"Home" is not your average rocker with an orchestra in the background DVD. (Did you even know that there was such a thing as an average one?) Actually several rock and roll groups have used live symphonies to give more “oomph!” to their music: The Scorpions, Metallica, & most recently Evanescence to name a few. But all of these groups used the orchestra to enhance their own sound. And while admittedly, the DVD is about Collective Soul; the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra is not simply a back up group. They are an integral part of the music and heavily featured throughout the DVD.
The DVD begins with a shot of Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center stage curtains closed, lights swinging wildly and a steady buildup of music coming from behind the curtains. By the time the curtain comes up the audience is jumping up and down and screaming, a little different from the calm and composed crowd the symphony is used to!
“It was really cool and completely different from anything else we’ve done. I think the most striking thing to me was, we’re used to seeing about half the seats filled and every one sitting down, and now every single seat was filled and everyone was standing up – and so it was really different from the normal symphony setting. Everyone was screaming, it was amazing!” said Lee Sheehan (photo at right) a senior violinist who has been with the Atlanta Symphony Youth for 5 years and has been playing the violin since she was 4 (I never even knew they made violins that small!)The orchestra didn’t look like their normal selves either! Instead of their formal black and white, they were dressed in blue jeans and black Collective Soul T-shirts with white long sleeve Tees underneath (although I did see a couple of the guys wearing collared shirts underneath!)
And the band didn’t relegate them to backstage. In the song “Needs” the symphony has a strong presence, not only with the strings but also the woodwinds. But what impressed me even more was the fact that the guys were interacting with the kids. Dean Roland, while playing guitar, was completely focused on the violins. And Ed Roland even backed away from center stage to let the kid’s talent shine.
There were even spotlights on the kids themselves: a quartet of strings, and a duet performed by Ed and cellist Brian Sung on the song “She Said”. The high school senior (who has been with youth orchestra for 5 years now and playing the cello since the first grade) also got to perform on live television with Ed on Atlanta’s “Good Day Atlanta”. “I never really imagined that I would be doing that kind of thing. It was just really cool! My family was there for the second night, and I got to point at my Mom,” he grinned, “So it was great!” I asked him what it was like working with the band. “Ed Roland was really nice. The first time I met him we were at the news station, and it was just me and him. And he just really made me feel comfortable about things. He made it easy for me.”
In fact, according to Will Turpin (wearing red shirt in photo at left)– the band’s bass player, one of the groups main goals was to make the kids comfortable with them; so they could have a good time, make a relaxed looking video, and just have a unique experience. Although how they got the teenage girls to concentrate on their music, I’ll never know! Relaxing those formal tendencies weren’t as easy as it may have sounded however. It took the first night’s concert to really get into the “groove” of how the rock and roll world went. According to Olivia Sedlack, a Junior who has been with the youth orchestra for three years and has played the French horn since she was 12, the first night’s concert the kids were a little stiff. “Our performances are very composed, so different from that. After that concert their manager came and talked to us, and told us to be really relaxed, and not mind dancing or anything. So the second performance, I remember the orchestra wound up standing up and dancing, and it was such a big difference. But it took someone telling us that it was OK to do that.” And obviously they did relax! On the song “Better Now”, not only do the kids join the audience in singing and stand up; they stand up on their chairs! Melanie Darby, the youth orchestra’s coordinator laughs, “the violins’ parents were going ‘don’t drop the violin, don’t drop the violin!’” But the kids were into it! So was their conductor!
Almost upstaging Ed Roland, Maestro Jere Flint is seen doing the twist and getting down with the lead singer (As seen in the photo at right). And I’m not sure, but I thought I saw a game of “keep away” being played by Dean & Will with the timpanist’s drumsticks.There are also very poignant moments on the DVD, such as the Roland brother’s tribute to their late father, Reverend Eddie Roland. Ed dedicates the song “Crown” to him, and a triumphant flourish from the brass section seems almost a salute to this man the brothers both dearly loved and still miss. At the end of the song you can see Dean hug his brother and give him a kiss on the top of the head. Not something every rocker will do.
In my interviews of the band, the kids and the adults involved with the orchestra, I kept asking, “What was the hardest thing about doing this, about bringing these two types of music together?” And I kept being surprised by the answer I got, "Nothing".
“It’s the same 13 notes that we play for Bach or we play for Collective Soul.”, stated Maestro Jere Flint. But I think it was best summed up by Melissa Miller, who has been playing the harp for six years and been with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra for two years, “Changing the music wasn’t hard at all, it’s just music.”
And that’s what this DVD is about…music. It’s not for those who love rock or those who love classical, or those who love pop; it’s for those people who love music. Period.
"Home: A Live Concert Recording With The Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra" The Live DVD hits major retailers on February 7 and will also be available as a two CD set.
Collective Soul; Ed Roland, Dean Roland, Will Turpin, Joel Kosche and
Ryan Hoyle
Released under Their Own Label "El Music Group"
