Boston Pops to Presents Mother's Day Tribute Beginning May 6

With Mother's Day weekend, the Boston Pops' first-ever all-vritual season starts with the Pops and Keith Lockhart celebrating music by and about women. Available on Thursday, May 6, beginning at noon, The Boston Pops Celebrates Mother's Day: Honoring Women was conceived by Maestro Lockhart as a tribute to all women-mothers and non-mothers everywhere.

It includes Joan Tower's Fanfare to the Uncommon Woman No. 3, the Main Title from Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, and works by Maurice Ravel, Rachel Bruerville, and William Grant Still that depict the love and care mothers give.

Along with symphonic renditions of classic pop music by Carole King and ABBA, the concert will also feature a special performance of the first movement of Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto with Tanya Gabrielian, and the final movement from J.S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, played by Boston Pops violinist Ala Jojatu and her daughter, Maria Jojatu. Adding another element of fun is the Quincy-based Dropkick Murphys who have lent their voices to the song "To Our Darlin' Mothers," sung to the tune of "What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor?"

For the first time in its 136-year history, the Boston Pops, under the direction of Keith Lockhart, presents its first-ever all-online spring season in lieu of its traditional live concerts at Symphony Hall, beginning on May 6 with the first of six weekly concert streams distributed through the streaming platform BSO NOW.

The BSO NOW concert streaming platform launched in November 2020 and was created in response to the live performance hiatus in place since March 2020, due to the restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, the Boston Pops will present six concert streams, releasing each Thursday at noon through June 10 at www.bso.org/now.

They consist of four newly recorded performance streams, led by Maestro Lockhart, and two iconic concert videos from the orchestra's archival treasure trove.

Now celebrating his 27th year with the Boston Pops, Keith Lockhart is the Julian and Eunice Cohen Boston Pops Conductor; click here for a recent biography. John Williams is the George and Roberta Berry Boston Pops Conductor Laureate. The director for the newly recorded portions of the BSO NOW series is Habib Azar; click here for a recent biography.

CRB Classical 99.5 FM and www.classicalwcrb.org continue to feature encore Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts on Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. In the program for Saturday, May 8, Bernard Haitink leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's Symphony No. 60, Debussy's transportive Nocturnes, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. The performance originally took place on March 18, 2017.

On November 19, the Boston Symphony Orchestra launched BSO NOW, an expanded online presence with newly recorded hour-long video streams by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Andris Nelsons and guest conductors; the Boston Pops, under the direction of Keith Lockhart; and BSO musicians in chamber music, as well as BSO Youth and Family Concerts, under the direction of Thomas Wilkins, and special projects featuring the orchestra's educational and community partnerships. Most BSO NOW video streams feature a magazine-type segment, with behind-the-scenes storytelling with conductors, composers, and musicians, plus much more.

All BSO NOW newly recorded programs are released on select Thursdays at noon at www.bso.org/now, with each program remaining available for 30 days after its initial posting. The BSO, Pops, and youth-focused video performances are recorded from the stage of Symphony Hall-widely considered one of the top three acoustic concert halls in the world-which is featured for all its beautiful detail and historic significance.

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