Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart eager to lead Cleveland Orchestra in program exploring the Great American Songbook

CLEVELAND, Ohio – On Sunday, in the bucolic confines of Blossom Music Center, the Cleveland Orchestra’s 2023 Blossom Music Festival will present “Two Pianos: Who Could Ask For Anything More?” Tickets for the concert start at $29 and are on available at clevelandorchestra.com.

The concert features an all-star trio for an evening of great American music drawing from The Great American Songbook as well as Gershwin’s iconic “Rhapsody In Blue” as interpreted by singer-pianist Michael Feinstein, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Cleveland Orchestra, guest conducted by Keith Lockhart of the world-renowned Boston Orchestra and Boston Pops.

The program marks the first time the two celebrated performers and friends have worked together on the same stage. And Feinstein, the leading music anthropologist and archivist of the Great American Songbook, will play, sing and provide social context for many of the works that will also feature pieces from a host of great American composers, including Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Alec Wilder, and Leonard Bernstein. The two stars will perform solo and in duos, and Feinstein will, naturally, sing many of these beloved tunes.

Leading the orchestra will be Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops for the past 28 years. That group premiered “Two Pianos: Who Could Ask For Anything More?” this spring.

Lockhart and the Boston Pops are among the rock stars of the symphonic music world, with more than 80 television appearances and 45 national tours. Lockhart has also guest-conducted orchestras around the United States and the globe, including a stint with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and the Utah Symphony and Opera.

Lockhart has held his baton in front of most of this country and many of the world’s foremost orchestras, including those in London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Prague, Vienna, and Rome, to name a few. This isn’t his Cleveland Orchestra debut, but it’s been almost three decades since the last time he led the group.

During the summer, Lockhart is the Artistic Director of the Brevard Music Center, a summer training program for hundreds of young talented musicians. Cleveland.com talked to Lockhart during a rare break in his busy summer schedule, molding the music makers of the future.

Considering all of your storied careers, I’d assume that you and Michael and Jean-Yve’s professional paths have crossed a few times over the past few decades.

Lockhart: Oh, yeah, both of them. I think the first time I worked with Michael, I knew him before that because he came in with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops when I was still an associate there. But the first time I worked with him was probably in 1995 at the Hollywood Bowl, and I have worked with him many times over that period of time. And Jean-Yves is just one of my favorite pianists on the planet. I’ve worked with him a lot. He’s been here (Brevard) a couple of times, actually with us and elsewhere. But the funny thing is I’ve never seen the two of them in the same room until we started doing this program, which I guess is the point.

I think some folks have a romanticized idea of the life of a famed conductor, but when you do these guest spots, you don’t have any real time to work with the orchestra you’re conducting, right? So your familiarity and comfort level with the material has got to be important. Not just the material, but the arrangements, so you can step up, raise the baton and go?

Lockhart: It’s wonderful new orchestrations, mostly by a man named Tedd Firth, that are really full. It’s very beautifully orchestrated and, of course, incredibly good source material. But, any time you show up to do something like this in a single-day situation as it is in Blossom with Cleveland, we all have our work cut out for us.

And you have to trust that the home orchestra is rehearsed and ready because there’s no time to try and fix or whip anything into shape

Lockhart: Well, the thing is, you don’t need to whip the Cleveland Orchestra into shape. It’s one of the world’s great orchestras to begin with, and we all speak the same language. We just need to translate for each other very quickly in situations like this. But really, I’m looking forward to it. It will be a wonderful intense day this Sunday, but really worth doing that. The program is gorgeous. I know the orchestra will love it, and I know even more that the audience will love it.

Michael Feinstein lives and breathes this material, doesn’t he? This is what he’s known best for.

Lockhart: I think the program is mostly his impetus o begin with. From what I hear from talking to the two of them, they were at a dinner party together like a decade ago and said something like, “You know, we really should do something together.” And this manifested itself in Michael’s very busy mind into an exploration of their mutual love of Gershwin and his contemporaries and combining the incredible encyclopedic knowledge of the American Songbook that Michael has with the absurdly skilled pianism of Jean. It’s a great combination.

As someone who has conducted many of these songs and pieces, do you have any favorites? Are conductors allowed to have favorites?

Lockhart: No, I’m not allowed to have favorites because, you know, it’s like your children. (chuckles). No, I think the great thing about this program is that it contains some interesting stops along the way, but also pretty much everybody’s favorite Gershwin song is in there at one point or another, and some absolutely stunning versions, and I think people will be at least humming along pretty much throughout the concert.

In all your travels, will this be your first time conducting the Cleveland Orchestra?

K.L.: No, no, it’s been a very long time, but I conducted the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom in 1995. It was around festivities celebrating the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And, weirdly, just because people’s paths go in different directions, I haven’t been back since. So I’m really looking forward to the return, though I don’t think there’ll be that many familiar faces by this point.

The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Keith Lockhart will perform “Two Pianos: Who Could Ask for Anything More?” at 7 p.m. Sunday at Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls. The program will feature vocalist-pianist Michael Feinstein and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet performing music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and more. Tickets range from $29 to $121 and are available at clevelandorchestra.com.