Keith Lockhart Talks About CARMEN, Christmas And Downloads

Orchestra conductors develop distinctive styles as they shape and mold the sounds that their orchestras produce. Such is the case with Keith Lockhart. As the conductor of the famed Boston Pops orchestra, he has upheld what is affectionately known as "The Pops Sound" and audiences expect it when they visit Symphony Hall. However, there was no doubt that Lockhart was in the orchestra pit wielding the baton during the Boston Lyric Opera's recent production of Georges Bizet's CARMEN at Beantown's theatre district.

As the houselights dimmed and the downbeat was given for the famous overture, the music was clear and precise. Other conductors are capable of achieving similar results, but in this instance, there was also lushness in the piece's more romantic passages that made this-- and the rest of the opera-fresh, vibrant, and riveting. Passion seemed to leap from the orchestra as the story of the lustful gypsy, her wayward soldier and a hot-blooded toreador unfolded on the stage of the Shubert Theatre. Aided by a first-rate cast including Dana Beth Miller, Daniel Mobbs, John Bellemer and Hanan Alatter, it was as though this wonderfully familiar music was being heard with new ears.

Prior to CARMEN's opening, Lockhart had been quoted as saying, "It is very possible to do CARMEN without thinking about it because you've heard it before. To look at it with fresh eyes-that's the entire responsibility, to approach the work as if you have never seen it before. Knowledge shouldn't blind new opportunities." Did he feel that he accomplished this? "I think so, but I have a little bit of an advantage because even though the music to CARMEN is familiar to people, I had a chance to start from a somewhat fresh perspective because I'd never done a production of it before. There were large amounts of the score that I never had conducted. If I were a career opera conductor I might think, ‘Oh, another CARMEN!' But I didn't say that. That said, I must add that this production is a very new take on CARMEN as a piece. I think by and large the thought of making it leaner, darker and taking out the opera comique connections because it was always a misfit. The opera was written for France's famed Opera Comique but they hated it because it didn't fit there. Then they added recitatives so it could as a grand opera but that wasn't Bizet's original intention. So to do it as a musical play and by going back to Prosper Merrimee's original novella and its motives suggesting who Don Jose is and who Carmen is was very effective. It was a fascinating process and it was fun to be part of it."

Chatting in the tastefully appointed Berenak Room within Boston's lovely Symphony Hall on a sunny November morning, Keith Lockhart is relaxed and happy to converse not only about CARMEN, but also of upcoming events with the Boston Pops. Casually dressed in dark slacks and a blue pinstriped shirt that brought out that same color in his eyes, Lockhart spoke with his usual candor and articulate nature. Having recently celebrated his 50th birthday, the maestro could easily pass for being at least a decade younger.

The question was posed to Lockhart whether there's a difference in conducting an opera as opposed to doing the same for a symphony orchestra. He took a deep breath and replied," The tools you use as a conductor are the same no matter what you're doing, whether it's a Pops concert or a Mahler symphony, an opera or a Broadway musical. It's all about the material and the uses of those particular tools. The big challenge, the thing that makes it fun to do, is the integration of the music into a theatrical experience: matters of pacing, matters of theatricality that don't play into concert performances. There's also the rather difficult and constant task of coordination: keeping musical elements all together. breathing at the same time and moving at the same time-even though the performers can't hear each other and are sometimes miles apart on stage."

One of the most splendid aspects about this version of CARMEN was that there was no difficulty in hearing the cast. There are times in other opera houses when the orchestra drowns out even the most robust soprano. That was never the case here. "This is a fairly good theater for orchestra balance, in that the pit cuts down enough sound from the orchestra so that you're not in a miserable situation. There are times in other houses that there's almost nothing you can do except make the orchestra play pianissimo all the time so the cast can be heard. That totally takes the energy out of things that aren't supposed to be pianissimo. This production started with very few balance notes; very few matters of concern. Balance is one of those things that I can't evaluate because the podium in the pit is not the best seat in the house for hearing how the voice blends with the orchestra. You rely on people behind you; the coach and the assistant conductor and people like that, to take notes to tell you here those things are an issue. Of course those things are staging dependant as well as the size of the particular voice and how it's orchestrated against." 

The average opera runs a good three hours in performance. That's a bit longer than the typical Pops concert. "It can be exhausting," Lockhart admits, "CARMEN allows these little breaks for dialogue in the original version. It's kind of like in a musical, where it gives the conductor time to breathe and think. A Puccini opera, for instance, is pretty much three or three and a-half hours of constant conducting. The mental energy is probably the greatest thing expended but there's a physical toll, too-especially if you're waving your arms over your head for that long a period of time. Yeah, it is a bit of a workout and I'm glad that opera singers never do shows two nights in a row. That means that conductors don't have to do them either!"

As excited as he is about his involvement with this unique production of CARMEN, Lockhart is equally excited about the upcoming Holiday Concerts that he'll be conducting for the Boston Pops. "This year we'll be doing thirty-five concerts here in Symphony Hall; just about the same as we've done for the past several years. It's really quite incredible. We do all those performances between December 9th and 27th, so it's amazingly packed. We're doing a fewer number of concerts this year on the road than we've done in the past. It's a direct result of the economy and presenters are very cautious these days about the costs of touring the orchestra versus the fees that are obtainable in the current market. That makes it an equation that doesn't work. We're appearing this year at Storrs, Connecticut, on Long Island at C.W. Post's Tilles Center, in Newark at NJPAC as we have for many, many years. We also have regional venues in Lowell, Massachusetts, Mohegan Sun, in Connecticut and in Providence...it's definitely a restricted schedule from what we've done in previous years." The touring concerts will feature the Grammy Award winning group called Swingle Singers, who will bring their inimical a cappella stylings to the shows. People who grew up in the 60's will fondly recall their distinctive sound.

