Orchestral Maneuvers

In San Francisco

Photo: Steph Port

Last Thursday, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and got on a plane for San Francisco, there to be driven straight to Davies Symphony Hall. The Decemberists are rehearsing for a show with the San Francisco Symphony. We are playing a concert with orchestral accompaniment for the first time in almost 20 years. This is from the last time we did it:

Photo by Autumn De Wilde

That’s from our show at the Hollywood Bowl with the L.A. Philharmonic. It was one of a handful of similar shows we did in 2007. I think the tour might’ve been a ten days long — or something like that. We ended the run in Chicago, playing the Pritzker Pavilion under a blustery sky. After we were finished, there wasn’t really an appetite to do it again in the immediate future. We had other stuff we wanted to do; drummer John was a little weary of getting angry looks from the first chair violist. But here we are, some eighteen years later, surrounding ourselves with strings and reeds and timpanists once again.