weekend the team will present A Boston Pops Salute to Our Heroes featuring both new content and retrospective highlights from performers from the past three years including music from Etheridge, Giddens, Moreno and Latifah — available on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio and Boston’s WHDH-TV on July 4, 8-11 p.m.
“Pulling from past years, we were able to put together a guest artist list we could never have at any single performance,” Lockhart said. “But it was important that this not just be a rerun, that the night have a sense of the here and now. … We needed to do new content, virtual content obviously, and new intros from me and the Bloomberg hosts who can contextualize the event a little bit.”
A few of the new pieces the Pops will have include sections of the orchestra doing holiday favorites, the viral hit “Summon the Heroes” with an introduction by Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams, and a pair of Lockhart collaborations with singer Renese King. Lockhart is quick to call attention to King’s reinventions of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “God Bless America.”
“When I thought about whom I would like to collaborate with to send a message toward the end of the show I thought of Renese immediately,” he said. “She was our soloist at the marathon bombing memorial; she has a truly angelic voice and is a truly kind human being.”
“’God Bless America’ has a wonderful message we can all get behind even if it has been given a black eye by people who have sung it,” he added. “The song was written during the middle of a pandemic, which did not escape me, with Irving Berlin truly terrified about what was going on in the rest of the world. … Renese’s version of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is very soulful, much more introspective than other versions, and obviously has a huge resonance in history with the Black community.”
Naturally, the program will include Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture, “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the annual Patriotic Sing-Along, taken from broadcasts in 2017, 2018 and 2019. But the tone will be different in 2020. It will be more expansive, more inclusive of voices, emotions and ideas from today’s American experience.