Pops Perspectives: A note from visiting Pops conductor Keith Brion

It is always a great pleasure to be back again making music with your wonderful Phoenix Symphony.

Traveling pops conductors lead a very different life and see things differently than those in a resident orchestra. Players in the orchestra are constantly playing different programs, and often with the same conductors. For the traveling pops artist, while the music remains nearly the same from concert, the players, staff and audiences constantly change. The challenge becomes to quickly adapt to an infinite variety of new situations in order to bring the whole musical package to its maximum potential. This means weeks or even months of planning and interaction with staff for personnel, library, programs, soloists, travel, production and promotion, and then finally rehearsals and performance.

Happily with such a fine and experienced staff and orchestra as Phoenix this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.At rehearsals I was struck once again by the orchestra's great working attitude and their artistic dedication, not an easy thing to maintain at the end of a long season. I enjoyed finding the changed acoustics, enabling much greater string sound and overall brilliance of sound since our last time together. I was also very pleased with your new [orchestra] seating plan, which is quite close to the plan used by the Vienna Philharmonic, and conforms to the real "traditional" seating used by nearly every orchestra until well past the beginning of the twentieth century. The plan is not merely historically correct, but better yet it serves both the core repertoire and happily my own program too.....and magnificently.

It has always seemed to me that orchestras still have so much to gain from more seriously exploring their own history and then making it come alive for their audiences. The Phoenix seating is certainly a positive case in point. As they say so often in England: "at the end of the day" we hope that all of this makes for a delightfully refreshing, rousing and patriotic evening's entertainment for the symphony's subscribers, who are after all the ultimate heroes in this tale.

Join us this Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening at Symphony Hall as we celebrate Memorial Day weekend with music from America's patriotic past.

-Keith Brion, Pops conductor for Red, White and Sousa!