Boston Pops honors essential workers with newly recorded “Summon the Heroes”

“The Boston Pops has cleverly repurposed John Williams’s score for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Summon the Heroes, as a tribute to today’s heroes—the medical personnel, police, grocery and transportation workers, and first responders who are working on the front lines of the pandemic and, in some cases, risking their own lives to do so,” writes Susan Elliott in Tuesday’s (5/5) Musical America (subscription required). “Preceded by introductions by Boston Pops Conductor Keith Lockhart and by John Williams, the orchestra’s conductor laureate, the video features 78 locked-down Boston Symphony Orchestra players, recorded independently and put together with cutting-edge software and clever engineering. The ‘heroes’ of the title refers to the athletes participating in the 1996 Summer Games. Says Williams of today’s heroes, ‘Like our wonderful athletes, they are performing Olympic feats of their own, tending to our health and well-being, and by doing so lifting all our spirits through the care and compassion they show the world each and every day.’ ”