Category: default || By jt3y

"They're applauding Beethoven's Fifth," my friend hissed Saturday night as the audience gave a standing ovation to the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven's Fifth is the hamburger and fries of classical music --- it's not very challenging to the listener. Even someone who knows nothing about classical music (like me) can recognize it, and student musicians can usually tootle their way through it.

"Yes," I said to her, "but this is McKeesport. We have simple tastes." Personally, I don't appreciate any piece of classical music if I can't imagine it accompanying Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry.

The MSO's opening concert last week also featured Brahms' "Hungarian Dance No. 5," which I can't hear, unfortunately, without silently adding Allan Sherman's lyrics: "If you like Hungarian food, they have a goulash that is very good ..."

That's not to say Saturday's performance was banal --- not by a long shot. The MSO now has a composer in-residence, Todd Goodman, and the symphony played three new pieces for strings that he wrote based on paintings of his hometown, Bedford, by artist Kevin Kutz.

Nor am I implying that the MSO isn't good --- in fact, it's very good, composed of professional musicians who are in many cases educators at local colleges or high schools, or who also perform with other orchestras. (I took the mother of me, who is a classical music aficiando, to the last concert of the 2005-06 season. Partway through the first half, she grabbed my arm and said, "Why didn't anybody tell me we have this in McKeesport?")

But I am trying to say that if your idea of classical music begins and ends with "Kill The Wabbit," the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra is a very accessible way to learn more. Before and during every concert, maestro Bruce Lauffer discusses the pieces and points out things that the audience should look for. And Lauffer or symphony principals are usually available after the concert to talk with the audience in the lobby. (Concerts are held in the very 1960s auditorium of McKeesport Area High School --- what it lacks in visual appeal it makes up for with excellent acoustics.)

The fact that it's close to the Mon Valley, and that parking is free, means it's also a good way to introduce kids to classical music --- you're not on the hook for an expensive trip to Heinz Hall.

Plus, this being the Mon Valley, there's usually a raffle.

The only drawback? Unlike downtown Pittsburgh, your choices for a drink after the show are pretty much limited to the Viking Lounge or Bootsie's (the old Lionheart), so don't plan on formal dress.

Otherwise, I can't think of a single reason you shouldn't go: The next concert is Saturday, Dec. 2, and will be holiday-themed. There will also be a performance by the Mon Valley Children's Choir and a sing-along.

The Festival of Trees will be going on at the exact same time, just across Eden Park Boulevard at the Jacob Woll Pavilion. Nobody asked me, but a trip through the trees, an MSO concert and dinner afterward (say, Tillie's?) sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday night.

. . .

I was listening to WDUQ-FM yesterday afternoon when they announced that Walt Harper had died. Aw, hell.

I'm a little too young to have gotten into either of Harper's famed clubs, and I never did get a chance to hear him perform, but I do own all of his recordings, dating back to the late '50s.

Pittsburgh and the Mon-Yough area have produced a number of jazz legends (Earl "Fatha" Hines was from Duquesne, after all), but Harper never quite had a national following among the cognoscenti.

Having read about Harper over the years, and talked to people who knew him, I suspect there are a couple of reasons for that. First, I think Harper never really wanted to leave Pittsburgh --- which is not exactly the entertainment capital of the world --- and that no doubt hurt his career.

And second, Harper's style could best be described as "crowd-pleasing." Whether leading a small combo or a big band, Harper had a tight, upbeat sound that's very entertaining, but it wasn't quite unique or avant-garde enough to grab much critical acclaim.

Yet just as the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra makes classical music accessible to the unwashed masses (like me), Harper made jazz accessible, too. "I don't like jazz," a lot of people say --- but a lot of those same people liked Walt Harper's music.

Harper liked to say he wanted to move jazz in Pittsburgh out of smoky bars and restaurants and into the mainstream.

Well, Western Pennsylvania has a pretty strong jazz scene --- outside of Chicago, New York and New Orleans, not many American cities do --- and I tend to think Walt Harper had something to do with that.

If his local celebrity didn't translate into a worldwide fanbase buying hundreds of thousands of records, like those of fellow Pittsburghers and jazz pianists Ahmad Jamal and Erroll Garner, then the world's loss was our gain.

Requiescat in pace, Walt Harper. You're swingin' with the angels now. I sure hope St. Peter likes "Satin Doll."

. . .

The Valley Mirror, the weekly newspaper serving the Steel Valley and Woodland Hills school districts, celebrated its 25th anniversary last week. At 35 cents, it's still the best bargain in the Mon-Yough area, providing a mix of short news items, chatty local gossip, sports results and society columns.

Founder Earle Wittpenn sold it several years ago to the publisher of the Braddock Free Press, Tony Munson, who merged the publications together, but Wittpenn's column "Earle's Pearls" still runs on the editorial page. And even if I do disagree with Wittpenn's politics (he's just to the right of Louis XIV), I enjoy reading it.

And now, in honor of this occasion, I'd like us all to sing along to this song, which was printed on the front page of the Valley Mirror in 1997. I've never seen it anywhere else, so as far as I know, it was an original to the paper. I clipped it out and have saved it ever since:

God bless Al's patio,
It's termite-proof
And it's whiter
And brighter
'Cause it seems there's no beams in the roof

There's no basement
There's no footer
And the walls are made of foam!

God bless Al's patio,
Attached to his home,
God bless Al's patio,
His foam sweet foam!

. . .

Finally, speaking of the Homestead area, U.S. Steel Corp. has returned to Munhall after an absence of two decades. The company's research and development center is moving from Monroeville to a new building along the Monongahela River, not far from the Rankin Bridge.

The building that USS is occupying was supposed to be a fuel cell manufacturing plant for Siemens-Westinghouse. The company decided in 2004 to focus its "energies" on its facility in Churchill instead.

The plant is within 100 yards, by the way, of the old pump house and water tower of Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel Works.

In a bloody skirmish in 1892, striking steel workers drove off Pinkerton guards who attempted to land there. They won that battle, but lost the war; the state militia and paid strikebreakers eventually crushed the union in Homestead, allowing Carnegie to lower wages and institute longer hours.

All I'm saying to the U.S. Steel employees in Munhall is this: If you see a barge full of Pinkertons coming up the river, best grab a shotgun and a pitchfork first and ask questions later.