You'd be hard-pressed to find a more thrilling musical evening than the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra's "Broadway Rocks!" pops concert.
Broadway performers Christiane Noll, Capathia Jenkins and Rob Evan, with a nine-member backup chorus, blew out the doors of Pulaski Academy's Connor Performing Arts Center in west Little Rock on Saturday night.
Parts of the Valentine's weekend program, which covered the past four decades of musical theater, were predictable to the point of being pedestrian, even when superbly performed -- "Seasons of Love" from Rent, a two-song Mamma Mia! medley and the orchestra's abandoning of its short-lived Phantom of the Opera moratorium, Evan and Noll acing both the title tune and "The Music of the Night."
But there were some pure gems, starting with the infectious opener, "Everybody Rejoice" from The Wiz; Jenkins channeling Tina Turner in "Proud Mary", wail included, and knocking off socks in versions of "I Will Survive" and, from Dreamgirls, "And I Am Telling You"; Evan singing the stirring "Anthem" from Chess; Noll Wicked-ly "Defying Gravity" (and that wasn't even her best number, which was "Good Morning Baltimore" from Hairspray); and Noll and Evan getting super-intense in the original version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a duet from a Broadway uber-flop called Dance of the Vampires.
Concertmaster Kiril Laskarov, who a couple of weeks ago was playing Mendelssohn on a 1712 Strad, took up a sleek, jet-black electric fiddle for a rockin' solo with trio and chorus in Evan's Mozart-Styx-Richard Strauss fusion arrangement of "Come Sail Away."
Singers, players and conductor will reassemble at 3 p.m. today at the performing arts center, 12701 Hinson Road, Little Rock. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761 or online at ArkansasSymphony.org.
Metro on 02/14/2016