Blossom Festival Orchestra: Broadway's Greatest Hits

(The complete program is at the end of this post)

The Cleveland Orchestra's 2012 Blossom Festival season draws to a close with this weekend's concerts -- performed not by The Cleveland Orchestra but by the Blossom Festival Orchestra. Where has summer gone?

It's been two weeks since the last Orchestra program -- dedicated to the material of John Williams --and returning to Blossom after that sabbatical felt a little odd. Unlike the disappointing Williams concert with its trite  program and robotic execution, tonight's program was passionately played and the program was a nice blend of selections from a wide swath of Broadway.

I was not, however, enamored by the soloists -- in the pavillion they frequently overpowered the orchestra (more likely the fault of the audio engineer than the soloists themselves). Individually, the soloists fulfilled their roles well but troubling, when both Ms. Vroman and Mrs. Gravitte were singing the same thing at the same time the result was far from satisfying, and in a few occasions actually made me cringe.

That said, it is perhaps obvious that my favorite pieces from the program unequivocally came from the few orchestra-only selections on the program. At the top of that list the Disney Broadway Medley featuring seven and a half minutes of music known to any Disney fan, including Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e, and Its a Small World among others. Maestro Russell encouraged the audience to sing along, and at times the low chant that rose from the lawn reminded me of a Latin mass. Incidentally, the later two in that medley hold special significance "Mickey Mouse" being the the first two words I knew how to spell, thanks to my grandmother's use of that song in her kindergarten classes, and It's a Small World being one of an aunt's most hated song [and my penchant for humming it around her about the same time in my early youth where I learned to spell Mouse].

The other two pieces for orchestra only, Seventy Six Trombones from The Music Man and the medley from Jesus Christ Superstar, though slightly less familiar were no less enjoyable.

Those that remember my sheer hatred of Chicago at PlayhouseSquare (the only musical I've ever walked out of at intermission, and one of only two where I've contemplated doing such) are probably not surprised that I had absolutely no attraction to Introduction and All that Jazz from Chicago. On the other hand, the medley from Mamma Mia! was sheer delight, though the sight of a full orchestra playing ABBA was a bit surreal. I'd certainly be up for a concert full of orchestral renderings of that music.

Mr. Labreque probably enjoyed the best individual balance with the orchestra of the night in Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera, the last piece on the published program, and the encore, You Can't Stop The Beat from Hairspray was the only time all three sounded really good while singing together.

A somewhat somber note was touched when Mr. Russell dedicated Defying Gravity (from Wicked) to the memory of Neil Armstrong, and then in a serendipitous bit of irony, lead into Circle of Life from the Lion King  both of which were high on my list of "likes" from this show.

In a few weeks The Cleveland Orchestra returns to severance -- and someone please remind me to stop by the box office: I still need to buy by tickets.

Lincoln

The full program from tonight's show
Seventy Six Trombones from The Music Man
Be our Guest from Beauty and the Beast #$^
This is the Moment from Jekyll and Hyde ^
Till There Was You from The Music Man #
Defying Gravity from Wicked $
Circle of Life from The Lion King #$^
Disney Broadway Medley (arr. Bruce Healy)
Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid #$^
Shall we Dance from The King and I #$
Medley from Hello Dolly! #$^
Introduction/All That Jazz from Chicago #$
Bring Him Home from Les Miserables ^
I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables $
Medley from Mamma Mia! #$^
Medley from Jesus Christ Superstar
Think of Me from Phantom of the Opera #
Memory from Cats $
The Phantom of the Opera from The Phantom of the Opera #^
Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera ^
You Can't Stop the Beat from Hairspray#$^
John Morris Russell, conductor.
(# - Lisa Vroman, vocalist; $ - Debbie Gravitte, vocalist; ^ - Doug Lrecquie, vocalist)

Blossom Festival Orchestra: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony

(The full program can be found at the end of this post)
I'm once again in  the midst of a whirlwind travel schedule -- most of last week was spent at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, tomorrow I'm flying to a project in Southern California and there for a jam-packed few days, getting back just in time to drive to a project at Ohio State in Columbus...and then flying back to a different project in Northern California...and I might have a quick visit to Houston, and well... I'll let you know what time zone I land in when September is over.

Way back at the beginning of the summer, though, September was wide open. When Rachel saw Bugs Bunny on the schedule for Labor Day weekend, she was interested and  we marked our respective calendars.

Having not really spent time together for the better part of the week -- and anticipating a large crowd and the traffic attendant thereto we decided to picnic pre-concert.

