We leave no garish moment unturned," Jack Everly says, as he surveys the gold glitter curtain on the back wall of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and the faux-neon light strip flashing pink along the rim of the stage.
Out in the lobby, Everly, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's principal pops conductor, looks over the gaming tables that have been brought in to add extra atmosphere for the "Pops Goes Vegas" show.
"Part of me is enjoying this enormously, and another part of me goes, `Oh, dear, have we gone too far?'" he says. "Then I think, `No.' Well, OK, there's a few chorus girls, and we have a Liberace impersonator. But it's all tongue-in-cheek. It's a symphonic Carol Burnett sketch. And we're playing very solid music of this genre."
Solid music and showbiz sparkle - that pretty much sums up the approach that Everly has taken since he was appointed to the pops post, starting in the 2003-2004 season. And the success of that approach with BSO musicians and audiences explains why Everly was offered a third three-year contract, which will keep him here through the 2011-2012 season. He signed it Friday.
"They had a lot of other conductors come in here after Marvin Hamlisch left the job" in 2000, the Indiana-born and -based Everly says. "In 2003, the musicians and the management at that time honored me with a commitment that said `trust,' and that means a lot to an artist. At the very beginning, I sensed from the musicians a feeling of `We get this.' I know I sound like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but we actually have a good time."
Everly, 55, has survived various changes at the BSO since he started - the hiring of a new music director, Marin Alsop; major shakeups in administration; financial hurdles. "It's been a challenge to stay the course with all the stuff going on around you," he says. "The constant, I'm happy to say, has been the musicianship and the audience. If you don't maintain those two things in tandem, you're out of luck."
The numbers reveal just how well Everly's luck is holding out.
There has been a 20 percent increase in sold tickets to SuperPops concerts in Baltimore this season over last, with average capacity per concert advancing from 63 percent to 76 percent at Meyerhoff, reports Eileen Andrews Jackson, BSO vice president of public relations and community affairs. The situation is also rosy at the Music Center at Strathmore, where sales of pops subscriptions increased 34 percent this season.
