Most people don't expect to rock out at an orchestral pops concert. But that's exactly what happened Saturday night with Classic Albums Live and the Akron Symphony in a note-for-note performance of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Joining in a baby boomer-driven trend that joins classical orchestras with classic rock, the Akron Symphony played backup to a visiting six-piece rock band that drew an enthusiastic crowd enticed by the chance to hear in its entirety one of the greatest albums of all time live onstage.
The Toronto-based Classic Albums Live was founded by Craig Martin in 2003 to re-create classic 1960s and '70s albums note for note and cut for cut. In Akron, expectations were undoubtedly high for rock lovers who have every nuance of the Beatles' influential 1967 concept album engraved in their brains. For the most part, Classic Albums Live delivered.
But in the opening title song Saturday night, the sound balance was off among the Classic Albums musicians, who consisted of two guitarists, a bass player, drummer, percussionist and keyboard player. The keyboard sounded shrill and overamplified in both Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and Getting Better. Even worse were the underwhelming, under-pitch vocals of bass player Mark Stewartson, singing lead in Lucy.
It was a rough start, and the orchestra was sitting around doing nothing for a while until the repeat chorus of Lucy. But things picked up with Marty Morin's ultra-cool vocals in Fixin' a Hole and the orchestra's beautiful strings in the lyrical She's Leaving Home, which also highlighted harpist Melody Rapier.
The 36-piece Akron Symphony came close to the 40 live orchestral musicians the Beatles used to record their groundbreaking A Day in the Life. From the orchestra's careening carousel sounds in Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite to the mellow clarinets in When I'm 64, it was fun to hear the synergy between orchestra and rock band.
But the true partnering came with concertmaster Alan Bodman playing the sitar's melody on violin in the exotic Within You Without You, which also had an awesome call-and-response section between strings and synthesizer. Most brilliant were the tension and excitement in A Day in the Life, complete with wildly extended orchestral crescendos and an offstage alarm clock replicating the album's shift in music from John Lennon to Paul McCartney's vocals.
Rock album re-creations are rare, Akron Symphony folks say, because few bands have taken the time to create the charts, or sheet music, for their material. Creating the charts for Sgt. Pepper as well as the Beatles' Abbey Road and Revolver exactly as the albums sound was a gargantuan task, CAL founder Martin said.
Saturday night, his band didn't engage in much patter and the musicians certainly weren't trying to impersonate the Beatles. For Classic Albums Live, it's all about a deep respect for the original music.
The Akron Symphony hasn't done a pop rock concert since its 2003 performance of The Music of Led Zeppelin: A Rock Symphony. Last weekend, the orchestral musicians and the visiting rockers thrilled audience members with a rowdy second act filled with a variety of Beatles hits. Concertgoers sang along and swayed with lit-up cell phones to Hey Jude and jumped up to dance for the first of two encores, the Beatles' cover of Twist and Shout.
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