Before the concert we stopped by the Sheetz on Steels Corners to grab sandwiches MTO (something about ordering using a touch screen eliminates the guilt associated with a BLT, hold the L and T, add Cheddar, Pepperoni, Olives, Pickles, and Mayo) and found a quiet corner of shaded grass just inside the Lot A gate to spread a blanket and chow down. We finished eating as the had-been trickle of concert goers turned into a full fledged stream of all ages: Some young, some old. Some empty handed, some toting a handful of foodstuffs, others looking as if they were prepared to survive for weeks.

Though a sweltering evening, with a bit of time left before the concert started we walked the Blossom grounds...stopping to watch a swarm of bees busily pollinating flowers, making our way around the top of the bowl watching children at play and a densely-packed lawn, rivaling if not surpassing the 4th of July programs. Settling into our seats in the pavilion, we noted that it was comparatively empty.

The program -- now in it's 20th year (though the program note mentions that George Daugherty made his Blossom conducting debut in 1070 [sic]) -- mixes a live orchestra with classic Warner Brothers cartoon clips to reinforce the classical music that was so prevalent in those. Overall, it's a nice concept: I didn't really slip into critical listening mode and spent most of the evening smiling, though I question the value of the clips (indicated with a * below) where the orchestra was not used, instead relying upon the original--recorded--soundtrack. There were also a few places where it seemed that the overall balance, particularly orchestra-to-sound-effects-and-dialogue felt a bit wonky.

I'm not sure what my favorite from the evening was: Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner are always fun with Zoom and Bored; Baton Bunny, Rhapsody Rabbit, and What's Opera, Doc were fun for the musical gags and in jokes. Scooby Doo's Hall of the Mountain King and The History of Warner Bros. Cartoons in Four-and-One-Half Minutes, of course featured iconic music. Rachel enjoyed but had hoped to hear the full Join Up With Me, So Joyous and Free (from Robin Hood Daffy) and Hello My Baby (from  One Froggy Evening) that were excerpted as part of a medley.

Lincoln

The Full Program
The Dance  of the Comedians (Overture) from The battered Bride. Music by Bedrich Smetana
The Warner Bros. Fanfare. Music by Max Steiner
Merrily We Roll Along (The Merrie Melodies Theme). Music by Charles Tobias, Murray Mencher, and Eddie Cantor; Arr. Carl W Stalling.
Baton Bunny. Based on Franz von Suppe's Overture to Morning Noon and Night In Vienna.
*Excerpt from What's Up Doc?
Rhapsody Rabbit. Music by Carl W. Stalling. Milt Franklyn, piano solo.
*I Love to Singa Medley, including: I Love to Singa, Music by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg; Would you Like to Take a Walk from Naughty Neighbors, Music by Harry Warren; Tiptoe Through The Tulips from A Scent of the Matterhorn, music by Joe Burke; Hello My Baby from One Froggy Evening, Music by Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard; A Cup of Arsenic....from Bewitched Bunny, based on Gertrude Lawrence A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You; Largo Al Factotum from Back Alley Oproar music by Carl Stalling after Gioacchino Rossini from The Barber of Seville;  Join up With Me, So Joyous and Free from Robin Hood Daffy, Music by Milt Franklyn; Square Dance (Skip To My Lou -- Turkey in the Straw), from Hillbilly Hare, music by Carl Stalling, based on American Flok Songs
Zoom and Bored, original score b y Carl W. Stalling and Milt Franklyn; based on The Dance of the Comedians from Bedrich Smetana's The Battered Bride.
*Home Tweet Home, Original Score by Milt Franklyn.
The Rabbit of Seville. Music by Gioacchino Rossini, Arr. Milt Franklyn, based on Overture to The Barber of Seville.
Overture to The Beautiful Galatea. Music by Franz von Suppe.
Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl. Music by Johann Strauss from the Overture to Die Fledermaus.
Scooby-Doo's Hall of the Mountain King. Music by Edvard Greig using Peer Gynt's In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Bedrock Ballet. Music by Jacques Offenbach: Can-Can from Orpheus in the Underworld.
A Corny Concerto. Music by Carl W. Stalling, Based on Johann Strauss's Tales of the Vienna Woods and The Blue Danube.
*Long-Hared Hare.
What's Opera, Doc?. Music b Milt Franklyn based on Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung, Rienzi and Tannhauser.
Merrie Melodies That's All Folks, Music arr. Carl W. Stalling.
The History of Warner Bros. Cartoons in Four-And-One-Half Minutes. Music by Gioacchino Rossini: William Tell Overture finale.

Blossom Festival Orchestra: Disney Live In Concert: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

The Original Feature Film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with live underscoring by The Blossom Festival Orchestra with the Men of the Blossom Festival Chorus, prepared by Lisa Yozviak
Richard Kaufman, conductor.

