On Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles took the stage at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. The efficiency marked the tip of touring for one of many best and most influential acts of the rock period. Other than one impromptu rooftop live performance on the band’s Apple Corps headquarters in London on Jan. 30, 1969, the British quartet performed no extra stay reveals.
Many Beatles tribute bands have tried to fill that void since, performing the band’s hit songs on levels from Tokyo to Liverpool to Las Vegas. Now, Ben McClara, founding father of the Sacramento Preparatory Music Academy, is paying homage to Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison with the Beatles Guitar Undertaking Rock Orchestra.
On Sept. 27 and 28, McClara’s ensemble will carry the Beatles’ 1968 White Album to life in live performance at Santa Rosa Junior Faculty. The performances, which can characteristic 40 skilled and scholar musicians — together with eight vocalists — provide a uncommon likelihood to listen to the enduring album stay in its entirety.
Alongside the Sacramento-based Beatles Guitar Undertaking Rock Orchestra, the occasion will showcase native expertise resembling vocalists Rick and Melissa Fulkerson, SRJC Director of Music Jerome Fleg on saxophone, Bob Williams and Richard Loheyde on violin, and Jesse Coppock on double bass. Peter Petty will function grasp of ceremonies.
“There are Beatles cowl bands which have 4 individuals in wigs pretending to be the Beatles, and there’s a man within the background with a synthesizer taking part in the orchestral elements,” McClara mentioned.
This will likely be a really totally different expertise, he emphasised. The orchestra, comprising strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, and choir, along with guitars, will carry out not solely the 30 tracks from “The White Album” but in addition the 1968 singles “Hey Jude” and “Woman Madonna.”
“The orchestra wished to do extra,” McClary added.
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AP Photograph/Fred Pardini
On this picture taken Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles carry out at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. (AP Photograph/Fred Pardini)
AP Photograph/Fred Pardini
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On this picture taken Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles carry out at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. (AP Photograph/Fred Pardini)
Increase
A transcendental expertise
Based in 2016, the Beatles Guitar Undertaking beforehand carried out in Santa Rosa in 2022 on the Luther Burbank Middle for the Arts, the place they offered Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band and Magical Thriller Tour. This yr, nonetheless, the occasion marks a brand new collaboration with Santa Rosa Junior Faculty.
“That is thrilling,” McClara mentioned. “I hope it opens new doorways.”
McClara’s orchestra first carried out The White Album stay in Sacramento in 2017.
“No person had heard The White Album accomplished stay earlier than,” McClara famous.
Launched with a stark white cowl, The White Album is the Beatles’ ninth studio album and their solely double LP. It spans a number of genres, together with folks, nation rock, British blues, ska, music corridor, onerous rock and avant-garde. Nineteen of the album’s 30 songs have been written throughout the Beatles’ Transcendental Meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India, within the spring of 1968.
Upon launch, The White Album debuted at primary within the UK, the place it remained on the high of the charts for seven weeks. Within the US, Capitol Data shipped greater than 3.3 million copies inside 4 days, and the album reached primary by its third week on the charts.
The enhancements in sound gear through the years enable for an enhanced live performance expertise, one thing McClara is eager to focus on.
“It’s unhappy the Beatles by no means acquired (to play) on sound system in live performance,” McClara mentioned. “We invested lots in our gear through the years.”
Curiosity in Beatles music, and particularly within the Beatles Guitar Undertaking, has remained sturdy, McClara defined, regardless of the passage of time.
“The Beatles’ music is being taught in colleges proper now,” he mentioned.
If You Go
What: The Beatles’ White Album Reside in Live performance
When: 4 p.m., Saturday, September 27; 2 p.m., Sunday, September 28
The place: Burbank Auditorium, Santa Rosa Junior Faculty, 1501 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa
Admission: $39.99
Info: sacprepmusic.com
