Classipops Concert Series in the New Year

DO CLASSICAL AND POPULAR MUSIC belong together? The answer, for musicologist/pianist Claire Detels, is an enthusiastic ‘yes.’ Though they have been kept mainly separate on concert programs for hundreds of years, Detels says that audiences are ready and eager for a more inclusive approach to programming. Many, if not most, music fans, she argues, have a love for both and would appreciate having them presented together, in a more informal atmosphere than found in the Classical tradition, with all the pesky rules about clapping and not clapping, what to wear and so forth.

Detels’s new Classipops Concert Series is a move in that direction. Held on a quasi-monthly basis at El Pueblito United Methodist Church in El Prado

(where Detels is Music Director), the Classipops concerts are held at a family-friendly hour at 2 p.m. Sundays, and are free to the young, with donations encouraged from adults, $5-15.

Detels reports that the first concert, “Classipops Christmas” on Dec. 18, was a great success, mixing Classical works by Handel, Purcell, Corelli, Reger and Barber, with popular carols, including audience participation.

Detels says, “I was surprised and delighted by the eager and quite beautiful participation of the audience in the carol singing, as well as in a closing “Hallelujah Chorus.” Now, I’m looking forward to our second Classipops concert in the series, “Franz Schubert Meets the Beatles,” on Sunday, Jan. 29 at 2 p.m. at El Pueblito.”

So, what in the world do Franz Schubert and The Beatles have in common? Their brilliance in the creation of the greatest genre in the history of music: the song. Indeed, some scholars argue that song, and music, preceded speech in human culture. The Iliad, for instance, was probably sung throughout before Homer set it down in words.

In the European Classical music tradition, the greatest and most prolific of all song composers was the early Romantic Franz Schubert (1797-1828), who wrote more than 650 songs in his short lifetime, on all subjects and in all styles, during the period of the greatest flowering of Romantic poetry.

In the popular tradition, The Beatles — especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney — are among our greatest songwriters, composing on every subject and every style. What fun, then, to enjoy their music together in an informal concert including audience participation on choruses? To celebrate these great songwriters, Detels will be joined by singers Mark Jackson, and Elizabeth Calvert, and the recently-formed pop group, the Taos Tomatoes, featuring Calvert, Julie Greer and Isabella Draper.

Upcoming concerts in the series will include a March Irish Classipops concert, a Memorial Day Classipops concert and, in the fall, a Latin Classipops concert to celebrate Hispanic Heritage month.