(Revised) PREVIEW: Pasadena Pops offers free concert tomorrow as tribute to Marvin Hamlisch

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily
News

______________________

 

Pasadena Symphony and
Pops

“A Tribute to Marvin
Hamlisch”

Larry Blank, conductor

Jason Alexander, host

Saturday, September
22, 2012 7:00 p.m.
(corrected time)

Pasadena City Hall Centennial Plaza

FREE CONCERT

Information:
www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org

______________________

 

The Pasadena Symphony and Pops will pay a final musical
tribute to former Principal Pops Conductor Marvin Hamlisch, with a free concert
tomorrow night on the steps of Pasadena’s City Hall and facing Centennial
Plaza. The music will start at 7:30 p.m. Family activities, including a musical
instrument petting zoo and children’s entertainment, will begin at 5:30 p.m.
Food trucks will also be available for those who don’t want to go to the bother
of packing a picnic dinner.

 

Hamlisch died suddenly on Aug. 6 at the age of 68.
Subsequently, noted pianist and singer Michael Feinstein was named as his
replacement beginning with next summer’s season at the Los Angeles County
Arboretum. Feinstein will hold the newly established Marvin Hamlisch Chair as
the Pasadena Pops’ principal conductor.

 

Longtime Hamlisch colleague Larry Blank will conduct
tomorrow’s concert, which will be enceed by TV and Broadway star Jason
Alexander. Guest performers will include composer-pianist Jason Robert Brown
(who, among many other things, wrote the Broadway musical Parade) and Broadway stars Lisa
Vroman and Valerie Peri.

 

The program will include many of Hamlisch’s most memorable
songs, including selection from A Chorus
Line
, They’re Playing Our
Song
, Nobody Does It Better,
and The Way We Were, as well as music
by people that inspired Marvin: the Gershwin’s, Jule Styne, and others.

 

The free concert comes two weeks before the opening of the
Pasadena Symphony season on Oct. 6 at Ambassador Auditorium. Guest conductor
Mei-Ann Chen returns to lead the PSO in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9,
Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, and
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with 17-year-old George Li as soloist.
(LINK)

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted with attribution.

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