The Atlanta Braves keep the tradition alive with tenor Timothy Miller singing “God Bless America” at every Sunday evening home game, even during the audience-less games of the pandemic. Miller, an accomplished opera and concert singer, will share this signature performance at a concert this Sunday with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center. He joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes along with Kevin Leahy, drummer and executive director of the Atlanta Pops to talk about the Orchestra’s exciting repertoire and their return to live shows after a long hiatus.
The Pops were able to interrupt the long break with a few online streaming performances, but Leahy assures us there’s nothing like coming back to live audiences. “We pride ourselves on being able to pivot and being a nimble orchestra, that can sort of roll with the punches,” he said.
Both an administrator for the Orchestra and a virtuoso player in it, Leahy works to make the Pops a crowdpleaser from every angle. “I’ve been fortunate to have been playing drums with this orchestra for about 15 years,” said Leahy. “It’s not really a regular position in a symphony orchestra, but where this orchestra blends both the strings, brass, percussion and woodwinds of a typical orchestra with a jazz-pop rhythm section, I knew I really wanted to hold onto this position.”
He described the job of carrying on Pop’s illustrious legacy. “Discovering the history, that’s been the treat for me… and to see that back then it was new and different, and they were collaborating with the pop stars of those eras… Isaac Hayes in the ’60s, and James Brown in the ’70s, and Chet Atkins in the ’80s and ’90s, and to see those programs, and to see the advertisements for those shows was really inspiring,” said Leahy. “It put the question on me, ‘Alright, what does that look like today?’”
Among other things, it looks like Miller’s accomplished voice carrying the Pops through a diverse program of classics. “It’s certainly always a pleasure to be joining the Pops orchestra because I get the chance to sing things that I wouldn’t normally sing,” said Miller, “Popular well-known hymns like ‘How Great Thou Art,’ will certainly be a signature performance on the program. We’re also going to do, from the third act of Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto,’ we’re going to do ‘La Donna È Mobile…’ I’m also very excited to perform one of Ellington’s signature works, which is ‘A Train.’”
