Longmont Symphony Pops Concert features musical portraits of the West

By Peter Alexander April 29 at 5:22 p.m.

The Longmont Symphony and conductor Elliot Moore will end the 2024-25 concert season with their annual Pops Concert, Saturday at the Vance Brand Civic Auditorium (7 p.m. May 3; details below).

The program offers what the orchestra calls “an exciting trip out west”—or, since we are in Colorado, you might think of it as a musical step out the door and into the wide open spaces around us. Included are fiddle tunes, musical descriptions of the Grand Canyon and an 1878 cattle drive, and music to a cowboy ballet.

Richard Hayman, for many years chief musical arranger or the Boston Pops Orchestra, contributes Pops Hoedown. A collection of well known fiddle tunes including “The Devil’s Dream,” “Chicken Reel,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Rakes and Mallow” and others, Pops Hoedown evokes the high spirits of a Saturday night barn dance.

Disney’s 1958 film Grand Canyon won the Academy Award for best short film. The music written for the film by composer/arranger Ferde Grofé lived on long past the film itself in the form of the Grand Canyon Suite. Of the five movements of the full suite, the LSO will play the most familiar: “On the Trail,” describing the steady gait of donkeys into the canyon and their race back to the barn; and a movement depicting an afternoon “Cloudburst.”

The 1972 Western film The Cowboys starred John Wayne, Bruce Dern, Colleen Dewhurst and Slim Pickens. The music for the film was one of John Williams’s earlier film scores, and the Overture Williams wrote drawn from  the film creates an intense, uptempo portrayal of a cattle drive and the young cowboys who are the film’s subjects.

Agnes de Mille’s ballet Rodeo had its premiere in 1942 at the Metropolitan Opera House, receiving 22 curtain calls. The success was due not only to de Mille’s inventive choreography—which led to her selection to choreograph Rogers and Hammerstein’s Broadway hit Oklahoma—but also the music by Aaron Copland. Subtitled “The Courting at Burnt Ranch,” the ballet tells the story of the romance between the Cowgirl and the Champion Roper.

From its use in the orchestral suite and television commercials, Copland’s “Hoedown” from Rodeo has become instantly recognizable as musical Americana. Copland incorporates several fiddle tunes into the “Hoedown,” including “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “Miss McLeod’s Reel.” The LSO will play the full ballet score, including sections titled “Buckaroo Holiday,” “Corral Nocturne,” “Ranch House Party” and “Saturday Nigh Waltz.”

In addition to these popular pieces inspired why the American West, the LSO Pops program includes Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle Faddle, The American Frontier by Calvin Custer and Cowboy Rhapsody by Morton Gould. 

# # # # #

“Pops: A Western Hoedown“
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor

• Leroy Anderson: Fiddle Faddle
• Richard Hayman: Pops Hoedown
• Ferde Grofé: Grand Canyon Suite
• Calvin Custer: The American Frontier
• John Williams: Overture to The Cowboys
• Morton Gould: Cowboy Rhapsody
• Aaron Copland: Rodeo

7 p.m. Saturday, May 3, Vance Brand Civic Auditorium

TICKETS