by Sarah Ryals
If you find yourself humming along with the rock classics piped in while you shop for groceries, please know this is NOT what you will experience when you attend The Music of the Rolling Stones. Brent Havens would visibly shudder at such a notion.
“A lot of people they think it’s just an orchestra trying to do [the Stones],” the conductor-arranger observed. “That’s not the case. We’re doing a full rock ‘n’ roll show with lights and amps and the full deal.”
Unlike tamed-down, canned rock classics, a Brent Havens production delivers a teeth-rattling rock encounter that brings in full, lush, complex orchestration behind top-level rock performers to channel The Rolling Stones’ biggest hits in a whole new way. What makes it all work are Havens’ expert arrangements – honed by decades of composing and conducting for the film and television industries – and the integrity he brings to every note of the original recording. The multi-talented powerhouse has written music for orchestras, feature films, television network movies, commercials, and sports networks. He recently completed a score for the film “Quo Vadis,” a Premier Pictures remake of the 1956 gladiator film. But the rock-band-plus-orchestra concert format is his singular invention and has established him at the forefront of concert hall entertainment for three decades.
“One of my biggest things was to make sure this didn’t become a Muzak show,” Havens says. “It’s a rock show. Every instrument on stage is miked…it’s pretty easy to overpower a violin, but not when they have a microphone clipped to the instrument…”
Little chance you’ll confuse this show with your standard tribute act. Yes, there is the extraordinary orchestration. But the Music of The Rolling Stones experience wouldn’t be complete without an emphatic nod to the high-octane stage presence of one of the greatest concert bands the world has ever seen. Lead singer Mick Adams superbly delivers the vocals, swagger, and energy of Mick Jagger. From the skin-tight jeans to the glitter to the bouncy antics across the boards, Adams channels an uncannily authentic Jagger. You might find yourself looking around to confirm you’re not actually at London Stadium seeing the real thing. Adams and his band – who appear similarly sparkly and rocked out in their costumes – visually and musically channel a Stones concert in a head-nodding, toe-tapping way that brings the audience along for a highly exhilarating ride.
Havens himself has never aspired to be a rock performer. A graduate of the acclaimed Berklee College of Music, he was more interested in jazz, jazz fusion, and arrangement as a student. Like many careers, his was launched by a chance encounter. “Right out of college, I was working at a TV station and was walking by a control room one day when I overheard one of the technicians bemoan, ‘Wow, we could really use a musical arranger for this.’ So, I said, ‘I can do it!’ and they actually gave me a shot even though I didn’t have much experience at the time.” The producers liked Havens’ work, which led to more and progressively bigger assignments. He spent several years in the 70’s doing jingle work and orchestrating for commercial productions, which led to work in television and on movie scores.
Eventually, Havens founded his own company, Windborne Music, in 1990. The enterprise was initially a production house, but in 1994, Havens came up with a novel idea: to produce rock-band shows backed by a full orchestra. The first foray into this unique configuration was Music of Led Zeppelin which hit the stage in 1995.
“I’m not a classical musician, nor a classical conductor per se, and I wasn’t really into rock and roll when I was a kid,” Havens recalls in a 2015 UCR interview. “But you couldn’t go to a grocery store when I was a kid and not hear Led Zeppelin. I mean, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ those tunes were always playing on the radio.”
Recognizing the immense popularity of Led Zeppelin’s discography and their musicality, Havens banked on the salability of the band’s hits. He began the orchestration process by transcribing every note of each song to be performed by Windborne’s own stable of rock performers. In doing so, he gained a new-found respect for the genius of Jimmy Page. He then arranged the orchestra accompaniment. The result? “The aural palette of colors is so different…we’ve got the brass, the strings, the woodwinds joining in… During solos, I’ll have the string players do a counterpoint line way above what [the guitarist] is doing.” In other words, it is precisely the familiar music you know and love, enhanced with orchestral nuance, flourish, and sound spectrum.
Music of Led Zeppelin was at first met with skepticism by orchestras, even as they sought to use pops programs to get new audiences to the concert hall. But the proof, as they say, was in the performance: Havens’ test concert sold out a 1,000-seat venue in a single day.
Havens applied the wildly successful Led Zeppelin template as he went on to add more productions under the Windborne banner. Now, decades later, the company has a repertoire of 12 shows including the works of Queen, Whitney Houston, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, and, of course, The Rolling Stones.
“The Rolling Stones are musically simpler than Led Zeppelin to arrange but they bring their own distinct feel to every song – plenty of seven-bar phrases,” observes Havens. “And, like all the shows we do, everything has to be flawless and perfectly coordinated. We’ve been staging this production for the past few years, so it is very finely tuned.”
Havens gives a lot of credit to the quality of the orchestras that invite Windborne Music tours to their stages, both across the US and worldwide.
“These are people who are highly accomplished and profoundly skilled with their instruments, having studied them for decades” Havens explains. “They can quickly master the charts and deliver a great performance with us.”
While the conductor never reveals the playlist prior to the concert (he wants the audiences to have the thrill of spontaneous reactions when their favorites are played), he promises that concertgoers will not be disappointed by the repertoire. “Satisfaction”, “Wild Horses”, “Paint It Black”, “Sympathy for the Devil”…these are all typically in the lineup, Havens confirms.
“This is a high-energy, uplifting concert performance and people love it,” he continues. “When you combine great rock ‘n’ roll with a full symphony orchestra, there is a level of emotion there that just can’t be expressed or experienced any other way.”
