Rockapella Loses Its House Band... Or Vice Versa?

2007-03-15T07:05:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of year again, when I get a flyer wedged and crumpled into my mailbox bearing the insufferable mug of maestro Keith Lockhart. Alas, the Boston Pops’s season is upon us.

The flyer tells me that the season will open with Ben Folds, which is cool enough, but it also tells me that someone — or a couple of someones — won’t be dropping by the hall this spring: Rockapella. This will be the first time in three seasons, I think, that RP hasn’t made it to Beantown for at least a Pops concert or two. Last season, they were headliners during the regular season in Boston, the Pops tour across America, and at the end-of-summer shows at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts.

So what happened? To be purely speculative, maybe Keith and his BFF Scott Leonard had a spat, or maybe the Rockapops relationship had simply run its course and it was time to make a clean break. (The Pops get the kids on weekends?)

Sad as it makes me that the blue-haired Symphony Hall crowd (plus me) won’t get the chance to fawn adoringly over RP this season, maybe the time was right. After all, the Rockapella/Pops shtick didn’t change any over the past few years. They performed more or less the same arrangements of more or less the same songs in a show that was themed — painfully — Our Seventies Show. If Scott Leonard decided it was time to put some distance between the band and that particular branding strategy, I can’t say that I’d slag him for it. This is a concert, remember, that closed with a sing-a-long of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”

Of course, Our Seventies Show is still on the Pops schedule, with Broadway lady Liz Callaway listed as the guest. It’s entirely possible that Rockapella will be added to that show later. But even if they’re not, there is only one minor tragedy in all this: That Scott’s splendid, Pops-customized arrangement of “Philadelphia Freedom” may not see the light of day again.

The Lost Scott Leonard Recital?

2007-02-11T06:49:00.000-05:00

The SP Times profiles local celeb Scott Leonard in some form every couple of years. The most recent one, however, from the February 7 issue, is probably the most charming to date. It also includes this intriguing footnote to Scott's otherwise well-known bio:

When Leonard started, the [University of Tampa] music program was more about Bach than Stevie Wonder. Yet after a few lessons, voice instructors knew the direction that Leonard was headed in.
Leonard honed his skills with music professor Dr. David Isele, who now serves as the university's director of choral and vocal activities.
"He took a lesson, and I told him that he really had a voice," Isele said. "He gave the first, I call it, 'hybrid' concert at UT. Half of it was classical music, and the other half was musical theater singing."

Oh, to have that setlist.

Rockapaella

Rockapella Loses Its House Band... Or Vice Versa?

The Lost Scott Leonard Recital?