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Dear Class of 2011,

Congratulations! By virtue of your enrollment at Harvard College, you have been selected from among tens of thousands of applicants to audition for the 2007-2008 Harvard Pops Orchestra! As a member of the Pops, you will have the honor of performing with the nation’s oldest college pops orchestra. (And if you Google "pops orchestra," we are the sixth hit. We think that’s pretty cool.)

What is the Harvard Pops Orchestra, exactly? We’re not your average college orchestra, nor are we a normal pops orchestra. We are a student-run, full symphony orchestra performing at least four times a year, with a professional conductor, maestro Allen Feinstein ‘86. But a “typical” Pops performance is a large theatrical event, complete with actors, film, murder, lighting, bad puns, costumes, and of course, music.

Every concert has a theme and a story. For our tenth anniversary concert last spring, Pops performed Pops Goes Back to the Future, in which we turned Sanders Theatre into a giant time machine so we could go back and thwart an attempt to stop Pops from ever being born! In the course of this adventure, we played John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, music from Star Wars and Back to the Future, as well as a Piece for Two Time-Traveling Orchestras where Pops from the present played together with Pops from the recent past. Getting Sanders during Arts First weekend is a Really Big Deal. It was awesome. Last year we also recorded an original radio play, Pops Rides the Waves, (buy CDs!) and accompanied a silent film, The Mark of Zorro (1920).

The Pops orchestra rehearses on Monday afternoons from 4:00 to 6:30. Most Pops members also perform with other campus ensembles, including HRO, BachSoc, the Holden choirs, a cappella groups, and student theater, hence the small time commitment. Other members join Pops in addition to non-musical commitments like sports or having a life. We are a casual group with a professional sound, so we expect our members to come to all rehearsals, but we do have plenty of joking around and a regular snack-time.

Due to the unique nature of our concerts and repertoire, the Pops orchestra offers not only opportunities for student leadership but also for student arrangers, composers, playwrights, and even conductors. At each concert, the plot, script, and often as much as half of the music is written specially for Pops, in a level of collaboration between students and professionals unheard of in other college orchestras.

Auditions will take place during the first two weeks after move-in.
(See our auditions page for details.)

We look forward to meeting you! Feel free to contact us with any questions.