English prog-rockers Pink Floyd always sounded as if they should have had an orchestra behind them.
That was never more evident than when they released their 1973 masterpiece “Dark Side of the Moon.” The concept album begged for that bigger sound. They recorded it with synthesizer, which filled in some of the blanks, but it just didn’t seem to do it the justice of a symphony experience.
On Friday, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra will provide that experience when it joins Jeans ’N Classics productions for “An Evening of Pink Floyd.” Think of it as the ultimate Pink Floyd cover band experience with a full band, vocals that sound spot-on for Roger Waters and David Gilmour, and the full complement of the orchestra behind them creating an unimaginable wall of sound that brings “Dark Side” to life.
“The joy of doing (the orchestra concert) with Pink Floyd is you get to hear all of those textures and sounds that synthesization was trying to do,” said Peter Brennan, who founded Jeans ’N Classics in his native Canada in 1996 and does the orchestrations for its 40-plus rock-meets-orchestra shows.
The concert is divided into two halves, the first devoted to Pink Floyd’s other landmark album “The Wall,” the second to “Dark Side,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
“In terms of the ‘Dark Side’ suite, it is the closest that we can approximate what an orchestra must feel like when they put their heads down and 40 minutes later come up for air after playing a Beethoven symphony,” Brennan said. “You get your head totally into all of those moods and those themes.”
“An Evening of Pink Floyd” opens the second season of the orchestra’s “TSO Rocks the Fox” series with Jeans ’N Classics at Fox Tucson Theatre. Brennan said eight of his artists — a four-piece rhythm section, a saxophone player, two female backup vocalists and a lead vocalist — will perform with the TSO, led by conductor Keitaro Harada.
“The music is all familiar,” said Harada, who grew up in his native China listening to his mother’s vast music collection that included Western pop and rock. “It’s going to be a fun time.”
Harada said the TSO Rocks the Fox series is a chance for the orchestra to introduce itself to non-symphony-goers.
“I don’t expect any of them to become season subscribers, but this is your hometown orchestra,” he said. “This orchestra is so diverse it can play anything.”
Brennan, who arranges all of the Jeans ’N Classics shows, said his troupe has been performing the Pink Floyd “Dark Side” show for six years, but the Tucson concert will be the first time they have devoted the first half of the show to “The Wall.”
“They are my two favorite (albums), very, very iconic albums,” he said. “It’s kind of interesting to do ‘The Wall,’ which was several years after ‘Dark Side’ came out. ‘Dark Side’ is the one that sticks in my mind as being ‘a work.’ It’s a concept album and the way we do it we start it and it just flows. For 40 minutes, you just sort of close your eyes and let it flow all over you. It’s as if you put the needle down on the (record) and let it play. And of course half the people in the audience don’t know what a record is.”
“Dark Side of the Moon” was released in March 1973. It debuted at No. 95 on the Billboard 200 chart and didn’t drop off until July 1988. It re-emerged on the pop charts for another 759 weeks, spending a total of 1,500 weeks on charts — a number that has never been eclipsed, according to Billboard.
