A feast of froth: Solano Symphony's season-ending Pops concert
As sure as the Dixon May Fair comes and goes in early May and Fiesta Days arrives in late May, the Solano Symphony embarks on its annual Pops concert, a program of light classical music, movie themes and often-breezy orchestral arrangements and medleys of musical theater works, jazz and pop tunes. In short, it's a feast of froth.
Still, by all accounts, it is one of the symphony's most anticipated and popular annual concerts, a seasonender — and literally ending every year with Sousa's rousingly patriotic anthem “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The music gets underway at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre.
“We're almost in the final stages of rehearsals,” longtime symphony conductor Semyon Lohss said during a telephone interview Sunday, adding that the last of two would be Thursday night at the Laurel Creek Elementary School in Fairfield.
The program begins with John Williams' “Superman” March; followed by Offenbach's Overture to his operetta “The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein,” a piece with tuneful, exhilarating melodies; Faure's Pavane; Sullivan's (he of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) Overture to “The Pirates of Penzance”: and Johann Strauss Jr.'s “Orpheus-Quadrille,” in which “Strauss used passages from Offenbach,” noted Lohss, a native of Russia who have lived in Fairfield for decades.
After an intermission, the second half of the program boasts “a beginning that will be rather unusual,” he said, referring to a past silent-auction fundraiser that awarded the
winner with the prize of leading the orchestra during the Sunday afternoon concert.
The guest conductor?
Nancy Hopkins, who, said Lohss, has never conducted an orchestra but received “a crash course” on conducting with two 45-minute lessons. She will lead the musicians in a rendition of Leroy Anderson's “Belle of the Ball.”
What would a Pops concert be without a taste Leonard Bernstein's “West Side Story” tunes? A lot of hummable ones, for sure: “I Feel Pretty,” “Maria,” “Something's Coming,” “Tonight,” “One Hand, One Heart,” “Cool,” and “America.”
The program will continue with Hermann's “Duke Ellington Fantasy,” and Stone's arrangement of several Cole Porter songs, from “You Do Something to Me” and “Love for Sale” to “Night and Day” and “Anything Goes.”
Like the lilting songs of Jerry Bock's “Fiddler on the Roof” score? You will hear plenty of them: “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Matchmaker,” “Miracle of Miracles,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “To Life,” and “Tradition.”
Anderson's song library returns with “Fiddle-Faddle,” and Sousa's 1896 march, his best-known work and the official U.S. national march, closes out the symphony's 36th season with a formidable and riveting blend of wind and brass instruments and percussion that may remind many of the sound patriotism while tugging at the ol' heartstrings.
Of the annual Pops concert, Lohss expressed “pleasant surprise” about attendance numbers over the years.
After the concert, year over year, he remembered “walking into the (VPAT) lobby and just observing the atmosphere, how people communicate with each other after the concert.”
“Every time, people tell me they enjoyed the program,” Lohss recalled, adding, “They'll say, `I've never heard that particular piece of music, but I enjoyed it.' “
IF YOU GO: Solano Symphony Pops concert. When: 3 p.m. Sunday. Where: Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre, 1010 Ulatis Drive, Vacaville. Tickets: $10 to $35. Telephone: 469-4013. Online: www.solanosymphony.org