What better way to glorify the band that was “more popular than Jesus” than with the voice of God?
The sonorous presence of actor Morgan Freeman will be one of the highlights of the Beatles on the Beach festival in Boca Raton on March 12-15, which will include a March 14 performance by Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience.
As suggested by its name, the actor and ensemble tour the country to share new treatments of music from the Mississippi Delta and 100 years of storytelling tradition heard in the songs of Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and others.
The band is accompanied by symphony orchestra musicians under the direction of Vienna-based composer and conductor Martin Gellner. At Beatles on the Beach, local orchestra musicians will be joined by students from Lynn University.
Freeman grew up near the blues mecca of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he is a co-owner of the Ground Zero Blues Club, the space where the idea of mixing the blues and orchestral music first took flight. Last summer Freeman and his partners decided to take these experiments by the Ground Zero house band on the road, sharing stages with the San Francisco Symphony, the Nashville Symphony and at the famed Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony.
Calling the blues “America’s only real classical music,” Freeman, 88, admits he was a latecomer to the music, not taking it seriously until he was an adult.
“I knew about the blues. I sang along with everybody else when we sang the blues, but I was not particularly involved with it, or even enamored of the blues. I had rock ’n’ roll,” he says.
Freeman serves as an omniscient narrator for performances by the Symphonic Blues Experience, sharing history, introducing characters, providing cultural context for the music and its influence. The concert is performed against a backdrop of video and photography, including family pictures and material from the Library of Congress, that illustrates specific historic and musical themes.
A Tampa Bay Times review of a concert in St. Petersburg last September said the band and members of the Florida Orchestra turned the 2,000-seat Mahaffey Theater into a swaying juke joint: “Though the lush, swelling harmonies from the orchestra provided a cinematic layer to the performance, it was hard at times to focus on anything but Freeman’s crew of Mississippi musicians as they wailed, shredded and grooved along.”
Freeman is still a working actor, and due to scheduling conflicts some concerts have shown him only on video — but his Boca Raton appearance will be in person.
A typical set list will trace the blues from its foundation as a chronicle of shared social and economic struggle, to its ongoing effect on rock, soul and hip-hop. Shows have included Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues” (also covered by Led Zeppelin), the Staple Singers’ hit “I’ll Take You There” and “I Lied to You,” the Oscar-nominated song co-written by Raphael Saadiq for the “Sinners” movie soundtrack.
“I’m quite satisfied, because it does add an awful lot to have this plotting going on,” Freeman says. “It’s so unique.”
Beatles on the Beach founder Daniel Hartwell attended the concert in St. Petersburg and came away convinced that a band of such cultural significance as the Beatles was deserving of Freeman’s majestic intonation.
“They are a genre of music on their own. In 200 years we will still be listening to Beethoven and the Beatles,” Hartwell says.
The Beatles are no strangers to the blues — illustrated on “Yer Blues” from the White Album, and “Let It Be” album tracks “Don’t Let Me Down” and “For You Blue” — but Freeman declined to predict what songs the Symphonic Blues Experience has queued up for Beatles on the Beach.
While saying he wanted to maintain an element of surprise for the festival audience, he did express a fondness for “Hey Jude.” Then he playfully broke into song.
“Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs …” he sang, Paul McCartney’s Wings hit never sounding so heavenly.
Freeman understands the effect his voice can have — thanks to the film “Bruce Almighty” and its sequel, “Evan Almighty” — but reminds the listener that it was merely a role to be played.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea to attach God to a person. It was just, you know, it was a joke. It was a fun time, not anything serious, right?” he says.
Freeman also traveled the globe during three seasons of the National Geographic documentary series “The Story of God,” speaking with spiritual leaders, scientists, historians and archaeologists about the influence of religion. The show took him to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, India’s Bodhi Tree, Mayan temples in Guatemala, the pyramids of Egypt and the banks of the Ganges River.
“Do you want to know what I learned?” Freeman asks. “It’s all true. Every religion has a story that explains the beginning, the beginning of life, the beginning of Earth itself. Every religion can explain it to you. And it’s all true. That’s all I gotta say.”
If you go
WHAT: Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience at Beatles on the Beach
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, March 14; gates open at 3 p.m.
WHERE: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
COST: $44.70+ for general admission standing room (BYO chair), or $60.65+ for seats, at Ticketmaster.com
INFORMATION: BeatlesOnTheBeach.com
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on IG: @BenCrandell.
