Entertainment/Ticket

Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008

Pops by the Sea will be playing a numbers game this weekend

San Luis Obispo Symphony’s Pops by the Sea concert counts from zero to 1812 and beyond

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This weekend, Pops by the Sea is a numbers game.

“Tea for Two.” The “Hawaii Five-O” theme song. “SeventySix Trombones.” Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”

“You can just go down the line,” said Michael Nowak, music director of the San Luis Obispo Symphony. “You can start at zero and end with ‘1812.’ The list goes on and on.”

Now in its 16th year, Pops by the Sea is the symphony’s season- closing concert, a chance for Nowak and his fellow musicians to cut loose in the summer sun. The concert is Sunday afternoon in Avila Beach. Organizers expect the concert to draw about 3,000 people, some visiting from the Central Valley.

“It’s such a different kind of atmosphere than the Performing Arts Center,” Nowak said. “As long as people and families are having a good time and they promise us good weather, we’re there.”

A range of music choices

In past years, Pops organizers have picked themes ranging from Westerns to luaus and dance parties.

This weekend, Nowak said, the emphasis is on numbers and the movies, musicals, television and pop standards that feature them.

As usual, the musical selection ranges from jazz to pop to classical masterpieces. Sunday’s concert starts appropriately with “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’ ” by George Gershwin and counts up, featuring numerical tunes such as Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magnificent Seven Theme.”

The symphony honors The Beatles with a Fab Four medley that includes “When I’m 64.”

One highlight is sure to be the exuberant “1812 Overture,” previously featured at Pops in 1994 and 1999. Although this concert won’t use the traditional cannons, symphony marketing director Patty Thayer promised, “We’ll still have lots of booms.”

“Traditionally, percussionists are very accustomed to taking a starter pistol and firing it into a trash can,” she explained. “You get a nice big bang.”

Other numbers include music from the movies “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Apollo 13” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (the theme is also known as “Also Sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss).

Weatherman is host

Meteorologist Dave Hovde of KSBY Channel 6 will act as celebrity host—a choice organizers hope will guarantee nice weather. Last year, the mercury climbed to a sweltering 106 degrees.

“I really, honestly believe it’s going to be better,” Hovde said with a laugh.

Hovde joined the KSBY newsroom in 2003 after serving as chief meteorologist in Bakersfield and Fargo, N. D. He’s the winner of three Golden Mike awards from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California.

Hovde is the second KSBY staffer to host the event in recent years.

Wendy Thies, who retired earlier this year as news co-anchor, served as the mistress- of-ceremonies in 2006. She even sang a few tunes at the swing-themed Pops.

Although Hovde has experience playing French horn and trumpet, he warns audiences not to expect such musical hijinks from him.

“Wendy is just really, really talented,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult to surpass her.”

Although Hovde attended symphony events before, this is his first time at Pops.

“You might as well go when you have a table in front and a microphone in your hand and the best seat in the house,” he joked.