Grand Opera brings Atomic Big Band and its love songs to Wichita for Valentine’s Day
Michael Andrew laughs when asked if his Atomic Big Band’s concert Friday at the Century II Exhibition Hall, a fundraiser for Wichita Grand Opera, would be different because it’s Valentine’s Night.
“It’s hard to pay tribute to the American Songbook — Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, the staples of our repertoire — without love songs,” Andrew said from his home in New York. “There might be three songs in the whole collection that we do that aren’t love songs. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is ‘Mack the Knife.’
“There’s always a romantic evening attached to the collection of songs that we do,” he added.
Since 2002, Andrew has led the 17-player Atomic Big Band: four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones, a rhythm section and himself on vocals.
“It’s inspired by the Count Basie Big Band, mostly, but it’s a very traditional full-size big band configuration,” he said.
A former headline singer at New York’s Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center and lead singer and bandleader at Merv Griffin’s Coconut Club (Griffin has referred to Andrew as “one of the greatest singers of all time”), Andrew said that while a slew of popular singers have released albums of American standards through the years, for him it’s never gone out of style.
“For me, it’s personal because from the time I was very young, it’s all I would listen to,” he said. “It isn’t that anyone forced it upon me.”
His mother and late father were part of the Greatest Generation, he said, and he was raised listening to Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart and Harold Arlen.
“I never really felt rebellious toward it like my peers did,” he said. “Sure, I listened to rock ‘n’ roll because my friends did and it was what was on the radio. But it never spoke to me in the way that this collection of songs does.”
Andrew said his favorite music comes from the post-big band era, when singers like Sinatra became more popular than the leaders of the bands they fronted.
“The singers were the stars, rather than the big bands of the ‘30s and ‘40s,” he said. “It really is America’s music—when we finally had a style that was coming out of composers that wasn’t taken from other cultures.”
The music, he said, reflects American history.
“This is really our music,” he said. “Other nations that are much older than America have a rather ancient sounding music that goes back to the beginnings of their culture. This body of music is ours. It’s not going to go away, because we can’t ever have those origins again of what our music is.
“This was really our country’s music.”
The Wichita Grand Opera concert Friday is a continuation of the romance between Andrew and Wichita.
He was a guest with the Wichita Symphony in the early 2000s.
“At that point in my career, I felt like it was one of the most successful symphonic concerts that I’d had, certainly one of the best attended I’d had up to that point,” he said.
Andrew has returned several times thanks to the sponsorship of Dr. Dennis Ross, a nephrologist and clinical professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita.
“I’ve come back to Wichita, it seems like five times over the years, to do these types of events,” he said. “It’s always wonderful, I see a lot of familiar faces.”
Big Band Valentine with Michael Andrew and the Atomic Big Band
Presented by: Wichita Grand Opera
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14
Where: Century II, 225 W. Douglas, Wichita
Tickets: $75 for the concert and desert; $125 VIP package includes a 6:15 p.m. dinner, reserved parking, champagne toast and dessert. Available by calling 316-262-8054 or online at wichitagrandopera.org