Saturday, December 12, 2015.
The 610 Stompers Versus The Symphony, Plus Pizza.
My Saturday afternoon radio show has been pre-empted by football games every week for months. Nothing new there, but today will be the last time I will be punted into the sidelines every single week.
My morning mind is preoccupied with trying to impress on it the four verses of my solo at the big NPAS Christmas Concert. Why I find this short verse so hard to memorize is a mystery, and it worries me. Which makes the situation worse. It happens to better singers than me. Frank Sinatra--who would be 100 today--had all the lyrics for all the songs he sang in concert appear on screens lining the stage.
I have an idea. I stop at Walgreens and buy a few tree decorations, one each for Christmas Future, Christmas Past, and Christmas Present. By associating each bauble with the lyric words, my theory goes, I'll remember. But that really winds up complicating things further, and I keep getting the seasons in the wrong order.
[caption id="attachment_49966" align="alignnone" width="480"]
From the uppermost seats in the Orpheum.[/caption]
Mary Ann bought tickets to a concert for the Louisiana Philharmonic's Holiday Spectacular at the magnificent Orpheum Theater. What caught her attention was that the 610 Stompers get equal billing with the LPO.
The 610 Stompers are hard to explain. On Thanksgiving, when they were in the Macy's Parade in New York City (for the second consecutive year!), the network commentators were completely bamboozled by the Stomper act.
But I will try to make sense of it. All the members are male, most of them in their twenties and thirties. They wear perfectly matching uniforms, which appear to have been selected from the cheapest imaginable clearance bin: red windbreakers over A-shirts thst reveal almost-hairy chests, pale blue short shorts, white-and-colored-stripe tube socks, metallic gold sneakers, and white sweat bands. No statement is made about or by the getups.
Throughout the show, units of a half-dozen to forty-two Stompers appear throughout the theater, rendering a parody of whatever the straight act just finished (or is about to finish). Parody doesn't quite capture it, though. It's more along the lines of what a group of semi-conscious guys would do if they were asked to demonstrate what the previous straight act just performed.
Aside from the LPO, the other performers were the Roots of Music Brass Band; Alexis Marceaux, an excellent singer who gave forth with two strong solos; the New Orleans Children's Chorus; a ballet dancer whose moves were perfect, followed by a much younger ballerina whose abilities were nearly as good; and the Archdiocese of New Orleans Mass Gospel Choir. All these musicians, and certainly the LPO, played flawlessly.
Nothing about what the Stompers did seemed to be played for laughs, but they got laughs from everything they did. It was all preposterous, but played perfectly straight. In that way they interpreted a wide range of Christmas songs. The best of these was the March of the Toys. While the LPO played the great Leroy Anderson-Boston Pops arrangement of that, the Stompers became wooden soldiers in two ranks, meshing with one another in a way that predicted a mass collision (which had already occurred in other movements), but resulted in a perfect maneuver. It was like nothing I've ever seen, but by the intermission we all knew that this will not be the last time this show will appear here. The house was nearly full.
[caption id="attachment_49967" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Charles Carter, passer-by, Daniel Leylchuk, two 610 Stompers.[/caption]
On the way out, I ran into Charles Carter, my waiter at Antoine's, who was shooting the breeze with Daniel Lelchuk, the Gourmet Cellist on my radio show and second-chair cellist with the LPO. He astonished me by saying that the Holiday Spectacular required only two rehearsals from the LPO. I'll bet the Stompers spent many more hours on their end. They are well on their way to becoming a legend of New Orleans culture.
After the Spectacular, Mary Ann and I met up with her brother Lee and his wife Valarie, who had also seen the show and were now having supper at Domenica. They were lucky to get a table. Every time something goes on at the Orpeum, Domenica jams up. We eat the improbably delicious roasted cauliflower with feta cheese sauce, lasagna bolognese, and a pizza. The latter remains the best pizza in town, issuing forth from one of the first wood-burning stone ovens from Naples to find its way to New Orleans. A great evening, all in all.
Domenica. CBD: 123 Baronne (Roosevelt Hotel). 504-648-6020.
From the uppermost seats in the Orpheum.[/caption]
Mary Ann bought tickets to a concert for the Louisiana Philharmonic's Holiday Spectacular at the magnificent Orpheum Theater. What caught her attention was that the 610 Stompers get equal billing with the LPO.
The 610 Stompers are hard to explain. On Thanksgiving, when they were in the Macy's Parade in New York City (for the second consecutive year!), the network commentators were completely bamboozled by the Stomper act.
But I will try to make sense of it. All the members are male, most of them in their twenties and thirties. They wear perfectly matching uniforms, which appear to have been selected from the cheapest imaginable clearance bin: red windbreakers over A-shirts thst reveal almost-hairy chests, pale blue short shorts, white-and-colored-stripe tube socks, metallic gold sneakers, and white sweat bands. No statement is made about or by the getups.
Throughout the show, units of a half-dozen to forty-two Stompers appear throughout the theater, rendering a parody of whatever the straight act just finished (or is about to finish). Parody doesn't quite capture it, though. It's more along the lines of what a group of semi-conscious guys would do if they were asked to demonstrate what the previous straight act just performed.
Aside from the LPO, the other performers were the Roots of Music Brass Band; Alexis Marceaux, an excellent singer who gave forth with two strong solos; the New Orleans Children's Chorus; a ballet dancer whose moves were perfect, followed by a much younger ballerina whose abilities were nearly as good; and the Archdiocese of New Orleans Mass Gospel Choir. All these musicians, and certainly the LPO, played flawlessly.
Nothing about what the Stompers did seemed to be played for laughs, but they got laughs from everything they did. It was all preposterous, but played perfectly straight. In that way they interpreted a wide range of Christmas songs. The best of these was the March of the Toys. While the LPO played the great Leroy Anderson-Boston Pops arrangement of that, the Stompers became wooden soldiers in two ranks, meshing with one another in a way that predicted a mass collision (which had already occurred in other movements), but resulted in a perfect maneuver. It was like nothing I've ever seen, but by the intermission we all knew that this will not be the last time this show will appear here. The house was nearly full.
[caption id="attachment_49967" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Charles Carter, passer-by, Daniel Leylchuk, two 610 Stompers.[/caption]
On the way out, I ran into Charles Carter, my waiter at Antoine's, who was shooting the breeze with Daniel Lelchuk, the Gourmet Cellist on my radio show and second-chair cellist with the LPO. He astonished me by saying that the Holiday Spectacular required only two rehearsals from the LPO. I'll bet the Stompers spent many more hours on their end. They are well on their way to becoming a legend of New Orleans culture.
After the Spectacular, Mary Ann and I met up with her brother Lee and his wife Valarie, who had also seen the show and were now having supper at Domenica. They were lucky to get a table. Every time something goes on at the Orpeum, Domenica jams up. We eat the improbably delicious roasted cauliflower with feta cheese sauce, lasagna bolognese, and a pizza. The latter remains the best pizza in town, issuing forth from one of the first wood-burning stone ovens from Naples to find its way to New Orleans. A great evening, all in all.
