Saturday, August 18, 7:30 p.m.
LeClaire Park, 400 West Beiderbecke Drive, Davenport IA
It'll be “Surf's up!” at Davenport's LeClaire Park when the Quad City Symphony Orchestra performs its annual Quad City Bank & Trust Riverfront Pops concert on August 18, this year's outdoor event “Pet Sounds Live – a Beach Boys Celebratrion” featuring the area musicians performing the iconic album in its entirety under guest conductor Jeffrey Reed.
Boasting unforgettable Beach Boys songs including “Wouldn't It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows,” 1966's Pet Sounds was the band's eleventh studio album, and is regarded by musicologists as a work that advanced the field of music production, introducing non-standard harmonies and timbres, and incorporating elements of pop, jazz, exotica, classical, and the avant-garde. Combined with its innovative music, the album was crucial to the development of progressive and art rock, bringing more attention to psychedelic music in the mainstream and helping to elevate rock as a genre for listening as well as dancing. In 2004, Pet Sounds was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and one year earlier, Rolling Stone ranked it second on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Pet Sounds also topped the all-time-greatest-albums lists in The Times, Mojo, and Uncut, and as of 2018, Acclaimed Music positions the Beach Boys' achievement as, statistically, the most universally acclaimed recording ever released.
Serving as this year's Riverfront Pops conductor, Reed has worked with BJ Thomas, Larry Gatlin, Paul Williams, Peter Tork, Glen Campbell, Keith Emerson, Neil Sedaka, and many others in appearances with his own orchestra and orchestras in Italy, Russia, and South Korea. Reed has also twice appeared with the Royal Philharmonic at London’s Royal Albert Hall at the specific request of Neil Sedaka, and in the United States, he has conducted the orchestras of Alabama, Augusta, Charleston, Detroit, Knoxville, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Omaha, Phoenix, and Sacramento. In addition to conducting the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's rendition of Pet Sounds, Reed will lead the musicians in the Riverfront Pops' traditionally rousing 1812 Overture and Stars & Stripes Forever set to a LeClaire Park fireworks display.
The 7:30 p.m. “Pet Sounds Live – A Beach Boys Celebration” will be preceded by a 6:30 p.m. pre-show with the Quad City Youth Symphony Orchestra, tickets are $5-25, and more information on this year's Quad City Bank & Trust Riverfront Pops is available by calling (563)322-7276 or visiting QCSO.org.
