Lockhart on the Go

   What a decade it has been for Keith Lockhart.
   Named conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra at 35 – the press conference in Boston was ten years ago to the day this Sunday – he has led over 750 concerts and 60 television shows with the Pops, made nine Pops CDs (two nominated for a Grammy) and taken the Pops on 21 national and four international tours.
   In 1998, he donned a second hat by becoming music director of the Utah Symphony in Salt Lake City.
   A slice of his date book tells the story:
   "I conducted 30 (Pops) holiday concerts between Thanksgiving and Dec. 23. I took three days off and flew to England and did the British National Youth Orchestra for 12 days. I came back on Jan. 9th and was in Boston for two days, then went to Salt Lake for two weeks, including a ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ (Schoenberg) performance.
   "I did three concerts in Boston last week (plus a benefit concert for victims of the Asian tsunami) and now I’m going to Cincinnati."
   "That’s just the last couple of months," he said, he said, speaking by cell phone from Boston’s Logan Airport Monday.
   Lockhart - who pole-vaulted to the Boston Pops from the Cincinnati, where he served as associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops from 1990-95 and music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra from 1992-99 - leads the CSO Thursday through Saturday at Music Hall.
   It’ll be a knockout concert - literally, with American composer John Adams’ punchy, seven-minute "Lollapalooza" (a CSO premiere) opening the show. Also on the program are Gustav Holst’s blockbuster "The Planets" (with women of the May Festival Chorus) and Serenade for Violin, Strings and Percussion by Leonard Bernstein with violinist Robert McDuffie.
   Concerts are 7:30 p.m. tonight, 11 a.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall. Lockhart will present the pre-concert "Classical Conversation" at 10 a.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday (there are no "Classical Conversations" for Thursday concerts, which include a pre-concert buffet, free to ticket holders, beginning at 6:15 p.m. in the Music Hall Ballroom).
   Would Lockhart like to be less busy, I asked, amid announcements over Logan’s public address system.
   "I always say that and then somehow I find a way not to be," he said. "I really love what I do, but I would love to see a little bit more space between things. I would love to just be able to take a little of the intensity out of the schedule, but sometimes it’s not in the cards."
   The tsunami concert is an example.
   "They called me in England and I thought, ‘I have two whole days off in the next four months, but how can I say no to that?’"
   The concert, which involved an all-star cast of Boston musicians, was "wonderfully successful," he said. "We raised something like $75,000."
   Lockhart splits his time "almost evenly" between Boston and Utah – "a little bit more in Boston because my son (Aaron) is here" (Lockhart is separated from his wife, violinist Lucia Lin).
   "He’s a little over 17 months now. He’s just incredible and I miss him so much when I’m not with him. In an odd sort of way, I probably spend more time with him in my current personal situation that I would if things were normal, because I deliberately schedule time every day I’m in town to spend a couple of hours just with him. I don’t go home and say ‘dad is too tired to play.’"
   Lockhart, a Poughkeepsie, New York native, who earned his graduate conducting degree from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University and his bachelor’s degree from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, has been expanding the reach of his two orchestras. Sports-mined himself – he is an avid skier and enjoys the slopes in Utah – he has been scoring significant symphonic points with America’s sports-minded audience.
   In 2002, he conducted the Boston Pops in the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, the first time an orchestra was featured in a performance at the Super Bowl. In September, he and the Pops appeared live on national TV with Sir Elton John during the NFL Season Kickoff special prior to the first game of the 2004 season at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
   He led the Utah Symphony during the opening ceremony of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, as well as two programs for the related 2002 Olympic Arts Festival.
   After his CSO concerts, Lockhart heads for the Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida Sunday, this time as an observer. "There’s a little team from Boston involved in that" (the New England Patriots vs. the Philadelphia Eagles). It will be a brief respite, however. The next day he is due in Ft. Lauderdale for the first concert of the Pops’ biennial tour of Florida and the southeast.
   With the addition of the Utah Symphony in 1999, Lockhart feels that his "plate is nicely balanced."
   "I love what the Boston Pops does. I love what it stands for and I love the fact that we have a really wide and deep reach into the population that pretty much no other orchestra has. Millions and millions of people have a recognition of this orchestra, and you really can’t say that about any other performing ensemble of this sort.
   "On the other hand, I love the integrity and growth that my time in Utah has given me. I’ve had great opportunities to do wonderful repertoire and to learn how to be a music director of a large organization."
   Utah is thriving under Lockhart. In April, he will take the orchestra on its first tour of Europe in 19 years, a three week, 14-concert visit to Austria and Germany. "Most of the concerts halls I was in first with the CSO on their 1995 tour," he said.
   Lockhart hopes to catch up with his many friends in Cincinnati during his visit. He last conducted in Cincinnati in January, 2003, on a return engagement with the CCO. His last CSO appearance was on a subscription concert at Music Hall in 1996, when he led the CSO premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5.
   "I think a lot of people are not calling me because they’re afraid I won’t have time - there are so many that one hardly knows where to start - but I’m sure we’ll find some opportunity."
   Though he has reached "Olympian" status, Lockhart, 45, retains his kid-next-door appeal.
   "I’m just a little boy from Poughkeepsie by way of Cincinnati. This weekend is exactly the tenth anniversary of my officially departing. It’s just amazing that a decade has gone by."
   Still, he has no gray hairs to mark the journey.
   "My hair stylist just confirmed that for me. There aren’t any. All of my gray hairs are internalized."
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Feb. 3, 2005)