The Boston Pops Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts
that specializes in playing light classical and popular music.
The Boston Pops was founded in 1885 as a second, popular identity of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, founded four years earlier. Consisting primarily of
musicians from the BSO, although generally not the first-chair players,
the orchestra performs a Spring season of popular music and a holiday program
in December, the BSO schedule on break at those times. For the Pops, the
seating on the floor of Symphony Hall is reconfigured from auditorium seating to
banquet/cafe seating. In addition the Pops also plays an annual concert at the
Hatch Shell on the Esplanade every Fourth of July. Their performance of
Stars and Stripes Forever is famous for the dropping of the American Flag that
occurs as the song enters its final moments. Identified with its long-time
director Arthur Fiedler, in the past the orchestra has recorded extensively, made
frequent tours, and appeared regularly on television. The Pops Spring and
Holiday seasons allowed the BSO to become one of the first American
orchestras to provide year-round employment for its musicians.
The current Music Director of the Boston Pops Orchestra is Keith Lockhart.
History In 1881, Henry Lee Higginson, the
founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, wrote of his wish to present
in Boston "concerts of a lighter kind of music." The Boston Pops Orchestra was
founded to present this kind of music to the public, with the first concert
performed in 1885. Called the "Promenade Concerts" until 1900, these performances
combined light classical music, tunes from the current hits of the musical
theater, and an occasional novelty number. Allowing for some changes of
taste over the course of a century, the early programs were remarkably similar
to the Boston Pops programs of today. The Boston Pops Orchestra had seventeen
conductors before 1930, when Arthur Fiedler began a fifty-year tenure as the
Pops conductor. Under Fiedler's direction the orchestra's popularity
spread far beyond the city of Boston through recordings, radio and
television. Unhappy with the reputation of classical music as being solely for
affluent concert goers, Fiedler made efforts to bring classical music to a
wider audience. He instituted a series of free concerts at the Hatch Shell on
the Esplanade, a public park beside the Charles River. Fiedler insisted that the
Pops Orchestra play popular music as well as well-known classical pieces,
opening up a new niche of popular symphonic music. Of the many musical
pieces created for the orchestra, the Pops' most identifiable works were the
colorful novelty numbers composed by Fiedler's close friend Leroy Anderson,
including "Sleigh Ride", "The Typewriter" and many others. Fiedler
also initiated what has become a Boston tradition, and keeps growing as the
years go by, which is the annual "Holiday Pops" concerts the Boston Pops
give every December. Under Fiedler's direction, the Boston
Pops sold more commercial recordings than any other orchestra in the world,
with total sales of albums, singles, tapes, and cassettes exceeding $50
million. The orchestra's first recordings were made in July 1935 for
RCA Victor, including the first complete recording of George Gershwin's Rhapsody
in Blue. The Pops made their first high fidelity recording on June 20, 1947, of
Gaîté Parisienne, and recorded the same music seven years later in stereophonic
sound, their first venture in multitrack recording.
Fiedler is also credited with having begun the annual tradition of the Fourth
of July Pops concert and fireworks display on the Esplanade, one of the
best-attended Independence Day celebrations in the country with
estimated crowds of 200,000–500,000 people. Also during Fiedler's tenure,
the Pops and local public television station WGBH developed a series of
weekly televised broadcasts recorded during the Pops' regular season in
Symphony Hall, Evening at Pops. The list of artist-performers during
this period includes world-class soloists and contains some historic and
legendary names who performed on the many Boston Pops tours that went to
hundreds of cities across the country throughout the 1950s through the '70s.
