Rare holiday for Keith Lockhart

As conductor of the Boston Pops, Keith Lockhart is used to the Fourth of July being a workday.

 “The last time I had July 4 off was either 1989 or ’90,” said Lockhart during a recent phone interview. “I don’t even know what it’s like not to work on the Fourth.”

With the annual Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular and live concert on Boston’s Esplanade, as well as the current Boston Pops spring season, canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, however, Lockhart is about to find out.

This year, the orchestra will present the prerecorded “A Boston Pops Salute to Our Heroes.”

The program – set for broadcast July 4 at 8 p.m. on Bloomberg Television, Radio, and cable/satellite and streaming services, and simulcast on Boston’s WHDH-TV Channel 7 – will pay tribute to frontline workers in many fields, and respect to those who have lost their lives during the current pandemic, while also celebrating diversity and America’s founding values of liberty and justice for all.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Want news like this sent straight to your inbox? Head over to PatriotLedger.com to sign up for alerts and make sure you never miss a thing. You pick the news you want, we deliver.

“I’ll be taping introductions and other segments from home,” says Lockhart. “We’ll be presenting both newly created content from the Pops and guest artists, and also highlights from recent Fireworks Spectaculars.”

Until then, he will continue to quarantine with his wife, Emiley Zalesky Lockhart, and their sons, Kellan, 10, and 8-year-old Christopher, at their home on the Cape, where they have been staying since mid-March.

“We’re all healthy, but we’re all getting sick of this,” reports a good-humored Lockhart of these unusual days that find him conducting math classes instead of America’s Orchestra.

“I’m kind of the head teacher right now. I’m helping my 8-year-old learn long multiplication and working with my 10-year-old on his math assignments, too,” he says

His legion of loyal fans can rest easy, though, as Lockhart’s transition from Maestro to Mr. Chips is not only temporary but part time.

Indeed, Lockhart is fully immersed in “Boston Pops at Home,” an expansive array of new and retrospective audio and video content available free each week at www.BostonPops.org/AtHome.

“Before I even got into the conversation, we knew we wanted new and interesting content,” he explains. “We now have more online programming than ever before, until we can all come back together in person.”

One of those new virtual offerings is “Conversations with Keith,” in which the conductor and pianist interviews people integral to the Pops' success, both onstage and off.

“Doing a talk show is a lot of fun and it’s also a lot of work. To prepare, I think about people like Dick Cavett and James Lipton, and then try to do an amalgamation of them as well as other great hosts,” says Lockhart. “One advantage I have is that I already know most of my guests.”

So far they have included Larry Wolfe, principal bass of the Boston Pops, who is marking his 50th anniversary with the orchestra, and Broadway arranger and composer David Chase, whose arrangement of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a Holiday Pops tradition.

The program has also featured Broadway writer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, the Tony Award-winning team behind “Ragtime,” “Anastasia,” “Once On This Island,” and more. Ahrens and Flaherty were preparing to premiere the orchestral “Ragtime in Concert” with the Pops this spring.

That premiere has now been postponed until spring 2021. When the project moves forward, it will be without its original Tony Award-winning book writer Terrence McNally. The famed playwright and librettist died of coronavirus-related causes, at age 81, on March 24.

“Terrence McNally was very enthusiastic about the whole project,” recalls Lockhart. “He had rewritten the script, and then he was gone – one of the first high-profile people to die from COVID-19.”

Lockhart was named Boston Pops conductor in 1995, and has since led the orchestra in more than 2,000 concerts and collaborated with some 300 guest artists, celebrities and performers, from all musical realms, as well as politics and sports. The second-longest serving conductor in Boston Pops history, after the iconic Arthur Fiedler, this spring was to be a celebration of his 25th anniversary with the orchestra.

While Lockhart – currently also chief guest conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London, and the artistic director of the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival in North Carolina – is quick to acknowledge that he is “not a big birthday or anniversary person,” he does have a quarter century of great memories to look back on.

“Being on the field at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans in 2002 with the Boston Pops for Super Bowl XXXVI, the first one after 9/11 and the first Super Bowl won by the New England Patriots, is one of my most vivid memories. We played ‘America the Beautiful,’ with Marc Anthony and Mary J. Blige. Afterward, all I could think was, ‘Wow – that was cool.’”

And the excitement didn’t stop there.

“From the Super Bowl, I flew to Salt Lake City where I was then also the music director for the Utah Symphony. Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams was celebrating his 70th birthday and guest conducting his ‘Call of the Champions’ with the Symphony, and special guests Sting and Yo-Yo Ma, as part of the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics,” remembers Lockhart. “The week of February 2, 2002, was the biggest week in my life.”

The Poughkeepsie, New York, native – a graduate of Furman University who earned his master’s degree in orchestral conducting from Carnegie-Mellon University and began his career as associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops orchestras and music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra – says his acclimation to Boston was swift.

“Massachusetts people are not known for embracing the stranger in their midst, but I was lucky to be embraced very quickly,” says Lockhart. I was a Mets, not Yankees, fan, which helped. And my dad went to Northeastern so I’d heard a lot about Boston before I moved to the city. Now, it feels like where I belong. We make our home in Newton, and I’ve lived in the area longer than anywhere else in my life.”

Long a local favorite in his own right, Lockhart is helping “Boston Pops at Home” take a look back at the Boston-born Fiedler who joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1915 as a violinist and went on to serve as conductor of the Pops for a record 50 years until his death in 1979 at age 84.

In an upcoming “Conversations with Keith,” Lockhart and his guests, Ron Della Chiesa, voice of WCRB’s BSO broadcasts, and Peter Fiedler, son of Arthur Fiedler, will discuss the Arthur Fiedler legacy and the long-unseen 1979 documentary, “Arthur Fiedler: Just Call Me Maestro,” which will soon be streaming as part of “Boston Pops at Home.”

And on the Cape, Lockhart, 60, is about to wrap up the math lessons.

“Right now, my sons are counting the days until the end of the school year, and asking, ‘What’s next?’ My wife and I have been checking into what summer camps might be open this year, and hoping we find one to send them to,” he says with a laugh.

Staying in touch with 'Boston Pops at Home'

 

As a means of staying connected to its audience, during this period of live concert cancellations related to public health concerns over the spread of Covid-19, Boston Pops at Home (www.bostonpops.org/athome) has created a way of engaging and entertaining audiences around the world with complimentary online and radio content.

Monday’s Boston Pops at Home features a 20–30-minute playlist from the Boston Pops audio archives. Tuesdays on Boston Pops social media channels, fans can play a "Name That Tune" game based on recent Pops performances. Wednesdays include Pops HomeSchool content for elementary and middle-school students.

Thursdays bring "Conversations with Keith," hosted by Pops conductor Keith Lockhart. Each Friday a new video segment and musical demonstration from a Boston Pops player are presented. Saturdays recap previously recorded material, and on Sundays, 99.5 WCRB rebroadcasts complete Pops performances.

'Boston Pops at Home,' and also 'BSO at Home' and 'BSO HomeSchool' (www.bso.org/athome) programming will continue through July 4.

– R. Scott Reedy