“A four-night residency by roots music polymath and MacArthur ‘genius grant’ recipient Rhiannon Giddens, a screening of ‘Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope’ with live orchestra, high-flying acrobats, and the returns of Bernadette Peters and Leslie Odom Jr. are among the coming attractions in the Boston Pops’ spring season,” writes Zoë Madonna in Thursday’s (2/21) Boston Globe. “The season, which runs from May 8 to June 15, also features … James Beckel’s multimedia piece ‘From the Earth to the Moon and Beyond,’ a Pops co-commission celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing…. Giddens … tore up the Esplanade with her banjo, fiddle, and barefoot dancing at the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular last July Fourth…. She’ll first join the Pops with her own band to play music from her albums…. Then, she curates an homage to black composers of symphonic music including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, and Billy Strayhorn…. ‘When you look at the Pops audience and who comes, you really do get an incredibly wide slice,’ [Boston Pops conductor Keith] Lockhart says…. The Pops aims to make that slice even wider with its first sensory-friendly family concert … designed for patrons with special sensitivities such as those associated with autism”
Posted February 26, 2019