Some shows have holiday–oriented themes, such as Christmas shows featuring
performers such as Jonathan Meath, who appeared as Santa with the Boston Pops
for ten shows during 2008–2009. After Fiedler's death in 1979, he was
succeeded as conductor of the Boston Pops by the noted film composer John
Williams. Williams continued the Pops' tradition of bringing classical music to
a wider audiences, initiating the annual "Pops-on-the-Heights" concerts at Boston
College and adding his own library of well-known film scores to the
orchestra's repertoire. During his time with the Pops, Williams had the honor of
performing with Sammy Davis, Jr. as one of the artists for one of the Evening At
Pops specials that aired on 1988. Keith Lockhart assumed the post of
principal Pops conductor in 1995. Lockhart continues to conduct the Boston
Pops today, adding a touch of flamboyance and a flair for the dramatic
to his performances. Williams remains the Laureate Conductor of the Pops and
conducts a week of Pops concerts most years. Lockhart brought in numerous
pop-music acts to play with the orchestra, including Ben Folds,
Rockapella, Guster, My Morning Jacket, Aimee Mann, Kelly Clarkson, Elvis
Costello, Barry Manilow, Steve Lippia (during their 2012 Spring Season, Lippia
paying tribute to Frank Sinatra by performing "Luck Be A Lady" by Frank
Loesser from his infamous play Guys and Dolls, Amanda Palmer, Neil Diamond, Big
and Rich, Maureen McGovern and Martina McBride, as well as Aerosmith, Toby
Keith, Jennifer Hudson, The Hot Sardines, Jack Williams, Gretchen
Wilson, Julia Udine and Ben Jacoby from the 2014 U.S. touring production of
Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera, The Dropkick
Murphys, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, stage actor Will LeBow,
comedian Jimmy Tingle, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, current Boston mayor
Marty Walsh, and The Beach Boys. POPSearch
POPSearch is the Boston Pops' nationwide talent competition that offers amateur
singers the chance to perform with the orchestra at Boston's Fourth of July
Extravaganza, as well as on the orchestra's national tour. The winner
also receives a cash prize. The American Idol–style competition has expanded into
a nationwide contest through video submissions on YouTube and voting
through BostonPops.org. Tracy Silva, a mother of two from
Taunton, Mass., and van driver for special needs children, won the
inaugural POPSearch contest in 2004. Frances Botelho-Hoeg, an elementary
school principal from Kingston, Massachusetts, was knocked out in the
second round of the inaugural POPSearch, but returned in 2005 to sweep the
competition. The POPSearch 2007 grand champion Maria
Perry won $5,000 and performed with the Boston Pops on July 3 and 4 in the
annual July 4 Extravaganza seen by a live audience of almost a half-million
people on the Charles River Esplanade and several million more on WBZ-TV.
High School Sing-Off In the early spring of 2008, Keith
Lockhart announced the "Boston Pops High School Sing-Off--A Best of Broadway
Challenge," the first-ever Boston Pops musical theater competition for
Massachusetts high school students. Students from high schools throughout
Massachusetts were encouraged to submit audition videos of musical theater vocal
works for solo, duet, trio, quartet, or quintet to the Boston Pops before May 9,
2008. The winner was featured in the Fourth of July concert on the Esplanade.
Music directors and conductors 1885; 1887 – 1889: Adolf Neuendorff
1886: John C. Mullaly 1887: Wilhelm Rietzel
1888: Franz Kneisel 1891: Eugen Gurenberg
1891 – 1894; 1903 – 1907: Timothee Adamowski
1895: Antonio de Novellis 1896 – 1902; 1906 – 1907: Max Zach
1897: Leo Schulz 1908 – 1909: Arthur Kautzenbach
1909 – 1917: André Maquarre 1913 – 1916: Clement Lenom
1913 – 1916: Otto Urach 1915 – 1916: Ernst Schmidt
1916: Josef Pasternack 1917 – 1926: Agide Jacchia
1927 – 1929: Alfredo Casella 1930 – 1979: Arthur Fiedler
1955 – 1999: Harry Ellis Dickson 1980 – 1993: John Williams
1995 – present: Keith Lockhart 2002 – 2006: Bruce Hangen
See also Pops orchestra
References External links
Official website Official website of Keith Lockhart
Official Myspace page for POPSearch 2007