I love pop music. I love symphonic music. If those passions haven’t already revoked any of my pseudo-punk-rock cred, let me offer one more confession: I love patriotic music.
It was a hot and humid Thursday evening on July 3 in Iowa’s capital. The president was in town. He was speaking at the State Fairgrounds, about a mile south of where I live on the east end of Des Moines. When I heard he was coming, I immediately assumed he would attend the concert. I am relieved to report that did not happen, and in retrospect that would have been extremely unlikely, though plenty of things deemed “extremely unlikely” have been unfolding throughout my lifetime. We’ll save that discussion for more appropriate platforms, though, like social media, and an exciting new domain for politics — churches! I’m here strictly to cover the experience of the Des Moines Symphony’s 31st annual Yankee Doodle Pops.
I picked up my friend, a fellow first-timer, and we arrived in the East Village right at 6:30 p.m., when the Turner Center Jazz Orchestra and Des Moines Symphony Academy Youth Jazz Orchestra were scheduled to play. The event website had provided maps to denote parking and accessibility options. I’m relatively new to Des Moines, and still not a fluent navigator, but we more or less ignored the map and cruised around for a moment until we found a parking meter, about a two-minute walk from the capitol lawn.
The sound coverage and quality were exceptional. Amplified acoustic music doesn’t always sound great to me, but both the jazz orchestras and the symphony orchestra sounded fantastic, no matter where on the lawn you ended up.
When attending any live music, I often make my seating or standing location decision based on where I think it will sound the best. However, due to the heat and fairly uniform sound throughout the grounds, shade became the deciding factor. There were plenty of shady spots, but we ended up on the south end, in a little grove of trees. We couldn’t see much, but we were cozy. By the end of the concert, though, we would regret this location.
I am a musician myself, and it was fun to hear some familiar names from the stage during the jazz portion of the evening, including Steve Charlson (colleague at Grinnell College) and Tina Haas Findley (former voice teacher). I also loved the repertoire and arrangements. I wasn’t familiar with many of the tunes, including an original by a band member. (I missed the name of the tune and the composer, and cannot find any info online. If anyone from the band is reading this, please let me know.) It wasn’t clear to me whether the Youth Jazz Orchestra was playing with Turner Center, or if they were entirely separate. This was due to my sitting out of sight, I’m sure, but also speaks to the quality of musicianship from the youth.
As the sun began to set, the DMSO took the stage with vocalist Matthew Johnson. Johnson is a multi-disciplinary performing artist who has worked with Pharrell, John Legend, Jennifer Lopez, Childish Gambino and Stevie Wonder. His bio on the event webpage has plenty more impressive accomplishments if you want to check him out. Holy smokes, he was fantastic. Let’s call it “sonic charisma.” Without seeing any of the musicians, I was drawn in.
We remembered that the event is broadcast live on PBS, so I decided to open the stream from my phone. There was significant delay in the picture and sound, but I actually really enjoyed the visual supplement. I could finally see DMSO conductor Joseph Giunta’s wild, pixelated-camouflage red, white and blue tuxedo. Johnson, too, had stellar style, in his own bright red suit and fedora. They matched this swag in their sound, performing soul classics like “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, and “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green. My favorite was “America the Beautiful,” which they performed in the Ray Charles style. Which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, should be our national anthem.
We took a walk around the grounds a couple times to get a more comprehensive lay of the land — first individually, so someone could stay behind with our belongings, but the second time we felt comfortable leaving everything unattended. The schedule skewed a little earlier than I had anticipated. Food trucks started arriving around 4 p.m., over two hours before any music began. In fact, a few were packing up to leave in the middle of the Symphony’s program. Rather than a music festival, where the party continues into the night after the main stage finishes, this felt more like a tailgate: arrive very early, consume lots of food and drink before the event begins.
The concert finale featured Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” with live artillery. I knew this was going to happen, but for some reason it did not occur to me that the cannons I could see to the south, about 150 to 175 yards away, were the ones that would be used. I can’t recall if I have heard this piece performed live, but I thought I knew roughly when the cannons entered. I was incorrect! It was about 20 measures before I anticipated, and the first shot scared the ever living shit out of me! The blast of light happens a split second before the sound, followed by thick clouds of smoke.
For someone who finds even fireworks a little too violent these days, I was quite overwhelmed by the cannonfire. They were pointed literally directly at the south hill where we were sitting, and I could feel the heat from each shot, and soon there were children shrieking (probably a mixture of delight and fear) and running away from the smoke that began to wash over the audience.
A little observation and common sense could have kept me out of this situation, and I would guess from the other end of the lawn, high up on the north hill, it’s much more spectacular. However, it might be worth the event organizers posting some sort of signage, or perhaps even have a few ushers there early on to remind people that cannons are loud as heck, and combustion produces lots of smoke.
While this experience did cause our evening to end on a sour note, it was not enough to cloud the entire program. Overall, I enjoyed myself and would dub the event a great success — for myself, for the Symphony and for the City of Des Moines.
