Magical Concert at the Beach
This Saturday, August 11, Jetties Beach will again be the venue for the popular annual Boston Pops on Nantucket concert, featuring Keith Lockhart conducting the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. Tim Russert, Managing Editor and Moderator of Meet the Press and political analyst for NBC Nightly News and the Today Program, returns to host the event with his usual charm and humor. Special guests this year include eight-time Grammy Award winner Natalie Cole and the Synergy Brass Quintet, considered to be one of the premier brass wind chamber music groups in the United States. For the first time in 11 years, a member of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital staff, Macy Smith, RN, WCC, Medical Surgical Nurse Manager, will launch the show by singing the National Anthem.
Karen Palmer, Chairman of the Pops on Nantucket event, expressed her delight, saying, “This year we enter our second decade of transforming Jetties Beach into a magical concert venue. The momentum for the 2007 Boston Pops on Nantucket is building as hundreds of volunteers work behind the scenes to bring Nantucket a wonderful blend of amazing talent, fabulous music, great showmanship, and friends and family on the beach.”
The Pops tradition reaches back over 100 years. Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra first performed a summer program of light music in a café-style setting on July 11, 1885. The event evolved from a Promenade Concert to the Pops during the 1900 season; the Boston Pops Orchestra made its recording debut in 1935 under Arthur Fiedler. Today, under the leadership of Keith Lockhart, the Orchestra annually entertains more than 1,000,000 people at Symphony Hall, the Charles River Esplanade and on tour at venues in New England and across the country. Natalie Cole has been a guest artist previously with the Boston Pops, which has presented special guests Kathleen Battle, Tony Bennett, George Benson, Big & Rich, Mariah Carey, Oscar Peterson, John Pizzarelli, The Pointer Sisters, Bonnie Raitt, Don McLean, Aaron Neville, Jessye Norman, James Taylor and numerous others.
Natalie Cole, daughter of legendary singer Nat "King" Cole and his wife Maria, a former singer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, made her singing debut at the age of six on her Dad’s Christmas album. After his death, 15-year-old Natalie moved to Massachusetts with her family, where she went on to graduate from the University of Massachusetts. Her albums include Inseparable, We're the Best of Friends, Unforgettable ... With Love, Ask a Woman Who Knows, and Leavin'. She’s a talented actress as well as a vocalist.
The Synergy Brass Quintet has emerged as one of the country’s most exciting ensembles and is comprised of five young Boston musicians, playing the horn, trombone, and tuba. The group, which is acclaimed for its technical virtuosity, outstanding showmanship, and diverse programming, has performed across the country and has participated in some of the world’s most prestigious music festivals.
Synergy
Typically for the Pops on Nantucket concert, a guest performer is invited to sing the National Anthem, and this year, Hospital staff members were invited to audition. Macy Smith, a pediatric nurse who trained at St. Elizabeth’s Nursing School in Boston and worked at Children’s Hospital in Boston and Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, originally came to the island from Cape Cod in 1991 for a nanny position. In 2002, she began working in Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s Visiting Nurses department before taking a position with the Hospital’s med/surg nursing staff. Smith earned the status of Medical Surgical Nurse Manager this year and is responsible for supervising the med/surg nursing staff.
This year’s Boston Pops on Nantucket concert will begin Saturday evening at 7:00 pm on Jetties Beach; the gate opens at 4:30 p.m. General admission tickets are currently available for purchase in the Hospital Living Room and in-town at Aunt Leah’s Fudge on Straight Wharf, Murray’s Toggery Shop on Main Street, and Visitors Services on Federal Street. Special reserved seating requests are now being placed on a wait list. Tickets will not be available at the gate.
The 11th Annual Boston Pops on Nantucket concert is sponsored by Nantucket Island Resorts/Jill & Stephen Karp as a benefit for Nantucket Cottage Hospital. The Pops on Nantucket concert raises funds for the island’s only hospital, enabling the purchase of cutting edge equipment while fostering state-of-the-art patient care.
