----------------------------------------------- JULY 27, 2001 ----------------------------------------------- Source: San Diego Union Tribune http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/  (abbreviated link text) Symphony is second-string to Yes  By George Varga  "I'd say half of the members of most orchestras, including the San Diego Symphony, are younger than Yes' members. At rehearsal, lots of the San Diego Symphony members brought their Yes albums for the band to sign." -- Yes orchestrator-conductor Larry Groupe puts things in perspective. Yes. No. Maybe. Those are the answers, respectively, to these questions: Can a symphony orchestra and a well-amplified rock band co-exist on the same stage, performing the same material? Can the orchestra make an impact if it must struggle to be heard above the rock band? And if not, is there any hope for such collaborations today, 45 years after Chuck Berry scored a hit with "Roll Over Beethoven" and 34 years after The Beatles broke ground by recording with a 40-piece orchestra on the landmark album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club"? Those issues came to mind during Wednesday night's Summer Pops at Navy Pier concert by Yes and the San Diego Symphony, a two-hour-plus show that included such band favorites as "Close to the Edge," "The Gates of Delirium" and the orchestra-free encores of "Starship Trooper" and "Roundabout." The answers were simultaneously encouraging and troubling, sometimes for the same reasons. And they suggested that the problems faced by such rock-meets-classical collaborations are mostly technological, since the biggest problem Wednesday was the inability of the orchestra to achieve sonic parity with the heavily electronic band it accompanied. Of course, Yes, which was formed in 1968, was not the first classically inspired rock act to perform in concert with an orchestra, or to face such hurdles. That distinction apparently goes to Frank Zappa, who teamed with Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a gig at UCLA in 1970. Pink Floyd, Procol Harum and a few other English progressive- rock bands soon followed suit, including Yes, which did a handful of orchestral concerts in London after the release of its second album, 1970's "Time and a Word." Now as then, the biggest challenges are to integrate the band and orchestra in an organic way and to ensure that both can be heard clearly as equals (as Metallica did during its 1999 concerts with the San Francisco Symphony). Sadly, that was rarely the case for Yes' performance with a slightly truncated lineup of the San Diego Symphony, which played from behind a large Plexiglas wall. The orchestra was too often overpowered by Yes guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Alan White, lead singer Jon Anderson and touring keyboardist Tom Brislin. Moreover, even if the orchestra had been better amplified and mixed, the dense nature of Yes' intricate compositions left little space for the symphony to make its presence felt. And that was a shame, since what could be heard of the orchestrations by new Yes arranger-conductor Larry Groupe, an Oceanside resident and rising film-score composer, showed considerable promise. During "Close to the Edge's" softest vocal portions, Groupe crafted a lush bed of strings for Anderson to sing over. His orchestral arrangement during the opening acoustic portion of "And You and I" added welcome dimension to the song, along with some nicely syncopated accents. And his newly composed overture at the start of "Long Distance Runaround," from Yes' 1971 album "Fragile," was a small gem of moody neo-impressionism. Significantly, the overture marked the only time the orchestra could be heard to full effect, since it was performed sans Yes, which quickly reclaimed its place of dominance in the not- so-sound mix. Yes and the orchestra fared better on two songs, "Don't Go" and the Celtic-flavored "In the Presence Of," from the band's upcoming album with the San Diego Symphony, "Magnification." Both benefited from being written specifically with an orchestra in mind, and from Groupe being able to create arrangements at will, instead of having to fit one onto a decades-old Yes song that fans expect to hear performed in a manner reasonably faithful to the original. The sold-out audience of 4,800 cheered with fervor, rising to its feet several times. But momentum was stifled when the then-idle orchestra departed midway through the first encore, presumably to avoid going into overtime. That prompted one young woman near the front of the stage to exclaim: "Yes doesn't need the symphony!" One can only wonder if she would have felt the same if she could have heard the orchestra as well as Yes itself. George Varga can be reached by phone, (619) 293-2253; fax, (619) 293-2436; e-mail, george.varga@uniontrib.com; and mail, The San Diego Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego 92112.  [Illustration] 1 PIC; Caption: Yes singer Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire performed with -- and often drowned out -- the San Diego Symphony at their joint concert Wednesday night.; Credit: Crissy Pascual / Union-Tribune Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com