The Cleveland Orchestra
CONCERT PRESENTATION
Blossom Music Center
1145 West Steels Corners Road
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio 44223
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Stewart Copeland's
Police Deranged
for Orchestra
Saturday, September 11, 2021, at 7:30 p.m.
The Cleveland Orchestra
Stewart Copeland, drums
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Rusty Anderson, guitar
Laurhan Beato, vocalist
Carmel Helene, vocalist
Ashley Támar, vocalist
The performance is presented
with one 20-minute intermission.
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2021 Blossom Music Festival
Presenting Sponsor:
The J.M. Smucker Company
This concert is
sponsored by PNC.
W A Y B A C K in the mists of 1976 I fired up this band called The Police. In the fashion of the day it was supposed to be a punk band but one of the guys started writing actual songs. Hit songs, songs that were so cool and fun to play that our manifesto evolved from “We will eat your children!” to “Come dance with us!”.
Sting had joined the mission as a bass player who could also sing, although singing wasn’t much required in those early days. But then Andy Summers came along with his large vocabulary of fancy guitar chords and our ears pricked up to music possibilities that went way beyond our hostile hairdos. Sting’s hitherto undisclosed (even to him I suspect) gift for song writing led to another amazing reveal: Dang! That guy can really sing!
The Derangement of those songs began as music score for a movie I made out of Super8 footage of the band that I had shot during our rise to glory. Film puts capricious demands on music which is why these popular songs had to be deranged. I had to carve up the music to serve the scenes in the movie, and once the scalpel was out, a whole new frenzy of inspiration from Police music began. Delving into the multi-tracks of the original recordings as well as live performances revealed lost guitar solos, bass lines and vocal improvisations that were just too cool to leave in dark obscurity.
Meanwhile, my two decades before the mast as a hired-gun film composer had forced an education in orchestration upon me, and the idea formed to make this combination that brings us here tonight. Sting’s songs, Andy’s inventions and my impunity, all on the page for a wild ride with The Cleveland Orchestra.
—Stewart Copeland
S T E W A R T C O P E L A N D ' S Police Deranged for Orchestra is a high energy orchestral evening celebrating the work of legendary rock star and composer, Stewart Copeland and focuses on the epic rise of his career in music that has spanned over four decades.
Copeland is a unique figure in world music: renowned as the founder of The Police, a band that became a defining force in rock music from the 1980s through to the present day; he is also a seasoned and prolific composer in opera, ballet and orchestral music.
This concert will be an evening bursting with The Police’s biggest hits including "Roxanne," "Don’t Stand To Close To Me," and "Message in a Bottle," With Copeland on drums, three singers, and a guest guitarist, conductor Edwin Outwater leads The Cleveland Orchestra in this unique concert experience at Blossom on September 11.
S T E W A R T C O P E L A N D has spent more than three decades at the forefront of contemporary music as rock star and acclaimed film composer, as well as in the disparate worlds of opera, ballet, and world and chamber music.
Recruiting Sting and Andy Summers in 1977, Copeland is renowned as the founder of The Police, a band that became a defining force in rock music from the ‘80s through to the present day. His career includes the sale of more than 60 million records worldwide, and numerous awards, including five Grammy awards.
Copeland moved beyond the rock arena in the mid-1980s when he returned to his classical roots with creative pursuits in concert and film music. His concert works include BEN-HUR: A Tale of the Christ, which features Copeland as soloist in a live orchestral score for the 1925 silent film; Tyrant's Crush: Concerto for Trapset and Orchestra commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Poltroons in Paradise commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; and Gamelan D'Drum, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the world percussion group D'Drum.
In 2017, Chicago Opera Theatre premiered Copeland’s surreal chamber opera The Invention of Morel, a co-commission with Long Beach Opera based on the novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Copeland has also written two operas based on stories by Edgar Allen Poe: The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart. Copeland has continued writing for Opera and 2020 will see the premiere of Electric Saint, commissioned by Staaskapelle Weimar as well as his Oratorio, Satan’s Fall, based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which premiered in Pittsburgh in February 2020 and will be performed across the US and UK in 2021.
The 2018-19 season saw Stewart Copeland premiere concerts of his project Stewart Copeland Lights Up The Orchestra, a concert showcasing the life of Stewart and his compositions, from The Police to Spyro the Dragon and Tyrant’s Crush with performances taking place across Germany and the UK.
In 2021, Copeland will debut a new project, Stewart Copeland: The Police Deranged for Orchestra, which focuses on the epic rise of his career. The concert is an evening bursting with The Police’s biggest hits including ‘Roxanne’, ‘Don’t Stand To Close To Me’ and ‘Message in a Bottle’ arranged for full symphony orchestra as well as hand-picked highlights from Copeland’s compositions. The project will tour across Europe and US throughout 2021 and 2022.
Recipient of the Hollywood Film Festival's first Outstanding Music in Film Visionary Award, a Grammy nominee for his 2005 CD Orchestralli, and a 2003 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Copeland has been responsible for some of the film world's most innovative and ground breaking scores. His numerous film scores include Oliver Stone's Wall Street, the seminal score for the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, the score for Bruno Barreto's Oscar-nominated Four Days in September and his Emmy nomination for the Showtime pilot and series Dead Like Me. His work in television includes contributions to The Equalizer, Babylon V, and Desperate Housewives and he also scored the blockbuster hit video game ‘Spyro.’
A T R U L Y V I S I O N A R Y conductor, Edwin Outwater regularly works with orchestras and institutions throughout the world, producing, curating, and conducting unique concert experiences. He is equally adept at interpreting canonical works, and regularly premieres new commissions and connects audiences with repertoire beyond the mainstream. He is, in the words of Michael Tilson Thomas, “one of the most innovative conductors on the scene today.”
Recent guest performance highlights for him include New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia orchestra, New World Symphony and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Chicago, Seattle as well as Toronto, Victoria, and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony where he currently holds the position of Music Director Laureate. In April 2020, Edwin Outwater was appointed Music Director of San Francisco Conservatory of Music and began his tenure in September 2020.
International appearances include the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony, the Brussels Philharmonic, BBCNOW, the New Zealand Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, Malmö Symphony, Mexico City Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Sinfonietta.
Outwater’s recent curations include “Sound Health,” a collaboration with soprano Renée Fleming, The Kennedy Center, and the National Institutes of Health, as well as a jazz version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, with Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony. He also appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall in a concert for families featuring a world premiere by composer Caroline Shaw, narrated by actor John Lithgow.
Outwater holds a long association with the San Francisco Symphony. His 2019-2020 season began with a hugely successful collaboration between the orchestra, Outwater and legendary metal band Metallica at the new Chase Center arena. He also regularly conducts and curates their SoundBox series and “Holiday Gaiety,” an LGBTQ holiday concert he created with drag performer Peaches Christ.