Jeff Tyzik’s Holiday Pops

Remember Christmas of 2008, in the deepest trough of the recession?

Jeff Tyzik, 59, came to town to conduct the MSO’s Holiday Pops concerts. We were accustomed to Doc Severinsen’s big, glitzy holiday concerts. Tyzik drew an austerity budget, with pretty much just him and the orchestra. Tyzik’s low-key charm and modest demeanor proved just right for the moment; the audience loved him.

He’s back with a fresh holiday Holiday Pops program, this one billed as a Holiday Spectacular, with  MSO Chorus, the Milwaukee Children’s Choir, the Milwaukee Youth Chorale, the Alleluia Ringers and narrator John Letterman. It runs Friday through Sunday (Dec. 3-5).

Before rehearsal Thursday afternoon, Tyzik thought back to 2008.

“You don’t always need the pageantry,” he said. “The holidays are about warmth and home and family. I start with the music; if you treat it with respect and integrity, you can’t go wrong.”

Tyzik has an advantage there, because he writes almost all of his own arrangements. He also puts his programs together for each market, in cooperation with the orchestra’s management. Tyzik has been principal pops conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic for 17 years, and has about 180 original arrangements to his credit. Tyzik, a trumpet player by trade, knows that symphony musicians notoriously resent pops concerts and often play them sullenly. He counteracts that by devising arrangements that will entertain the musicians as much as the audience.

“I knew that from day 1,” he said. “If the music is trite or corny, the musicians might feel it doesn’t capture their spirit. My concerts are not like that.”

One example is Tyzik’s ingenious combination of Little Drummer Boy with Ravel’s Bolero, which he performed in 2008. The whole orchestra smiled over that one; they’ll repeat it on the 2010 Holiday Pops.

Many of Tyzik’s arrangements are published and in wide use. He credits his success as an arranger in part to his education, at the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester. In his student days, Eastman provided student composers and arrangers with a workshop orchestra and a workshop jazz band. Ray Wright, who was also conductor of the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, led the workshops, and some of the biggest names in jazz came through to play with the band.

“It was a great place to experiment,” Tyzik said. “And a great place to get berated by Ray Wright. If something in your score wasn’t working, he would close it and say, ‘Bring it back when it’s fixed. If you can’t fix it, we’re done with it.'”

Tyzik played with Chuck Mangione‘s band for six years in the 1970s, when Mangione was huge. Mangione’s concerts with symphony orchestras made a big impression on him.

“They brought in people who would never make it all the way though the Verdi Requiem,” he said. “That got me to thinking about ways to appeal to a different audience. I loved classical music and I loved rock ‘n’ roll and I loved jazz, and I thought that getting them together might be my mission.”

Tyzik has put them together, in countless jazz and Latin-tinged pops programs for his home-base Rochester Philharmonic and many other orchestras across the country. But Pops aren’t the whole picture for him. He is a serious composer, too, and he conducts plenty of main-line classical programs.

“It’s a strange life,” he said. “I might be doing Stravinsky one night, and two nights later I’m doing Latin, or blues or a patriotic concert. I might be conducting the Vancouver Symphony one night, and a few days later conduct a free concert in a high school gym in a town outside Rochester.

“You have to give everything you have to every experience. This is my life’s work, but it’s never a job. It’s a privilege to walk out on that stage.”

The MSO Holiday Pops will play four times this weekend: 8 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3-5. Tickets are $25-$95 at the MSO ticket line, 414-291-7605; at the MSO website; and at the Marcus Center box office, 414-273-7206.

Note: The MSO will collect toys for need children at these concerts, in association with the Children’s Service Society of Wisconsin. Donors will get 2-for-1 vouchers good for a January 2011 concert (excluding Itzhak Perlman’s special concert).