It is true that I'm not a fan of the Pirates franchise -- perhaps it's tied to my fear of the Disney ride of the same name that (now inexplicably) permeated my early childhood -- I think it was a fire thing. Anyway, when I found out a friend was playing tonight's show at Blossom, I decided I'd give tonight's concert a spin. Visiting the Severance Hall Box Office yesterday afternoon to buy my ticket, the sounds of a rehearsal wafted out through the lobby I was hooked -- and looking forward to tonight's concert.

I'm a sucker for film music's drama and emotion; John Williams and Thomas Newman rank among my favorite composers.

Arriving at Blossom slightly over an hour before the 9PM concert, I was impressed to see cars out in the grass lots; once inside the gates the number of families spread across Blossom's expansive lawn easily rivaled the crowd that had assembled for the Fourth of July concert. Audience members and ushers alike got into the Arr of the moment with their pirate swag. Settling in to my pavilion seat just before the concert started an unmistakable whiff of the smell of buttered popcorn hit our section, with several--yours truly--left craving popcorn.

As the film and concert started the pre-recorded dialogue and sound effects seemed overly loud and quite boomy in the pavilion, however within a few minutes either this had been corrected or my ears had adjusted and the sound was reasonably balanced and intelligible, though I would have preferred if the orchestra was a bit louder in relationship, but that's more an exercises in hair splitting.

The music in films draws out emotion in romance, drama in action scenes and is just generally that extra seasoning that a lot of people may not consciously notice, but if absent it is conspicuously absent. Having the orchestra provide that seasoning live was a great touch and really highlighted the impact of the music. In the case of Pirates that music is generally soaring and dramatic.

Mr. Kaufman -- who was seen last year at Blossom conducting The Magical Music Of Disney and previously at Severance Hall for a Salute to John Williams in 2009 -- certainly drew that emotion out of the musicians, ranging from the lyrical romantic moments to the swashbuckling . The Men of the Blossom Festival Chorus, interestingly, were pretty much relegated to grunting, with no what-you-or-I-would-consider traditionally sung lyrics.

While the concert was musically satisfying, I was hugely disappointed by the technical quality: The lip sync between video and audio was horrendously off with audio leading video by about a half second*, which wound up giving me a headache. Compounding that frustration, at Intermission when I attempted to locate the House Manager to express my concerns not one of the half dozen ushers I asked had any idea if there even was a house manager, let alone who or where that person would be. As I worked my way back into the center of the pavilion I overheard countless patrons asking ushers "Is there a problem with..." and "Will they fix...", with the ushers generally brushing off the concerns, and as far as I could tell not relaying them to anyone.

(As an update, an acquaintance pointed out after the concert that if you were far enough up the hill the natrual delay of sound reaching your ear would minimize or eliminate the effect of the lip sync issue present in the pavillion and lower lawn)

Lincoln
*- By my very rough approximation. Also surprising, since based on my day job knowledge, this isn't a difficult problem to solve, especially compared to the opposite version of this problem. The technical issue is that each step of processing that happens to an audio or video signal adds delay. Assuming video and audio are in sync when they enter "the system", if one chain has more processing involved, and the other chain doesn't have enough artificial delay added, the two will no longer be in sync. And you'll give audience members headaches.

Blossom: The Greatest Generation: Music from the 1940s

Key: The Star Spangled Banner (arr. Toscanini)
Grofe: Mardi Gras from The Mississippi Suite
Ellington: Sophisticated Lady (arr. Gould)
Gershwin: Ambulatory Suite (arr. Riddle)
Goldsmith: The Generals March
Rodgers and Hammerstein: Symphonic Portrat: South Pacific
Sousa: Royal Welsh Fusiliers
Whear: Stars in the Field of Blue [World Premiere]
Williams: Hymn to the Fallen from Saving Private Ryan
Gershwin: Strike up the Band*
Porter: It's De Lovely*
Gershwin: Embraceable You*
Gershwin: 'S Wonderful*
Unknown: I'll be Seeing You
Loras John Schissel, conductor; *-with Helen Welch, vocalist.

I had oscillated about attending a concert at Blossom this weekend; I certainly knew an entire program of brass (Saturday) would be stretching my patience and I had feared that this program would be Big Band heavy... along the way I realized that two of my favorite composers, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were firmly rooted around that decade. In any event, I found my way to Blossom for tonight's concert, the last "regular" offering this season (where has the summer gone?) with only Joffrey left before the Orchestra returns to more convenient Severance Hall.

The concert generally held my interest and was rich in texture, ranging from quiet and soulful to patriotic to festive. Helen Welch, vocalist for the block of songs under the heading Selections from the Great American Soundbook, and indicated with an asterisk above has an amazingly beautiful voice, yet every one of the songs in that block left me completely unmoved; at one point I found myself contemplating trying to use my TiVo remote's 30-second skip button to move things along.

