Tag: Conductors
Fort Smith Symphony Releases Album of Works by Louis Wayne Ballard, Groundbreaking Native American Orchestral Composer
What Does the Recent Batch of Movies Say About Classical Music?
At Detroit Symphony, Contract Extension for Music Director Jader Bignamini, Plus FY 23 Operating Surplus
Composer John Adams Reviews Jeremy Eichler’s New Book, “Time’s Echo,” About Music as Memorial and Monument
Review: No Name Pops’ Holiday Show, with Dancing Santas, Yuletide Favorites, and a Tune by Jason Kelce
In Saturday’s (12/2) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin reviews the holiday show of Philadelphia’s No Name Pops orchestra: “It’s not every day that you get a kickline of two singers and eight dancing Santas…. Most of the tunes at these concerts led by conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez are traditional Christmas carols and standards … The No Name Pops Choir and Gospel Choir of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas … kicked up the program’s verve several notches…. You don’t get much more Philly than Jason Kelce, whose ‘Santa’s Night’ got an orchestral version world premiere…. ‘Santa’s Night’ is a single by Kelce, a center for the Eagles … It’s a ballad in three-quarter time … Clever of Lopez-Yañez, who did the orchestration, to assign a quick spotlight moment to the sax near the end—an ode to Kelce, who plays the sax. Lopez-Yañez doubled as emcee for the evening, and he’s plenty likable. The newly named principal pops conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra … deftly handled his most challenging assignment: conducting a girl and boy from the audience who were invited to come up and play sleigh bells and a percussion whip in Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride.’ ”