Canadian group Jeans ‘N Classics has teamed up with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra before. This time these longtime collaborators unite for Women of Rock, which has its world premiere during a Rockin’ Orchestra Series concert next weekend.
Women of Rock to celebrate female artists on March 15.
Canadian group Jeans ‘N Classics has joined Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra for symphonic shows such as Disco Ball and Endless Summer: The Music of the Beach Boys. However, Women of Rock, which has its world premiere during a Rockin’ Orchestra Series concert at the Schuster Center in Dayton at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 15, is a brand-new production for the two longtime collaborators.
“It has a lot of songs we’ve done before but we’ve never put them together exactly in this context,” said Jeans ‘N Classics vocalist Kathryn Rose, speaking over the telephone from her home in Toronto. “The gals and I got together last week to make sure we combine all of these numbers in a really impactful way for the audience.
“It’s always exciting for the women in the company to get to do an all-girls show,” she continued. “Women of Rock is a powerful theme too, so I’m impressed Dayton Philharmonic picked that particular theme. We’re all happy about that.”
Rose will be joined on stage by three other female singers from the company, Leah Salomaa, Rique Franks and Stephanie Martin, who were all involved in shaping this show.
“Our fearless leader Peter Brennan books all the shows,” Rose said. “He conceived most of them and wrote most of the charts but he’ll often consult us when it’s a mixed show like this. For these we take different elements of various shows and add some new songs and this time we had our way with the set list a little bit more than normal.
“We made sure we picked songs for everybody’s best strengths vocally and we’ve absolutely done that,” Rose continued. “We work great as a team so we’ve got it worked out so everybody is singing the same amounts of leads. Then we slip to the background station to sing backups for each other and then step forward again to sing lead.”
Women of Rock offers a wide spectrum of songs from the 1960s to the present, with everything from Jefferson Airplane and Sinead O’Connor to Heart and Katy Perry.
“The challenge with this or any type of mixed show we do is to make it flow,” Rose said.
“We may have sung these songs plenty of times before in this context or in this combination or in that order so you want to make that look invisible to the audience and make it a show and not just a collection of great songs.
“That’s why we spent so much time talking to each other beforehand,” she added.
“We conceptualized how we’re going to present all of these songs over such a big span of time that’s good for the audience and the symphony and good for us, too. I’m pretty excited with how it turned out, and I hope it gets booked again just like this.”