Philly Orchestra's free concert series entertains multitasking generations

The Philadelphia Orchestra, which knows the way to London and Vienna, could use a little help these days finding the neighborhoods of the city in which it lives. In 15 years, the orchestra's wonderful free neighborhood concert series has brought it to North Philadelphia, the Navy Yard, Drexel Hill, and elsewhere.

This year, the series consists of two concerts, and you might notice that the next one, July 30, has the intrepid Philadelphians venturing all the way to, well, their usual perch in Verizon Hall. The other in the series was Thursday at Penn's Landing, which means these concerts, meant to bring orchestral music to listeners who might not come downtown, will not reach beyond Center City this year. Let's hope that the orchestra and its sponsors, long involved in equalizing access to art, aren't letting up just as questions surrounding inequality are finally striking American as urgent.

And yet, Thursday night at Penn's Landing was remarkable in several ways. Despite a misty rain, the audience was huge (officials estimate between 5,000 and 7,500), overwhelmingly under the age of 40, and thoroughly diverse. They roared with enthusiasm. And while a great many were glued to the music, an equal number were engaged in what might be called parallel play. The orchestra performed patriotic tunes and light classics, and the audience held conversations with one another, called friends, sent texts, walked around, and ate. The social protocols so firmly established in the 20th-century concert hall did not apply. This is the multitasking generation, and they were going to do their own thing and have an experience on several layers simultaneously. This kind of relationship between performer and listener might be the wave of the future. But a little context: It's also a throwback, like the environment of the 18th-century concert.

There was some fine playing from the orchestra, led by assistant conductor Lio Kuokman, especially in Carmen Dragon's fat orchestration of "America the Beautiful." Two movements from Michael Daugherty's Reflections on the Mississippi, a tuba concerto played by Carol Jantsch, made an atmospheric partner to the Delaware - more lazy than mighty on this night but, with the lights of Camden twisting on its surface, beautiful nonetheless. Nice touch of the evening: In "Stars and Stripes Forever," three of the orchestra's trombonists drew chuckles for their plastic, colored trombones - one red, one white, and one blue.

The cellphones came out, too, at the Philly Pops' annual appearance Friday night in front of Independence Hall, and social media were cluttered with shots from the concert even before it started. Markers of generational shift abounded. The crowd, stretching as usual all the way to Market Street, was quite young - many probably not old enough to remember the material in the disco medley, from disco's first time around. I never thought I'd live to hear the day the Philly Pops would think to pay tribute to gay rights at one of its concerts, but there it was. Jerry Herman's "I Am What I Am" from La Cage aux Folles featured the retro-lovely Voices of the Pops and was dedicated to protesters who, 50 years ago, marched for gay rights in front of Independence Hall. Elsewhere, vocalist Capathia Jenkins used her saxlike textures to great effect in "Home" from The Wiz.

The program was a mix of Broadway, movie melodies (Rocky, "Happy" from Despicable Me 2), and patriotic tunes. The audience near the front was fully engaged. Farther back on the lawn, however, there was no sound system, and the Pops, led by affable music director Michael Krajewski, was a distant presence. It wasn't quite like being at a concert on the farthest patch of green, but it was, still, a pleasant hybrid experience. There, vendors hawked light sabers and passersby greeted the concert with indifference, and "You're a Grand Old Flag" became background music to a city, blending with the sirens and buses of Market Street and the America beyond.