CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The New York Pops

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

The New York Pops
Doc Severinsen, Conductor
Nicole Cabell, Soprano
Fort Worth-TCU Symphonic Choir
Ronald Shirey, Director

The former Tonight Show conductor returns to lead a festive program of holiday favorites with rising star soprano Nicole Cabell and a 150-voice choir from Texas.

Sponsored by Smith Barney

The New York Pops
Doc Severinsen, Conductor
“Heeeeere’s Johnny!” That lead-in, followed by a big band trumpet blast, was the landmark of late-night television for three decades. The “Johnny” was Johnny Carson, the announcer was Ed McMahon, and the bandleader was Doc Severinsen.

Severinsen’s accomplishments began in his hometown of Arlington, Oregon, population 600. Carl H. Severinsen was born on July 7, 1927, and was nicknamed “Little Doc” after his father, Dr. Carl Severinsen, a dentist. Little Doc had originally wanted to play the trombone, but the senior Severinsen, a gifted amateur violinist, urged him to study the violin. The younger Severinsen insisted on the trombone, but had to settle for the only horn available in Arlington’s small music store, a trumpet. A week later, with the help of his father and a manual of instructions, the seven-year-old was so good that he was invited to join the high school band. At the age of 12, Little Doc won the Music Educator’s National Contest and, while still in high school, was hired to go on the road with the famous Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. However, his stay with the group was cut short by the draft. He served in the Army during World War II and, following his discharge, landed a spot with the Charlie Barnet Band. When this band broke up, Severinsen toured with the Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman bands in the late 1940s.

After his days with Barnet and Dorsey, Doc arrived in New York City in 1949 to become a staff musician for NBC. After years of playing with the peacock network’s studio bands, he was invited to do a gig with the highly respected Tonight Show Band. An impressed conductor, Skitch Henderson, asked him to join that band in 1962 as first trumpet. Five years later, Doc took over as Music Director.

Since moving to Mexico at the end of 2006, Doc has kept a busy performance schedule and made new discoveries in two very talented musicians from Mexico. Together with these gentlemen, Doc has crafted an innovative and exciting program. El Ritmo de la Vida is, of course, “the rhythm of life,” a very apt description of Gil Gutierrez and Pedro Cartas and their music. According to Doc, “I came to Mexico with retirement on my mind, but when I heard them play I knew that I would be playing with them for some time to come. Latino music, along with the blues, has always been among my favorites, and Gil and Pedro do it along with a European style that I love and so do our audiences.”

THE NEW YORK POPS

The New York Pops was founded by Skitch Henderson in 1983 to give New York a permanent professional symphonic pops orchestra that would create greater public awareness and appreciation of America’s rich musical heritage. The orchestra is now the largest independent symphonic pops orchestra in the United States, enjoying one of the highest subscription renewal rates of any series at Carnegie Hall. The orchestra also tours throughout the world and performs free concerts in New York City parks through its Summermusic program. The New York Pops’s extensive education programs allow public schoolchildren to participate in numerous concert and music-making experiences: Salute To Music provides free instrumental lessons to more than 100 New York City junior high school students each year; Kids in the Balcony arranges for hundreds of children to attend all of The New York Pops’s concerts at Carnegie Hall; other education programs, such as Create a Symphony and Rhythm, Rhyme & Rap, teach skills such as composition, instrument building, percussion performance, and literacy. The New York Pops’s recordings include a recently reissued CD of the orchestra’s 1983 debut performance as well as From Berlin to Bernstein, The New York Pops Goes to the Movies, Christmas in the Country, Magical Moments from Great Musicals, and With A Song in My Heart—the Music of Richard Rodgers with Maureen McGovern. For the third year in a row in the summer of 2007, the orchestra performed the musical accompaniment to the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular, seen by more than 10 million television viewers nationwide on NBC. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York Pops is a not-for-profit corporation supported solely through the generosity of individual donations, institutional grants, and concert income.

Nicole Cabell, Soprano
Nicole Cabell, the 2005 winner of the BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff and an exclusive Decca recording artist, is quickly becoming one of today’s most sought-after lyric sopranos. Her solo debut album, Soprano, was named Record of the Month by Gramophone and received the 2007 Georg Solti Orphée d’Or from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique as well as an Echo Klassik Award in Germany.

Ms. Cabell’s current season includes debuts with Opera Pacific (Die Zauberflöte) and the Washington Opera, as well as return engagements at Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (as Musetta in La Bohème in all three cities). In concert, she will be heard in Madrid (Orphée et Eurydice, also to be recorded by Decca), Munich, Regensburg, Pittsburgh, and San Diego, as well as in recitals throughout the US. Engagements last season included debuts in Berlin (Roméo et Juliette, Idomeneo, Die Zauberflöte), Montpellier (L’elisir d’Amore), Santa Fe (La Bohème), returns to London for her Covent Garden debut in La juive, a recording and a concert of the title-role in Donizetti’s Imelda de’ Lambertazzi, and a solo recital. She also recorded the role of Musetta in La Bohème for Deutsche Grammophon.

Notable pops appearances include an all-Bernstein evening at Harvard with Judith Clurman as well as concerts at the Bard Festival and with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Pasadena Pops, and the Compton Heights Band in St. Louis. In future seasons, Ms. Cabell will return to her home company, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, for several leading roles and will make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera.

Nicole Cabell’s Decca releases include the role of Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and a solo disc of arias in Italian, French, and English, Nicole Cabell, Soprano.

Fort Worth-TCU Symphonic Choir
Ronald Shirey, Director
Professor Ronald Shirey has been at Texas Christian University since 1976, coming there from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, where he had been Chairman of the Vocal Department and Director of Choirs since 1970. During his stay at TCU, the choirs have been heard in the state conventions of the Texas Music Educators Association on seven different occasions in performances before the Vocal Division. In the conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (in which performers are selected from taped auditions), they have performed for the Southwestern Division (a seven-state area) six different times, and in the national conventions of ACDA on four other occasions. TCU Choirs have performed with the Dallas, Fort Worth, Oklahoma, Midland-Odessa, Irving, and San Angelo symphonies in major works. Professor Shirey holds two degrees from the University of Tulsa. He has done graduate work at the University of Texas in Austin and a residency at Arizona State University in Tempe.

FORT WORTH–TCU SYMPHONIC CHOIR

The Fort Worth–TCU Symphonic Choir, under the direction of Ronald Shirey, is an amalgam of the Chancel Choir from the University Christian Church and Choral Union, Concert Chorale, and the Chapel Choir from Texas Christian University. The choir has performed with the Oklahoma Symphony, Midland-Odessa Symphony Orchestra, Irving Symphony Orchestra, San Angelo Symphony Orchestra, and the Forth Worth Symphony Orchestra. The Concert Chorale, TCU’s premier touring group, has appeared at the national and divisional conventions of the American Choral Director’s Association during the past 25 years with Professor Shirey.