Tonight, to-niight… “West Side Story”

West Side Story, one of Broadway’s classiest and most operatic musicals, became one of Hollywood’s classiest and most operatic movie musicals in 1961. This weekend, that MGM film will run as Sarah Hicks conducts the MSO. The orchestra will play Leonard Bernstein’s underscoring, dance music and accompaniments to the songs — or arias, if you prefer. Take away the gentle rumba pizzicato in the basses, and Maria sounds like Puccini.

West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957, the same year Bernstein became music director of the New York Philharmonic. Choreographer Jerome Robbins and librettist Arthur Laurents and lyricist Stephen Sondheim were his collaborators in this New York update of Romeo and Juliet. The movie version, starred Natalie Wood, who spoke the dialog but lip-synched the songs. Marni Nixon dubbed in the singing.

MSO patrons will hear Nixon and all the original soundtrack singers, including Jimmy Bryant, who sang the role of Tony for actor Richard Beymer. Conductor Hicks and the orchestra must adapt to those 51-year-old performances. That’s tricky.

“I got a 20-pound package delivered after I agreed to do this,” Hicks said, in an interview Wednesday. “It included a really well-marked score and a DVD of the movie with all the bells and whistles. We pick up all the music, which is a lot.”

By bells and whistles she meant click tracks (audible cues that mark time regularly), and streamers and punches (visual cues). Streamers are vertical lines that drift across the film image; punches are bursts of light at the end of a streamer. Hicks will see them on her display; you won’t see them on the screen.

But these devices don’t do all the work for the MSO’s guest conductor.

“They took a lot of rubato in some of the songs, especially ‘Maria,'” Hicks said. “Everything isn’t on a click track. There’s lots of push and pull. It’s pretty complicated.”

This is Hicks’ first time around with the live/film West Side Story, which was developed last year to mark the film’s 50th anniversary. But she has long experience with this sort of thing. She put together Psycho and Bride of Frankenstein for the Minnesota Orchestra, where she has been principal pops and presentations conductor since 2009. She’s also conducting an ongoing 12-film Pixar project with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

“I’m principally a pops conductor,” Hicks said. “I made the switch six years ago, because the business is changing and I intend to do this until I retire. I find what I do very satisfying. I produce, I have costumes, some staging, I interact with the audience and I conduct. I put things together. That’s more interesting to me than just silently waving my arms with my back to the audience.”

Hicks has formed her own production company. The idea is to take the shows she develops for the Minnesota Orchestra to the pops series of orchestras elsewhere, a model practiced by such luminaries as Doc Severinsen and the late Marvin Hamlisch.

“I’ve recently produced a Paris Scenes show, with everything from Edith Piaf chansons to American in Paris to French classical music,” she said. “It’s all scripted, with costumes and all-new arrangements. I have an ’80s show, an Italian one and a space-themed concert.”

Six years ago, Hicks’ agent told her she would brand herself forever and be locked out of the highbrow world if she concentrated on pops. She’s found that not so true. She said that she is in the running to be music director for more than one orchestra and has her fair share of Beethoven, Mozart etc. But she doesn’t feel that gap between pops and classics.

“I want to leverage everything I know how to do,” she said. “You can move people in many ways. It doesn’t have to be Mahler. It can be Roseanne Cash. Or it can be Bernstein. I always weep at the end of West Side Story. I just hope I won’t be bawling on the podium.”

West Side Story is a special MSO program, not part of the Pops subscription season. Note the 7:30 p.m. concert time on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 23-24, earlier than usual for the MSO. And no Sunday concert. Concerts will take place at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. For tickets, call the Marcus box office, 414 273-7206 or visit the MSO website.

Display image on the A&C page: The Chicago Symphony performs “West Side Story.” Todd Rosenberg photo courtesy of the MSO.

Lots happening; visit TCD’s Thanksgiving week On Stage column to plan your holiday weekend.