The holiday concerts themselves have the handsome maestro excited. "For the past fifteen years we've quadrupled the amount of Boston Pops original holiday material. We've done two Christmas-oriented albums and could do two more just from the new material that we've created but haven't recorded. Now that we have such a repertoire, we're enabled to go back and do things without re-inventing them every single year. The interesting about a holiday concert," Lockhart comments, "is that people don't want them to be entirely different. You'd be in big trouble if they did. People want to hear things that they're comfortable with, things that they can touch again and make sure that they know they're there. That's what the holidays are about in many ways; not just concerts. People need the comfort of knowing that something is the same while everything around it seems to change too quickly."

Those who have attended Holiday Pops concerts in recent years know that one of the special attractions are the narrated pieces incorporated into the program. Last year's version of THE POLAR EXPRESS which used projected pictures from the original book and music from the movie. "It worked really, really well," comments the conductor. "These are the modern classics. These are the modern versions of ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS or A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Before that--and aimed at the ‘baby boomers' like me--was HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. With that idea, it struck me that the one story we hadn't tried to tell that way was the original and greatest Christmas story because it's the reason there's a Christmas: the story of the birth of Christ. What we decided to do was take the story straight from the Bible, using the Gospels of Sts. Matthew and Luke and words and passages from Isaiah as well. We put them into a narrative about the Nativity in sort of a Lessons and Carols context. It's told by a narrator and responded to by a baritone soloist who is actually the same person as the narrator. There's also a chorus singing familiar carols that resonate, reflect on, or tell the story. Something like this has never been done in my time with the Pops. There are carols like ‘Angels From The Realms of Glory', ‘We Three Kings', ‘The First Noel' and other carols that are familiar and very much a part of peoples' Christmas. We call it ‘The Christmas Story' and that will be the big, new piece being trotted out this year."

There's something else that excites Keith Lockhart these days: "This year we are offering our first commercial internet download of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas', which has been the first big hit
at previous holiday concerts. People have been asking, ‘When can we get it? When can we get it?' and since we were not recording another Christmas album in the near future, we decided to offer it as a single. We will perform the piece in our concerts in hopes of driving people to go home and download it for themselves." Those who have experienced this piece of music in the past know that it weaves musical snippets from Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and even "Bohemian Rhapsody" into the traditional tune, resulting in something that is not only riotously funny but literally stops the show every night.

The famous children's book illustrator, Jan Brett will also be contributing to this year's Holiday Concerts. "She's a big friend of the orchestra and she's the wife of a member of the Boston Symphony's bass section. She's always been one of our biggest supporters. Jan is celebrating her 30th year of publishing children's books and has won numerous awards for her work. We'll be using her images for ‘The Night Before Christmas' when we do our version of ‘A Visit From St. Nicholas'. It'll be a good way to use our new-found video capabilities to show some really gorgeous images while the selection is being performed." These "new-found video capabilities" were effectively used in the spring concerts when images of the Boston Red Sox playing at nearby Fenway Park was implimented to illustrate Dropkick Murphy's exhilarating "Leaving For Boston". The segment ended with the sounds of a glass window shattering and an actual baseball dropping from above the stage at Symphony Hall, with Lockhart winning applause for catching it in front of the audience. Did he ever drop it? "No," he says with a hearty laugh, "Although I should never say things like that!"

There are very few things that Keith Lockhart has ever dropped in his career. His love of music along with his energy, charisma and affability make his work with the Boston Pops so exceptioanlly enjoyable. There's no doubt that he'll be connected with the organization for a long time to come. It's also encouraging to know that he's very much committed to conducting more operas. He's already done THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE, TOSCA, MADAMA BUTTERFLY, and THE TALES OF HOFFMAN. Are there any other operas he'd really like to conduct? "Yes," he adds emphatically, "DER ROSENKAVALIER. I think it's the real glory of the Romantic Age and in terms of the music, it's a beautiful and evocative score-- embarrassingly beautiful, in fact. That, and anything by Puccini which I haven't already done. Oddly enough, I've never done a BOHEME. I was offered a BOHEME in 2007 but I couldn't do it because I was getting married at the time." That's a good enough reason for turning down a job by any standards. However, it gives opera- aficionados something to anticipate in the future. , there'll be plenty of musical delights in the Holiday Pops concerts both on tour and in Symphony Hall.

Hopefully music lovers will be able to hear him conduct both ROSENKAVALIER and BOHEME soon. With any luck, both of these operas will be presented by the Lyric Opera of Boston in their gem of a theatre on Tremont Avenue. More immediately, there will be plenty of Holiday Pops both on tour and in Symphony Hall.

For information about the Boston Pops, go to:  www.bso.com 

For more information about Boston's Lyric Opera go to: www.blo.org

For more information about Keith Lockhart, go to:  www.keithlockhart.com

BOSTON POPS 2009 NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY TOUR ITINERARY

December 5	Storrs, Connecticut	Jorgenson Center for the Performing Arts	8:00 p.m.
December 6	Brookville, New York	Tilles Center for the Performing Arts	2:00 p.m.
December 6	Newark, New Jersey	New Jersey Performing Arts Center	7:00 p.m.
December 12 December 13 December 17 December 19	Lowell, Massachusetts Manchester, New Hampshire Uncasville, Connecticut Providence, Rhode Island	Lowell Memorial Auditorium Verizon Wireless Arena Mohegan Sun Arena Dunkin' Donuts Center	7:30 p.m. 2:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m.

 

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