Friday-night Pops concerts are low-key fun. The musicianship is stellar, the songs are usually familiar, and your fellow concert-goers won’t spill beer on your shoes or accidentally body-check your spouse.
For years, Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center has been the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s summer home for POPS! concerts. All month long, the HSO plants itself outdoors, enlists some hi-watt stars and beams sound waves into the night air.
Shows begin at 7:30 p.m. and take place regardless of weather conditions (unless it’s really bad out, I imagine). Assistant conductor Adam Boyles — we covered his victory during the HSO’s 2016 Battle of the Batons — presides.
Head to hartfordsymphony.org or call 860-987-5900 for tickets, or just walk up to the Bushnell box office. Here’s what to expect at the shows.
Brass Transit: The Musical Legacy of Chicago (July 6)
We interviewed Chicago singer/keyboardist and founding member Robert Lamm, who wrote “Beginnings,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “South California Purples,” back in 2015, and he was awesome. Head to Simsbury on July 6 to hear Lamm’s horn-heavy songs — also, all that soft-serve David Foster/Peter Cetera stuff — played by Brass Transit and the HSO.
Here’s Doc! Celebrating 60 Years in Show Business (July 13)
Gen-Xers and up remember trumpeter/bandleader Doc Severinsen — we interviewed Doc in 2011 — as a smiling, musical presence, flanking Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, on the Tonight Show. Johnny and Ed have passed on, but Doc’s still blowing his horn. In Simsbury, he’ll take on American songbook standards and big-band classics, and maybe tell a few stories.
Magical Movie Music (July 20)
Remember the “Forrest Gump” soundtrack? Me neither. But luckily other material — “The Godfather,” “Star Wars,” “Amadeus” — played at this concert will be more familiar. And being there might feel like attending an old-timey drive-in movie, I don’t know.
REWIND: Celebrating the Music of the ‘80s (July 27)
Ah, the 1980s. Big hair, New Wave music, a celebrity in the White House and that A-ha song, the one you belt out in your loudest, highest falsetto. There’s some history to this; in 2015, we interviewed Sheena Easton, who did a bunch of spy numbers with the HSO. Boyles and the HSO enlist a “rock band” and some singers to help get all those New Coke vibes across.
