Pops concert featuring movie music is up next for Adrian Symphony Orchestra

ADRIAN — It’s become a tradition for the Adrian Symphony Orchestra that movie-music composers get their due in February’s concert slot, and this year is no exception.

The pops concert, called “Adventures in Film,” is at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, at Adrian College’s Dawson Auditorium. A cash bar opens in the lobby at 6 p.m.

Tickets are $32/$29/$21 for adults, $30/$27/$21 for senior citizens, and $18/$15 for students and are available online at adriansymphony.org, by calling 517-264-3121 or at the door beginning two hours prior to the concert.

Audience members are invited to come dressed as their favorite adventure-film characters and participate in a costume contest, with the audience voting on the winners.

With so many of the patrons at a typical ASO concert away for the winter, the orchestra made the decision years ago to make the February slot a pops concert oriented toward families, with an earlier time than usual to make it kid-friendly.

And over time, the February concert “has become known as our film-music slot,” ASO Music Director Bruce Anthony Kiesling said.

Unsurprisingly given this year’s adventure-movie theme, several of the pieces on Friday’s program come from John Williams: the “Raiders March” from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “The Asteroid Field” from “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Flight to Neverland” from “Hook,” the “Superman” march, and the main theme to “Jurassic Park.”

Besides the sheer popularity of Williams’ music — in fact, just last February, the ASO devoted basically its entire pops concert to it — there’s another reason why film-score concerts often include lots of things by that particular composer: the music excerpts really well.

“Williams is a master of the short-form orchestral work,” Kiesling said. “He writes in a way that can work well in a concert hall. It feels complete somehow. Some other film composers don’t write in a way that works well for an orchestra, but John had an innate gift for that and no one creates atmosphere and setting the way he does.”

But the concert has plenty of music by composers not named John Williams, too. The program also includes music by other film-score legends: Hans Zimmer (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), Alan Sylvestri (“Back to the Future” and “Captain America”), Elmer Bernstein (“The Magnificent Seven”), and Henry Mancini (“The Great Race”).

Including Mancini’s “Pie in the Face Polka” from “The Great Race” is something of a departure from the usual type of music the ASO has done for these concerts. Not only is it a comic piece, but it gives the orchestra the chance to play something totally different from, say, Williams’ epic and brass-heavy scores.

“So often, we do things like Marvel-movie music and ‘Star Wars,’” Kiesling said. “But no one can evoke style like Henry Mancini. And it’ll give our clarinetist a real workout.”

Also part of the evening is some of John Powell’s music from “How to Train Your Dragon” and three vocal pieces. One of the songs is from a different animated film and two are from the James Bond franchise.

“Somewhere Out There,” written by James Horner, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for “An American Tail,” will be sung by the Clinton Youth Honors Choir. Soprano Cecilia Petrush performs the title songs from two Bond movies, “You Only Live Twice” (written by Bill Conti and Michael Leeson), and “For Your Eyes Only” (by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse).

Petrush, a Pittsburgh native, is a senior at the University of Michigan working on her B.F.A. in musical theatre with a minor in performing arts management and entrepreneurship. She has performed professionally for more than a decade.

As the reigning Miss Washtenaw County, she will compete in the Miss Michigan scholarship competition this June. Prior to that, in April, she performs in the role of Maureen in the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Department’s production of “Rent.”

In the long history of symphony orchestras and the types of concerts they program, pops concerts are a relatively recent development.

“It used to be anathema to do pops music,” Kiesling said.

But the popularity of such concerts in modern times is undeniable. And the ASO’s decision to devote this particular slot on the orchestra’s calendar to pops, and to film music specifically, has paid off.

“This concert has become our best-selling concert,” Kiesling said. “Over the years, the audience numbers are really growing.”

If you go

WHAT: “Adventures in Film” Adrian Symphony Orchestra pops concert

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17

WHERE: Dawson Auditorium, Adrian College

TICKETS: $32/$29/$21 for adults, $30/$27/$21 for senior citizens, $18/$15 for students

HOW TO ORDER: Online at adriansymphony.org, by calling 517-264-3121, or at the door beginning two hours prior to the concert

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Pops concert up Feb. 17 for Adrian Symphony Orchestra