December 18 at 2:30pm, Lowell Memorial Auditorium; Lowell, MA
Tickets, priced at $40 to $126, may be purchased at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium Box Office Monday – Friday 10:00am – 6:00pm & Saturday 10:00am – 3:00pm, by calling the Box Office at (978) 454-2299, or online
Holiday Pops
The series begins on Sunday, November 27, at 7pm at the Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa. On Monday, November 28, and Tuesday, November 29, “America’s Orchestra” will perform at 7:30pm at the Fox City Performing Arts Center in Appleton, Wisconsin, before a Wednesday, November 30, performance in Chicago, Illinois, at 7:30pm to be held in Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theatre.
The Boston Pops will then head back to its Northeast stomping ground for a Friday, December 2, 8pm performance at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Saturday, December 3, performance at 8pm held at the University of Connecticut’s Jorgensen Auditorium in Storrs, Connecticut. The orchestra will appear in two states on Sunday, December 4. The first stop is CW Post University’s Tillis Center in Greenvale, New York, at 2pm. On that same day the orchestra will perform at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey, at 7:30pm. The Boston Pops holiday tour wraps up with two performances later in the holiday season.  On Saturday, December 17, the orchestra will appear at the Verizon Center in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 7:30pm. On Sunday, December 18, at 2:30pm the orchestra will perform at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Massachusetts. These holiday concerts coincide with the Boston Pops’ holiday series at Symphony Hall in Boston, which runs from December 7 to 24 this year.
Rockapella
Originally forming as an a cappella troupe of Brown University graduates who sang Doo Wop on New York City’s street corners in 1986, Rockapella has grown to become one of the world’s most sophisticated and lasting pop vocal groups, performing at least 80 concerts a year. With the success of the TV smash hit “Glee” and a cappella groups reigning in the Corner of Cool on college campuses everywhere, the quintet has tapped into a new hunger for exciting live vocal performance. A single Rockapella concert opens a window on practically the whole history of vocal music from vintage Mills Brothers through jazz and rock to current Hip Hop. The current Rockapella line-up features Scott Leonard (since 1991, high tenor), Jeff Thacher (1993, vocal percussionist), George Baldi III (2002, bass), John K. Brown (2004, tenor) and Steven Dorian (2010, tenor). This line-up marks a regeneration of Rockapella, whose talents cover a broad entertainment spectrum and are keenly focused on musical excellence. Rockapella released their 20th album, Bang, in 2011. The work showcases 13 pistol-hot original songs with at least one composition by each of the members — plus a bonus cover of Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk.” The group is best known in the US as the innovative entertainers whose clever wit, shtick, and tunes were showcased in the 295 episodic voyages of the PBS kid-TV smash “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” Because of the universal appeal of vocal music, Rockapella attracts an avid international following that takes them regularly to such exotic locales as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Switzerland, and Germany.
Keith Lockhart
Keith Lockhart became the twentieth conductor of the Boston Pops in 1995, adding his artistic vision to the Pops tradition established by his predecessors John Williams and Arthur Fiedler. Mr. Lockhart has worked with a wide array of established artists from virtually every corner of the entertainment world, while also promoting programs that focus on talented young musicians from the Tanglewood Music Center, Boston Conservatory, and Berklee College of Music. During his seventeen-year tenure, he has conducted more than 1,300 Boston Pops concerts and introduced the innovative JazzFest and EdgeFest series, featuring prominent jazz and indie artists performing with the Pops. Mr. Lockhart has also introduced concert performances of full-length Broadway shows, including Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel and Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, and the PopSearch and High School Sing-Off competitions. Under his leadership, the Boston Pops has commissioned several new works-including The Dream Lives On, a tribute to the Kennedy brothers, which was premiered in May 2010 during the 125th anniversary season-and dozens of new arrangements.
Audiences worldwide love Keith Lockhart’s inimitable style, expressed not only through his consummate music-making, but also by his unique ability to speak directly to the audience about the music to which he feels so passionately committed. He and the Boston Pops have released four self-produced recordings-Sleigh Ride, America, Oscar & Tony, and The Red Sox Album-and also recorded eight albums with RCA Victor-Runnin’ Wild: The Boston Pops Play Glenn Miller, American Visions, the Grammy-nominated The Celtic Album, Holiday Pops, A Splash of Pops, Encore!, the Latin Grammy-nominated The Latin Album, and My Favorite Things: A Richard Rodgers Celebration. Keith Lockhart has made 71 television shows with the Boston Pops, including a 2009 concert featuring jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, and special guests Sting, John Mayer, and Steven Tyler, and the annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, broadcast nationally on CBS Television. He has also led many Holiday Pops telecasts, as well as 38 new programs for PBS’s Evening at Pops (1970-2004). He has led the Boston Pops more than 30 national tours, as well as performances at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall, and brought the music of “America’s Orchestra” overseas in four tours of Japan and Korea. Mr. Lockhart has led the Boston Pops in the national anthem for numerous major sports events.
Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Keith Lockhart began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of seven. He holds degrees from Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and has previously served as associate conductor of both the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops orchestras. In addition to guest conducting appearances in the United States and abroad, he holds the titles of principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra and artistic director of the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute in North Carolina. He was music director of the Utah Symphony from 1998 to 2009, leading that orchestra in performances at the 2002 Olympic Games. Visit keithlockhart.com for further information.
The Boston Pops is on the internet at www.bostonpops.org. For further information, call the Boston Pops at 617-266-1492. All programs and artists are subject to change.