Southern Nevada Symphony Orchestra pops concert enchants audience

By BOBBIE GREEN

The Progress

A lively Pops Concert featuring the Southern Nevada Symphony Orchestra (SNSO) brought the audience in a crowded Virgin Valley High School auditorium to its feet on Saturday evening, April 27.

This final concert of the SNSO 2023/24 season, under the direction of Susan Thiriot, thrilled the audience with their choice of energetic pops music. Guiding the audience through the musical legends was narrator Mark Guertin.

The Orchestra opened with a rousing medley of music from the epic film Star Wars. In his intro, Guertin quoted director Steven Spielberg saying, “Without this music from John Williams, bikes, brooms or men in red capes do not fly. Dinosaurs do not walk the Earth, and we do not wonder, weep or believe.”

The next offering was the soundtrack from the movie “Frozen” written by husband-and-wife team Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez.

The familiar music from the popular TV series Downton Abbey delighted the audience. Again, Guertin quoted the composer John Lunn “The Music is never about the place or the time, it’s much more about what is going on inside people’s heads and their feelings.”

Guertin warned the audience of the passion that would be displayed in the next very familiar and loved piece by Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell.” Memories of the Lone Ranger and the horses’ hoofs flooded back through the audience. By the end they were on their feet with extra loud cheers.

After the orchestra’s well-deserved intermission, they continued with a Go West Musical celebration with a medley of themes from familiar western movies. The Magnificent Seven, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Hang ‘em High.

With the performance of the soundtrack for the “Lord of Rings” by Howard Shore, the audience was treated to a special vocal performed by Cameron Woodrow, a 7th grade student at Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton. Woodrow’s haunting voice also got the audience to their feet with a standing ovation.

Music from another beloved play, Fiddler on the Roof, was lively and cheerfully performed by the orchestra.

The final piece was as narrator Guertin said, “A wild ride along with the music from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean.

He explained that the piece begins with a jaunty little tune and then explodes into an epic orchestral arrangement.

It was so real the audience began to imagine Captain Jack Sparrow running through the room, and then even onto the stage where he took over the conductor’s podium.

But this wasn’t just imaginary. He was replaced when Thiriot came back to the stage with a huge sword to threaten the Pirate. She drove Sparrow off the podium and resumed conducting with the sword as her baton.
Captain Jack Sparrow was re-created brilliantly by Grant Mecham.

Thus the concert ended with an unlikely performance of a Pirate anthem by a Mesquite orchestra in the Bulldog auditorium. But everyone loved it, all the same!