My wife and I recently went to Houston to visit her
parents, who live there. They told us before we came that they
had tickets for a Houston Symphony "Pops" concert, but they kept
the guest performer's identity a secret until just before the
concert. Needless to say, we were thrilled when it turned out to
be John Denver. The first half of the program was just the
symphony, and then John came out after the intermission. This was
a very different performance than most of the others I've seen of
his, such as the Wildlife Concert, since he had an entire
symphony orchestra behind him. That would be pretty stiff
competition for most singers, but John's voice was more than up
to the challenge. He started with a version of "Rocky Mountain
High" that just about blew the roof off of Jones Hall, and he
went on for over an hour and a half of singing (with very little
time spent talking between songs), never faltering. His voice was
as good as I've ever heard it (and that's saying something) --
and on some of the long notes in "For You", I think he may have
set some new records for how long a note can be held. The
orchestral arrangements were all good -- on some songs, such as
"I'm Sorry", the symphony stayed pretty much in the background;
on others, like "The Foxfire Suite" and "Amazon", it was much
more of a full partner. Most of the songs sounded different from
the way I had heard them before, with the symphonic background,
but they all sounded great -- and as I said before, John's voice
was more than a match for the full orchestra. He also talked
about how much he enjoyed getting a chance to sing with an
orchestra, and you could tell that he meant it -- he really
seemed to be having a good time. This looked like an older
audience than he usually gets -- I'm almost exactly John's age,
and most of the people around me looked quite a bit older than I
am -- but most of them joined right in when he asked the audience
to sing along on some of the songs, and everyone seemed to enjoy
the performance. He eventually got around to doing what he
introduced as "a simple country love song"-- I guessed what was
coming, of course, but most of the audience didn't, so there were
roars of laughter when he hit the punch line: "Get your tongue
out of my mouth, because I'm kissing you goodbye". The last song
on his regular program was "Calypso", and the whole audience
seemed to be swaying back and forth to the beat by then. We were
all on our feet for a standing ovation before the last note had
died out. After several minutes of clapping and cheering, John
came back out and did his new song, "Yellowstone (Coming Home)", for an encore-- it got a standing ovation, also, but this time he was really
finished for the evening. All in all, a memorable performance
that I feel really fortunate to have gotten to see.
Questions? Comments? Please send e-mail to jbearden@ieee.org
Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden