San Diego Review - Union-Tribune (SPOILER)
STEVE COSIO
By George Varga, POP MUSIC CRITIC
July 27, 2001
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
Those are the answers, respectively, to these questions:
Can a symphony orchestra and a well-amplified rock band co-exist on the
same stage, performing the same material?
Can the orchestra make an impact if it must struggle to be heard above
the rock band? And if not, is there any hope for such collaborations
today, 45 years after Chuck Berry scored a hit with "Roll Over
Beethoven" and 34 years after The Beatles broke ground by recording
with a 40-piece orchestra on the landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club"?
Those issues came to mind during Wednesday night's Summer Pops at Navy
Pier concert by Yes and the San Diego Symphony, a two-hour-plus show
that included such band favorites as "Close to the Edge," "The Gates of
Delirium" and the orchestra-free encores of "Starship Trooper" and
"Roundabout."
The answers were simultaneously encouraging and troubling, sometimes
for the same reasons. And they suggested that the problems faced by
such rock-meets-classical collaborations are mostly technological,
since the biggest problem Wednesday was the inability of the orchestra
to achieve sonic parity with the heavily electronic band it
accompanied.
Of course, Yes, which was formed in 1968, was not the first classically
inspired rock act to perform in concert with an orchestra, or to face
such hurdles.
That distinction apparently goes to Frank Zappa, who teamed with Zubin
Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a gig at UCLA in 1970. Pink
Floyd, Procol Harum and a few other English progressive-rock bands soon
followed suit, including Yes, which did a handful of orchestral
concerts in London after the release of its second album, 1970's "Time
and a Word."
Now as then, the biggest challenges are to integrate the band and
orchestra in an organic way and to ensure that both can be heard
clearly as equals (as Metallica did during its 1999 concerts with the
San Francisco Symphony). Sadly, that was rarely the case for Yes'
performance with a slightly truncated lineup of the San Diego Symphony,
which played from behind a large Plexiglas wall.
The orchestra was too often overpowered by Yes guitarist Steve Howe,
bassist Chris Squire, drummer Alan White, lead singer Jon Anderson and
touring keyboardist Tom Brislin. Moreover, even if the orchestra had
been better amplified and mixed, the dense nature of Yes' intricate
compositions left little space for the symphony to make its presence
felt.
And that was a shame, since what could be heard of the orchestrations
by new Yes arranger-conductor Larry Groupe, an Oceanside resident and
rising film-score composer, showed considerable promise.
During "Close to the Edge's" softest vocal portions, Groupe crafted a
lush bed of strings for Anderson to sing over. His orchestral
arrangement during the opening acoustic portion of "And You and I"
added welcome dimension to the song, along with some nicely syncopated
accents.
And his newly composed overture at the start of "Long Distance
Runaround," from Yes' 1971 album "Fragile," was a small gem of moody
neo-impressionism. Significantly, the overture marked the only time the
orchestra could be heard to full effect, since it was performed sans
Yes, which quickly reclaimed its place of dominance in the not-so-sound
mix.
Yes and the orchestra fared better on two songs, "Don't Go" and the
Celtic-flavored "In the Presence Of," from the band's upcoming album
with the San Diego Symphony, "Magnification." Both benefited from being
written specifically with an orchestra in mind, and from Groupe being
able to create arrangements at will, instead of having to fit one onto
a decades-old Yes song that fans expect to hear performed in a manner
reasonably faithful to the original.
The sold-out audience of 4,800 cheered with fervor, rising to its feet
several times. But momentum was stifled when the then-idle orchestra
departed midway through the first encore, presumably to avoid going
into overtime.
That prompted one young woman near the front of the stage to exclaim:
"Yes doesn't need the symphony!" One can only wonder if she would have
felt the same if she could have heard the orchestra as well as Yes
itself.
George Varga can be reached by phone, (619) 293-2253; fax, (619)
293-2436; e-mail, george...@uniontrib.com; and mail, The San Diego
Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego 92112.
Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.