KEITH LOCKHART
Celebrates 25 Years WITH THE BOSTON POPS
THE LAST CONCERT KEITH LOCKHART CONDUCTED was on March 12 with the Sarasota
Orchestra. The next day—Friday the 13th—the orchestra shut down due to the pandemic. “Most of that weekend was a wake-up call that we’re all going to be dealing with something we never dealt with before and that this was not a short-term problem,” he recalls. “It sticks to my mind my last public performance. I hope it’s not too long before the next one.” That next one is tentatively scheduled for December. “For someone who has not spent a couple of weeks off a podium, that is nine months apart,” he says. “When I finally am able to get up on stage to make music, I’ll be so grateful and so energized to do what I love.” Shortly after he was named the 20th conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1995, the then 35-year-old remarked about the permanence of the position he had taken, one that would define him and his career. “It is one of the best jobs I could possibly have in the whole industry,” he says today. “It’s an incredible place to be with a very loyal and widespread audience and a wonderful orchestra. Why wouldn’t you want to stay?”
America. If you’d describe what you’d love to be doing on a warm summer afternoon—it’s listening to the Boston Pops playing on a town green in New England. “We always enjoy doing this concert,” he continues. “Plus, it’s great to be doing it for the benefit of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. It’s artists supporting other artists. We’re going to miss this. Sadly, it’s one of the things on a long list of things we’re going to miss this season.” As to what he misses most, it’s the connection that a conductor makes with the orchestra and the audience. “This whole job is to connect with people,” he says. “You can make all the virtual videos you want, but the job is to bring people together for a shared emotive experience.” While there has been some good that has come out of the pandemic—Lockhart has been able to spend more time with his wife Emiley and their eight- and 10-year-old sons Christopher and Edward—it has “stopped me from doing what I love and what I do for a living dead in the tracks.” It’s a dream job that he cannot wait to get back to. “I’ve told a couple of people that I will never again take what I do for granted,” he says. “I’m ready to get back to doing live concerts as soon as somebody will let me.”
Twenty-five years later, this is not how he ever imagined he’d be celebrating this anniversary. It’s the first year he didn’t perform a 4th of July concert with the Pops on the Esplanade. It’s also the first summer he won’t conduct the Pops by the Sea after taking over the responsibility for Boston Pops Associate Conductor Laureate Harry Ellis Dickson who was responsible for founding the seminal concert in 1986. “This was a part of the world that Harry loved very much,” Lockhart says of the Cape. “I first split the concert with him the first two or three years and now I’ve been conducting it close to the last 20 years. … It’s the perfect slice of
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