By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
What started out as an homage of one girl group of the 1940s has turned into an internationally touring celebration of the Greatest Generation’s favorite music.
In the Mood, a musical revue extolling the big band era, will return to Amarillo for a 7:30 p.m. March 8 performance in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Buchanan St. Tickets are $29.50 to $59.50, plus fees.
“We started off as a celebration of the Andrews Sisters … then evolved with a bigger band,” founder Bud Forrest said. “Obviously, it struck a chord nationally and internationally.”
The revue is packed with music from the likes of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Erskine Hawkins, Frank Sinatra and other idols of the 1940s.
“There’s no story to In the Mood,” Forrest said. “The music is the story. … The goal is to give the flavor of what it must have been like to have all of these different big bands come through Amarillo.”
Nineteen performers, including singers and instrumentalists, will take the stage to revive a musical format that hasn’t ever fully gone out of style.
“The energy of the big band – the trumpets and the trombones and the saxophones and the rhythm section – performing American popular music written by some of the greatest songwriters of all time — it’s just a total package of American creativity,” Forrest said.
“Even some contemporary artists — Christina Aguilera, Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, Harry Connick Jr., Willie Nelson — they all sing these songs,” he continued. “Just because it was written 70 years ago doesn’t mean that it’s not still relevant today.”
Still relevant, and still appealing, he said.
“I always enjoy watching young kids in the audiences with their mouths wide open because they’ve never heard anything like this,” Forrest said.
There’s a definite intergenerational appeal, he said.
“We’re losing the World War II generation real fast now, and yet their children grew up in households listening to this music,” he said.
For tickets, visit PanhandleTickets.com or call 806-378-3096. Watch out for construction along Buchanan Street and allow for extra travel time or find an alternate route.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and on Facebook.
