Cleveland Pops' salute to sports champions arrives on cue

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Donald Rosenberg

Plain Dealer Music Critic

Cleveland Pops Orchestra

What: Carl Topilow and his ensemble begin their season with "Music of Champions," a program about sports.

When: 8 p.m. Friday. Where: Severance Hall, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.

Tickets: $24-$54. Call 216-231-1111.

Good timing is one of the prerequisites for a conductor. Carl Topilow teaches lessons of tempo and pacing to his students at the Cleveland Institute of Music on a daily basis.  But Topilow is demonstrating another kind of timing aptitude as founding conductor of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. In the spring, he devised a program about sports and music to open his ensemble's 2007-08 season. He couldn't have known that the Cleveland Indians would be heading to the American League Championship Series on Friday.

"Ironically, our very first concert was Oct. 12, 1996, and we also were in the playoffs that year," Topilow said last week. "We lost in the first round, and we had no conflict for our concert because of that. But I don't want to get into that. It would be like I'm jinxing the team."

Friday's Severance Hall program, on deck at the same time the Indians play the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, doesn't focus solely on baseball.  "Music for Champions" also embraces football, boxing and Olympic events. It includes music from movies and videos of film and NFL clips.  The lineup of composers is almost a who's who of film music: Miklos Rozsa ("Parade of the Charioteers" from "Ben-Hur"), Bill Conti ("Rocky"), Jerry Goldsmith ("Hoosiers"), Vangelis ("Chariots of Fire") and John Williams ("Summon the Heroes," "Olympic Fanfare 1984").

And then there's Beethoven.

Huh?

Yes, local radio sports figures Andy Baskin and Mark "Munch" Bishop are set to narrate "Beethoven Sportscast," a play-by-play description of a baseball game as inspired by the first movement of the titan's Fifth Symphony. The narration is the brainstorm of Peter Schickele, who's also the creator of that most incompetent (and imaginary) of Baroque composers, P.D.Q. Bach.

Along with these sporting goodies, Topilow is looking forward to leading Steve Reinecke's "Casey at the Bat," with Fox News anchor Todd Meany as narrator, and an uproarious football medley by Pops trombonist Paul Ferguson.

And we mustn't forget Ohio's official rock song.  "I think this is going to be the Severance Hall debut of 'Hang on Sloopy,' " said a proud Topilow.  

Purists will be relieved to know that several of the film scores will be performed in their original orchestrations and others in standard arrangements. The night's singalong, as if you hadn't already guessed, is "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

Topilow, who grew up in Bayonne, N.J., has been a music nut virtually as long as he's been a sports maven.  "I was a big Mets fan," he said. "When I was very little, I loved the Yankees, but I'm a big underdog person. That's why Cleveland is such a good fit for me. I shifted my allegiance to the Mets, and when they won the series in '69, that was fabulous. That's when the Jets won with Joe Namath and we landed on the moon. That was a great year."

As it could be in 2007 for a Cleveland team about to do battle in Beantown.