Orchestra Set to Fight Napoleon

Though the Last Minute Orchestra’s annual appearance at Lowell House may be a tradition, their performance is anything but traditional.

Singers and instrumentalists will convene in the Lowell House courtyard for the first time at 2 p.m. before their May 6 performance of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” and sound the first notes only one hour later.

In place of the usual firing of cannons, the group opts for exploding hydrogen balloons, and kazoos fill in for any missing instruments. Lowell House’s famous Russian bells also figure prominently in the piece.

Channing Yu ’93, a Lowell House tutor, will conduct the performance, as he has done for the last several years. Before that, Yu played in the orchestra, which he says draws a fair number of polished performers, although most are pretty rusty.

“About a quarter to a half practice every day, but the rest haven’t played in over a year,” Yu says.

Since the orchestra changes every year, each performance is different. One year, Yu says, the hydrogen balloons were stationed behind the orchestra.

“The French horns were kind of startled by the shock wave. One of them actually cut his lip,” Yu says. “The balloons are on the side now.”

According to the Lowell House Web site, the spring performance of the “1812 Overture” became an institution within the first decade of the House’s founding. Five or six years ago Lowell House added a chorus of vocalists to compliment the orchestra. Both the chorus and the orchestra include undergraduates, graduate students, and residents of Cambridge.

Now a permanent fixture of Arts First weekend, the Last Minute Orchestra has seen its audience grow in recent years, comprising members of the Harvard community as well as Cambridge residents and particularly, according to Yu, “kids of all ages.”

As Yu says, “It’s always lots of fun.”

—Staff writer Jillian J. Goodman can be reached at jjgoodman@fas.harvard.edu.