Friday night was one of those evenings when staid Severance Hall didn't so much resound as it just plain rocked, thanks to the Cleveland Pops Orchestra's season opener "When Swing Was King," a high-octane romp through the highlights of one of popular music's most rollicking eras.
Carl Topilow set the freewheeling tone with the opening number, strolling onstage playing his red clarinet as the orchestra, kickstarted by concertmaster David Russell, played Paul Ferguson's big, lush arrangement of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust."
Before anyone had a chance to breathe, Topilow launched his players into Joe Garland's "In the Mood." The segue created some delightful havoc in the main floor aisles as swing dancers planted in the audience leaped to their feat for some Olympic-style terpsichory, much to the consternation of the hall's ushers, who found themselves leading latecomers into a whirlwind of flailing limbs.
The Cleveland Pops Orchestra may be one of the most versatile ensembles in town these days, considering how authentic they sounded as they channeled the spirits of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie and friends. Topilow, too, is a whiz at shifting gears: The head of conducting faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music proved equally genuine as a swingmeister, adeptly wailing his way through the Byzantine solo part of Artie Shaw's brilliant Concerto for Clarinet.
The evening featured a veritable constellation of musical stars, including Howie Smith sitting in on alto and soprano saxophone.
Pops stalwarts Paul Ferguson, trombone, and Jack Schantz, trumpet, were also in the house, with the modest but breathtakingly talented Ferguson knocking just about everyone out with a Tommy Dorsey tribute that climaxed with the fiendishly difficult
"Trombonology."
Trumpeter Schantz switched to the mellow flugelhorn for his solo turn, a soft-as-silk reading of "Misty" that had the audience a bit misty themselves.
You can't have a big band without a vocalist, however, and Susan Hesse did the honors Friday. Her trademark velvet tone and sassy delivery served her especially well in a sax-vocal duet of Ellington's "Caravan" with saxophonist Smith, who played his tart-timbred soprano like a wise old snake charmer.
As with all Cleveland Pops Orchestra concerts, Topilow and friends were eager to color outside the lines, bringing in swing dancers Joel Plys and Valerie Salstrom to remind us that big band concerts were, first and foremost, opportunities for audiences to hit the dance floor and work off a few pounds in record time.
The high point of hilarity was reached when the musicians undertook the innocuously named medley, "Big Band Sounds," which Topilow turned into a name-that-tune audience quiz.
After a shaky parody of Guy Lombardo's "Auld Lang Syne" (which everyone in the audience guessed), two of the violinists traded their instruments for plastic jars of bubble juice, sending soap bubbles toward the podium while the rest of their colleagues played some percolating "champagne music." Nobody got that one wrong, either.
