Pops Phones Home — October 23rd, 8pm

Friday, October 23, 2009
Lowell Lecture Hall, Harvard University
$8, $6 students/seniors

Yearning to explore strange new worlds? To seek out new life and new civilizations? To boldly go where no man has gone before? Dare to join the Harvard Pops Orchestra as Pops Phones Home! Two hardy adventurers confront terrifying danger as they seek a new home fo ra lonely Sasquatch. Listen as they scream past Jupiter (Holst) on a theremin-powered wormhole, encounter an E.T. (John Williams) or two in the course of their Star Trek, and fight in vicious Star Wars! All this while our furry Space Oddity dreams of his own Independence Day. And what of our two adventurers? Will they emerge victoriouis, or will they find themselves Spellbound? Featuring a completely original Sasquatch Opera by Ben Green.

Blast off at 8pm on Friday, October 23 from Lowell Lecture Hall. Buy your one-way ticket to the cosmos from the Harvard Box Office, an orchestra member, or by emailing us. Keep watching the skies!

Dear Class of 2013,

Congratulations! By virtue of your enrollment at Harvard College, you have been selected from among tens of thousands of applicants to audition for the 2009-2010 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 fifth 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 that performs 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. Last year, our Risky quest for world domination led us right back to a Harvard freshman dorm and its Magic Futon (a comic opera written and conducted by Larry O'Keefe). Then we abandoned the third dimension for a world of laser-punching Supermen and singing rabbits in our Cartoon concert, and eventually we even sold our soul to a lovesick devil (don't worry, it took a trip to the underworld and even a Concerto for Garden Hose, but we got it back). But since Pops really has to be seen to be believed, you might want to check out one of our recordings. We have DVD’s of our AMAZING tenth anniversary concert in held Sanders in 2007, Pops Goes Back to the Future, in which Sanders became our time machine as we hopscotched through the decades. Along the way, 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 played with its past self. We also have CD’s of our original radio play, Pops Rides the Waves.

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, MSO, the Band, 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.

Come audition for Pops!

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

Sincerely,
Jack Li and Liana Hershey-Nexon,
Co-presidents