(Saturday Mornings at 10am)
CLASSICAL
The whole program is designed, he says, "to evoke your own holiday memories, what you do in your family and what you do in your community, with music that shows the Pittsburgh Symphony at its best -- a world-class orchestra that can play holiday music like no other."
Meyer will conduct the Mendelssohn Choir and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in "Holiday Memories With the PSO." The concerts also will feature Attack Theatre dancers and some vocals from a man with a big white beard wearing a red suit.
The program includes Pittsburgh Symphony Brass taking center stage to play a few cuts from its new album, "A Song of Christmas,″ and to back the Children's Festival Chorus' singing of ″Ding, Dong, Merrily on High."
Expect the unexpected, Meyer says, from Attack Theatre, which "takes some traditional piece and gives nontraditional interpretations. I said, 'Do what you do with "The Nutcracker".' When we do Lucas Richman's 'Reindeer Variations,' they're going to play off the reality shows. Each of the reindeer will get funny off-beat treatment as only Attack Theatre can."
Meyer programmed one number unrelated to Christmas, except perhaps as a musical present. He says he was visiting the Cleveland Institute of Music when he heard 14-year-old violinist Chad Hoopes. "As soon as he started to draw the bow across the strings, I was flabbergasted. He's very special," and will have a chance to show it in Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, in G minor.
These Holiday Pops concerts will be bittersweet for Meyer, because he will leave the Pittsburgh Symphony at the end of the 2008-09 season. In addition to his current responsibilities with the symphony, he is music director of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony, the Erie Philharmonic and the Asheville Symphony in North Carolina. He recently married Mary Persin, violist of the Biava Quartet, an ensemble that will give four concerts in Pittsburgh in spring 2009 for the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society.
"I simply need to create a more sane schedule for my life. This is my seventh season with the orchestra. In some ways, it's going to be a celebration of my tenure with the orchestra. My family is coming in from Cleveland and Canton, Ohio, and her family is coming in, too. I've grown to love and adore this orchestra, but I also know it's time to move on."
Meyer will be based in New York City, with an apartment near Lincoln Center, and others in Erie and Asheville. But he's likely to build up frequent-flier miles going to guest-conducting engagements, because he's just signed with the prestigious Colbert Artists Management.
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© Copyright 2008, The Yomiuri Shimbun
