The Plain Dealer

Cleveland Pops proves to have staying power

Donald Rosenberg

Plain Dealer Music Critic

A decade ago, the idea of an ensemble called the Cleveland Pops Orchestra was little more than that.

Conductor Carl Topilow and executive director Shirley Morgenstern had devised a plan for their brainstorm to make its debut at Public Auditorium in September 1995. That concert was canceled because of financial problems.

The Pops eventually played its first public notes a year later at the Cleveland State University Convocation Center, where Topilow led three concerts the first season.

The orchestra's growth during the past decade has been striking. The 60-member ensemble now gives six performances a season at Severance Hall, including the popular New Year's Eve concert and dance, and a holiday program at the Palace Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Topilow also takes what he calls a "run and stun" group of 35 players around the area for outdoor concerts. From $25,000 in 1995, the Pops' budget has risen to $800,000 this year.

As the Pops begins its 10th season this week at Severance Hall with its first collaboration with the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, the founders continue to look for ways to treat audiences to the mix of old and recent pops fare that has enabled their organization to forge ahead, despite numerous struggles.

"We started at a funny time," says Morgenstern, a dance instructor who is married to Topilow. "We started in the mid-'90s, when things were good. Sometimes being naive is a very good thing. We didn't know what it would take to keep the orchestra for 10 years. But after they play the first note, you know it's all worth it."

With Topilow as conductor, dry-witted host and dapper performer of clarinets of many colors, the Pops has established itself as a champion of beloved American music. Unlike some pops orchestras, which mix classical and popular fare, the Cleveland Pops largely sticks to Broadway, Hollywood, jazz and other light-hearted repertoire made in the U.S.A.

"We do very little music not by American composers," says Topilow, who heads the conducting program at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

This season, for example, the Pops is starting with a jazz-oriented program (Friday) and continuing with a tribute to the year's only non-American, Elton John (Friday, Feb. 17), a Broadway evening with Craig Schulman (Friday, March 10), a cabaret program featuring Susan Egan and Sal Viviano (Friday, April 28) and the sixth annual "Salute to Our Armed Forces" (Friday, June 2).

The "Spirit of Christmas" program, with pianist Paul Todd, is set for Sunday, Nov. 27, at the Palace Theatre.

Virtually all of the Pops' programming ideas pop out of Topilow's head.

"The thing that is the most daunting for me is the amount of creativity it takes to make it work," he says. "It taps into every creative bone in your body. I basically do it myself, but I have help. Shirley, of course. I'll take anybody's suggestions. But the buck stops with me."

"We have a great jazz community, a great classical community," says Topilow. "We have great resources. We don't have to go outside."

Many of Topilow's players have been in place from the get-go, and some are also members of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra. The Pops makes music largely for an older audience that wants to be entertained by the sounds they know and love, though Topilow and Morgenstern know they must appeal to younger crowds if their pops formula is to endure.

"A lot of orchestras are reaching out," says Morgenstern. "We're in an electronic age. Twenty- to 25-year-old ears are accustomed to high-tech, loud, electronic music. I've told our board we need to look to 30- to 35-year-olds. As you get older and more settled in life, tastes settle differently. We're still doing things they're accustomed to as they get old."

For these reasons, Topilow has mixed traditional styles with newer ones, if never leaning toward the edgy side of popular music. He believes there's something on his Pops programs for everyone.

"If they don't like what they hear, all they have to do is wait five minutes," he says.

Audiences certainly enjoy hearing Topilow play clarinet, whatever the colors. He has black, red, blue, white and green instruments he can mix and match, depending on the musical circumstances. He puts together a red, white and green clarinet for Italian music and the obligatory red, white and blue for such Americana as John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," in which he plays the famous piccolo line an octave lower.

Topilow and his musicians aren't only versatile, they're quick. Budgetary constraints allow for only two rehearsals per program, which doesn't faze the conductor. As an assistant with the Denver Symphony (now the Colorado Philharmonic) decades ago, Topilow led educational concerts on one rehearsal.

In Cleveland, he makes sure his players have everything they need to rehearse quickly and thoroughly.

"I always have very well-marked cue sheets for every concert for every musician with all the cuts," says Topilow. "When you're doing 20 pieces of music in a concert, you don't have time to waste. This is life in the fast lane. There are no exits. Time equals money. All those clichés are true."

Topilow and Morgenstern plan to drive the Pops for years to come, aware that they eventually will have to pass the organization on to others.

"We're looking five years out, 10 years out and 20 years out," says Morgenstern. "We're looking for when Carl and I are gone. We want this to be an institution that stays."