Drew’s aunt Lee Ann is kind enough to buy us season tickets to her choral performances with the Salt Lake Choral Artists. We always love these concerts–the conductor Brady Allred picks fascinating and disparate music. We’ve seen them do everything from traditional American folk music to an oratio about a native american soldier coming home from Iraq.
Last weekend’s performance was arrangements of music by the Beatles.
Instead of organs or orchestras, a Beatles cover band accompanied them, playing interim numbers between the choral pieces.
The members of the choir danced a bit during the band numbers. The band was a good cover band–the kind that makes the music their own. They did some of the more interesting Beatles’ music–like Back in the USSR–not just the early pop stuff.
The conductor and assistant conductor ran the chamber choir and the concert choir through rival arrangements of Blackbird…simultaneously.
A children’s chorus sang When I’m Sixty-four.
The self proclaimed “token Brit” in the choir gave amusing anecdotes about how the Beatles influenced his own life, though he also proclaimed himself to be a “square” and a “techie.”
The chamber choir performed an arrangement of “Can’t Buy Me Love” so traditionally that it might have been written by Bach. We laughed through the whole thing. I think Lennon rolled over in his grave.
An a capella group responded with a much more lively rendition.
An audience full of sixty-year olds swayed their arms in the air during Hey Jude.
The scripted and controlled form of the choral concert gave way to the off-the-cuff form of the rock concert.
All the choirs came together at the end to sing “All You Need is Love.”
The music was entertaining and powerful and moving and hypnotic–all the things Beatles music ought to be.
So. Much. Fun.
