BOSTON — Symphony Hall was packed to the upper balcony for the 38th annual Presidents at the Pops on May 9, 2019 when Broadway superstar Bernadette Peters almost stole the spotlight from the Boston Pops Orchestra led by maestro Keith Lockhart.
The original Boston Pops corporate fundraising event, Presidents at Pops celebrates the extraordinary partnership between the corporate community and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Designed specifically for the Boston business community, Presidents at Pops offers leaders from every industry the opportunity to entertain their valued clients, employees, and friends in the company of Boston’s top corporations, capped off with a gala performance with Lockhart, the renowned Boston Pops Orchestra, and Peters.
Presidents at Pops also provides an opportunity to sponsor one or more students who attend Days in the Arts at Tanglewood (DARTS), the BSO’s summer arts camp in the Berkshires. More than 400 middle school students from throughout Massachusetts attend this arts-immersion program, regardless of their ability to pay. Dick Connolly returned as a co-chair of the night.
Peters was joined by special guest with Marvin Laird, music director and piano; Kevin Axt, bass; Cubby O’Brien, drums, who is remembered for being an original Mouseketeer. The narrator was NASA astronaut Sunita L. Williams, a Needham High School alum.
Peters opened the Pops opened the 134th Spring Pops season the previous evening with a 50th anniversary tribute to the watershed events of the summer of 1969, “two stunning short films, a homegrown astronaut, and a celestial Broadway legend.” Commencing with the “Opening Fanfare” from Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (the theme used in “2001: A Space Odyssey”), and concluding with the Pops’ signature song, John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” the two selections bookended the program that took us to the moon, to the past, and to the Great White Way.
Photos by Bill Brett
