November is The Beatles month for conductor Todd Ellison. The Philly Pops’ new music director is returning to Heinz Hall to lead concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of the “Abbey Road” album, just one week after he conducts a completely different tribute to the Fab 4 in Philadelphia.
Ellison will conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops in three performances of “Revolution: The Music of The Beatles — A Symphonic Experience” Nov. 15-17 at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall. Paul Loren and Colin Smith will be the vocalists, with Greg Mayo, guitar; Zach Jones, drum set; Andy Roninson, keyboard; and Brian Killeen, electric bass.
Both halves of the concerts will begin with the sounds of The Beatles themselves performing.
“I think it’s an inventive way to start a concert,” says Ellison. “Our performers are not dressing up like The Beatles. They’re celebrating the songs, not imitating them. So I think it’s kind of cool to have videos and projecting photos way before the music begins, and to have rare images shown throughout the entire evening.”
Part of his life
The conductor wasn’t quite a teen when “Abbey Road” was released, but The Beatles were definitely part of his childhood exposure to a very wide range of music, thanks to his parents’ large and eclectic record collection. Life was less culturally fragmented a half century ago and the appeal of The Beatles transcended the world of rock. Leonard Bernstein famously loved The Beatles and showed his daughter how to play the band’s chords, which sometimes ranged far beyond the normal confines of rock harmonies.
Ellison was also into Broadway musicals big time. Later Marvin Hamlisch would be his mentor in a career that excels in both musicals and symphonic pops concerts.
A pops program is often presented by many orchestras during the same season, with different conductors along the way. Ellison says he hasn’t conducted this one before.
“Jeff Tyzik did the arrangements based on the originals. His work is always excellent. There are the big hits, of course. You’re going to hear ‘Yesterday,’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘I Am the Walrus’ and many more. But we’re doing other interesting pieces, too, such as ‘Things We Said Today.’ It all seems a clever concert.”
The concert program isn’t limited to “Abbey Road,” but will include the album’s final three songs — “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End” — as a set before concluding with “Twist and Shout.” That song was written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns, but was an early hit for the band.
‘The fifth Beatle’
Symphonic arrangements of rock are not always convincing, but Ellison admires the way Tyzik’s scores are based on the original recordings. The Beatles’ producer George Martin is sometimes called “the fifth Beatle” because of the initiative and creativity of his contributions to the final product.
“Whatever George Martin did with strings, we’ll be doing with strings, when it’s a string quartet or double string quartet, or cellos in ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ the crowd noises and clapping. We’re doing whatever they were experimenting with in that time, which is so theatrical and so fun.”
