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HOUSTON, TX (April 4, 2024) — Prepare for a nostalgic journey through Beatlemania as the Houston Symphony welcomes Classical Mystery Tour for A Tribute to the Beatles live at Jones Hall Thursday, April 18 and Friday, April 19. Renowned for their spot-on resemblance of the Fab Four, Classical Mystery Tour is a symphony pops attraction for the decade, performing hit songs from the English rock band’s formative years through to their solo years.
Fans can anticipate note-for-note renditions of the Summer of Love anthem, “All You Need is Love,” the nautical tale of “Yellow Submarine,” a beautiful live trumpet section on “Penny Lane,” and more. The troupe features Robbie Berg as vocalist and lead guitarist; Tony Kishman as electric bassist, pianist, and vocalist; Chris McBurney as drummer and vocalist; Jim Owen as rhythm guitarist, pianist, and vocalist; and Martin Herman as conductor.
Since its initial performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (now renamed Segerstrom Center for the Arts) in 1996, Classical Mystery Tour has performed for several decades with more than 100 orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The troupe has played to packed houses at the Sydney Opera House and has performed with America’s most prestigious orchestras, including The Cleveland Orchestra, The Boston Pops, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The San Francisco Symphony, and the Houston Symphony, among others.
Guests can enjoy the Beatles-themed cocktail, the Yellow Submarine, in the Jones Hall Lobby. For tickets and more information, call or text 713.224.7575, or visit houstonsymphony.org/classicalmysterytour.
HOUSTON SYMPHONY PRESENTS CLASSICAL MYSTERY TOUR: A TRIBUTE TO THE BEATLES
Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 19, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
Jones Hall for the Performing Arts
Martin Herman, conductor
Jim Owen, rhythm guitar, piano, vocals
Tony Kishman, electric bass, piano, vocals
Robbie Berg, lead guitar, vocals
Chris McBurney, drums, vocals
About Martin Herman
A resident of Los Angeles, Martin Herman was educated at Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University. He also spent two years in Paris on a Fulbright Grant where he worked as a composer and conductor with the New American Music in Europe and American Music Week festivals. Aside from his conducting interests, Herman is an active composer and arranger. He has received fellowships and grants from the American Music Center, the Camargo Foundation, Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has written chamber and orchestral works as well as three operas. He is recorded on the Albany Record label. As a longtime Beatles fan, Martin was commissioned to provide the orchestral transcriptions heard on the Classical Mystery Tour show.
Recent guest conducting engagements include the Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Louisville Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, Delaware Symphony, Alabama Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra in Prague, Czech Republic.
About Robbie Berg
Robbie Berg is a self-taught musician from Spokane, Washington. He knew from a young age that he wanted to have a career in music. Robbie began by smacking the pots and pans in his mother’s kitchen until he received a drum set. His first performance was drumming along to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for his third-grade talent show. He had thought he wanted to be a drummer, but then discovered he had a knack for the guitar. He began to concentrate on lead guitar and vocals, and eventually started writing his own songs. By the time he was 15, Robbie began his career portraying George Harrison in Beatles tribute shows. He has played cruise lines, Cinema Con, Broadway, Disneyland, and performed regularly for several years on the Las Vegas Strip. Robbie has been a life-long fan of The Beatles and continues to travel the globe to pay tribute to one of the greatest bands of all time.
About Tony Kishman
Singer-songwriter Tony Kishman was born in Tucson, Arizona where he began his musical career in the early 1970s. Although he had been playing guitar for a number of years, it was not until age 19 that Tony started performing seriously.
Kishman’s early influences included Wishbone Ash, Bad Company, and Peter Frampton. Between 1973 and 1978, he played guitar in the group Cheap Trix, a cover band performing Top 40 as well as originals.
Starting in 1979, Kishman played bass and guitar for six years as Paul McCartney in both the national and international tours of Beatlemania. He then went on to perform in Legends in Concert and produced shows that ran in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. He joined the classic supergroup Wishbone Ash for a tour of Europe and the recording of the group’s 18th album.
About Chris McBurney
Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, Chris McBurney was drawn to The Beatles after spotting The White Album in his older brothers’ record collection. That discovery set him on a musical journey for life. When he was 11 years old, McBurney toured Scandinavia as a boy soprano with the Madison Boy Choir and gained a love and appreciation of classical music. Now, as a drummer living in the NYC area, his playing has been featured on network television shows and commercials. He has performed on Broadway, and toured extensively in North America, Europe, and Asia with a variety of acts. One of his most challenging and rewarding musical experiences has been studying and perfecting the musicianship of Ringo Starr. He is thrilled to be able perform his favorite music with full orchestration, and to spread the music of The Beatles to audiences all over the world.
About Jim Owen
Jim Owen was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. He gained rich musical experience from his father who played music from the classics for him on the piano and from his extensive library of recordings by the great classical artists.
Owen began studying piano at six and won honors in various piano performance competitions through his teenage years. He was eight years-old when he first heard The Beatles and promptly decided to take up the study of the guitar. His first professional performance as a Beatle was at 16. Then, at age 18 he began touring internationally with various productions of Beatlemania, visiting Japan, Korea, China, Canada, Mexico, and much of South America.
In 1996, Owen began working on his idea for a new show with orchestra. It has long been his dream to share with the public live performances of some of the greatest music ever written and recorded. Classical Mystery Tour is the result.
About Houston Symphony
Under Music Director Juraj Valčuha, the Houston Symphony continues its second century as one of America’s leading orchestras with a full complement of concert, community, education, touring, and recording activities. One of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas, the Symphony held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston on June 21, 1913. Today, with an operating budget of $37.8 million, the full-time ensemble of professional musicians presents more than 130 concerts annually, making it the largest performing arts organization in Houston. Traditionally, musicians of the orchestra and the Symphony’s three Community-Embedded Musicians also offer over 1,000 community-based performances each year at various schools, community centers, hospitals, and churches reaching more than 200,000 people in Greater Houston annually.
After suspending concert activities in March 2020, the Symphony successfully completed a full 2020–21 season with in-person audiences and weekly livestreams of each performance, making it one of the only orchestras in the world to do so. The Houston Symphony remains committed to livestreaming its 2023–24 Season to a broad audience in over forty-five countries and all fifty states, one of few American orchestras dedicated to transmitting live performances to a size-able audience outside its home city through this technology.
The Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony has recorded under various prestigious labels, including Koch International Classics, Naxos, RCA Red Seal, Telarc, Virgin Classics, and, most recently, Dutch recording label Pentatone. In 2017, the Houston Symphony was awarded an ECHO Klassik award for the live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck under the direction of former Music Director Hans Graf. The orchestra earned its first Grammy nomination and Grammy Award at the 60th annual ceremony for the same recording in the Best Opera Recording category. The Symphony’s most recent recordings include a Pentatone release in January 2022 of its world premiere performances of Jimmy López Bellido’s Aurora and Ad Astra, and a Naxos release in July 2023 of its world premiere performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Duo Duel.
