January 21, 2009
Music critic Richard Scheinin writes:
“There’s new life for the Grateful Dead: in the concert hall. The “Dead Symphony,” an orchestral reinvention of tunes by the trippiest band of the
’60s, is about to have its first West Coast performances.
And Carolyn Garcia — Jerry Garcia’s widow, better known as Mountain Girl to Deadheads — offers this warning: “It’s not rock ‘n’ roll.” And she’s OK with that. Composer Lee Johnson’s 50-minute tableau of Grateful Dead songs, to be
performed by the California Symphony on Sunday and Tuesday at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, is “emotional stuff,” she said, “exquisitely pretty” at times and mysterious, too. “Lee kind of does these interesting dissections of the melodies. So it’s hauntingly familiar, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.’…”