The remainder of the concert was more my speed, I particularly liked the festive Mardi Gras from Groffe's The Mississippi Suite and Goldsmith's powerful The General's March. Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady was a little too sentimental and a bit depressing, but was interesting nonetheless, perhaps in part because when you say Duke Ellington, I think jazz...and when you say jazz I don't think of a string orchestra which is what Sophisticated Lady offered.

The Symphonic Portrait from South Pacific really served to remind me how much the music from that show is a part of American pop culture. While I don't think anyone took Mr. Schissel up on his offer to sing along, I found myself mentally filling in many of the blanks ("Some enchanted evening, uh, _______"; "I'm going to wash that ___ right out of my ____"), and it's a shame that there wasn't some kind of cross promotion with PlayhouseSquare's upcoming presentation of the Lincoln Center production of South Pacific, as this concert helped to eek up my interest in seeing a musical that isn't what I would consider my typical type of show.

Likewise, the tail end of the concert offered Symphonic Scenario from Victory at Sea which was as varied in texture as the remainder of the program. It generally held my interest and those parts that I didn't care for--of which there were few--moved swiftly enough to keep my involved. Particularly ear-catching was a solo violin later in the work.

Finally, the world premiere Stars in a Field of Blue by retired Navy member and CWRU alum Paul Whear was quite interesting to hear, and perhaps tied with The Generals' March as my favorite from the evening.

Lincoln

Blossom: Disney in Concert: Magical Music from the Movies

Disney Classics Overture (arr. Healey)
Menken & Ashman: Suite from Disney's The Little Mermaid (arr. Menken, Merkin, Pasatieri, Rickets)
Menkan & Schwartz: Colors of the Wind from Disney's Pocohontas (arr. Troob)
Menken & Ashman: Suite from Disney's Beauty and the Beast (arr. Troob & Heijden)
Sherman & Sherman: I Wan'na Be Like You from Disney's The Jungle Book (arr. Heijden)
Sherman & Sherman: Medley from Disney's Mary Poppins (arr. Healey & Whitcomb)
Menken: Suite from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (arr. Starobin)
Menken, Ashman & Rice: Suite from Disney's Aladdin (arr. Troob & Healey)
Badelt: Suite from Pirates of the Caribbean (arr. Rickets)
Zimmer, Rice & John: Suite from Disney's The Lion King (arr. Kelley & Rickets)
with one encore (It's A Small World, composer unannounced)
Richard Kaufman, conductor; Sherilyn Draper, stage director and writer; Candice Nicole, Whitney Kaufman, Aaron Phillips, Andrew Johnson, vocalists.

A fitting end for this concert -- and this week in general -- was the encore presentation of It's A Small World. Earlier this week I found that a musician friend of mine has played in a concert with a relative's neighbor in a relatively far off land. In tonight's concert, not only was my violin teacher playing in the orchestra, but Candice Nicole, one of the vocalists was a friend and classmate in high school. Having grown up in Southern California, after all, I don't run into classmates on a regular basis.*

While the Cleveland Orchestra is touring Europe, tonight's concert was in the capable hands of the Blossom Festival Orchestra. The weather, however, wasn't as welcoming with varying degrees of rain up until some point during the middle of the first half of the program; nonetheless, I was surprised by how full the parking lots--and even the lawn--were. A notable attendee was Mrs. "Mr. Rogers" [as in the Neighborhood], a box in front of and to the left of my seat, she had apparently driven in from Pittsburgh to attend this evening's concert.

I had not originally intended to attend this concert, and I quite enjoyed it in all of the important respects. Of course, Disney's movie music is as iconic as the films that they come from. One need only loook around to discover that each selection evoked or provoked different reactions from each audience member: Younger audience members may have perked up to Pocohontas, while the older audience members had a clear affection for Mary Poppins.

During the first few numbers I got the sense that perhaps the vocalists were reaching a bit further than they needed to, but that overly-sharp edge quickly dulled to a nicely burnished sound that persisted through the evening.

While I enjoyed all of the selections to some extent or the other, both the opening overture and the Lion King suite stirred the greatest personal emotion.

While I hate to note, spotlight operators (and/or whomever was calling spot cues) put on a distractingly poor performance, with spots randomly lighting up blank walls, being late to pick up or drop off a performer, and jolting adjustments just as joltingly shifted my brain from 'simply enjoy the music' and to 'what the heck was that?'

Lincoln
*- The timing of these coincidences further amuses me as this is the weekend of the 1 year anniversary of Lincoln in Cleveland (the actual blogday is Monday)