The American Popular Song

Last night, my mom and dad took me to the Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra--what a treat!  They have season tickets, and I happened to be visiting during the time of the last concert of the season, so they got me a ticket, even though it meant they had to shift seats.  Luckily, it wasn't a huge shift, since it was from one side of the balcony to the other.  I'd have felt bad if they had to give up front row seats for me.

Michael Butterman, the conductor/music director, put together works that went together exceptionally well from composers Alberto Ginastera, Maurice Ravel, Aaron Copland, and George Gershwin.  The Ginastera and Copland pieces were from dances, with four pieces each.  The Gershwin piece was "Rhapsody in Blue," which I'm guessing is a popular choice this year, as the piece approaches its 100th birthday.  It's a piece that is so popular that some have called it the most famous piece of classical music ever (see this episode of the 1A show for more information on the piece and the composer).

Much of it is familiar, in part because it's used in advertising, from airlines to beef (one of the Copland pieces was "Hoe-Down" which made me think of the "It's what's for dinner" campaign, which always made my mouth water, even when I was a vegetarian).  I also realize that this kind of program is aimed at people like me, people who grew up hearing classical music from a variety of sources, from my parents' collection, in church, and the background music of TV shows (cheaper than hiring a team to write original music).  The house was packed in part because it was the last offering of the season, but in part because people like me have heard of these composers (except for Ginastera perhaps) and knew that we'd have an enjoyable evening.

As if to prove my point, when the guest pianist Jon Nakamatsu came out to play an encore, he played "The Entertainer" from the 1970's movie The Sting.  Almost everyone in the audience was old enough to recognize it, and there was a laugh as he began.  As he played, I remembered learning the piece in elementary school, where we would have contests to see who could play it faster.  When we did that at church, we got some strange looks for playing such secular music on church pianos or perhaps it's because we played it at such breakneck speed to show off.

It was a marvelous evening, full of great music and interesting instruments, in a space small enough to see what was happening on the stage, but modern enough to have great acoustics.  It was also the day after Tina Turner died, and it was interesting to read retrospectives and tributes on the same day that we went to the symphony, interesting to think about the American popular song, how we've expanded the idea of American and song and popular, interesting to think about what makes good music accessible to a wide variety of people.