Lexington Philharmonic’s Pink Floyd concert will take you to the moon & beyond

Let’s settle a few things before getting started.

There will be no inflatable pigs flying over the audience Friday evening at the Singletary Center for the Arts. There will be no remnants of a massive, demolished wall onstage for tech crews to sweep away. And, no, there will be no pyrotechnics. Nothing will explode — at least not literally.

But while the more extravagant props that enhanced the concerts of Pink Floyd from the 1970s onward won’t be employed, the Lexington Philharmonic has plenty of pageantry in store when it brings the music of the famed British rock band to life. The orchestra will team with the electric instrumentation, vocals, lights and lasers of Windborne Productions to rekindle the music Pink Floyd filled arenas (including a two-night engagement at Rupp Arena in November 1987) and stadiums with during the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s.

“You cannot really listen to a Pink Floyd show without a visual show as well,” said LexPhil music director and conductor Mélisse Brunet.

While the Philharmonic has presented several pops-oriented concerts since Brunet took over the baton in 2022 — including programs devoted to the film scores of John Williams and the classic soul music of Aretha Franklin along with the summertime Picnic with the Pops performances — “The Music of Pink Floyd” strikes an especially personal chord.

“As a teenager, I fell in love with their music,” Brunet said. “I was working with a tour in Eastern Europe and since everything was a lot cheaper back then, I bought cassettes of albums like ‘The Wall’ (Pink Floyd’s 1979 multi-platinum rock opera of art and isolation.) That was about the only music I had and was listening to it, like, non-stop. Then later, I got ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ (a 1987 comeback work that followed a split between Floyd co-founders David Gilmour and Roger Waters.) I was very obsessed with the band. One of my aunts was going to all of their shows in France, so I heard her talking about them a lot.

“I grew up with this music. Some tunes I became more in love with in time, like ‘Atom Heart Mother’ (the side-long title suite from a 1970 Pink Floyd album that incorporated brass, orchestral and choral ensembles.) It’s very symphonic.”

The first half of Friday’s concert will be devoted to a full performance of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” the breakthrough album of prog-leaning psychedelia that has sold in excess of 50 million copies worldwide since its release in 1973. It also presents a performance challenge of sorts for the members of LexPhil and Windborne as the music was exact in its studio design and production.

“With Alan Parsons’ studio work and also the technical tools Pink Floyd had ... you absolutely you cannot have that live,” Brunet said. “But it’s the only album, actually, that Pink Floyd toured so much with before they recorded it. They played it live almost entirely when they hit the recording studio. That’s why it’s so strong as an album and so coherent. But onstage, it’s never going to be the way you hear it on the album because that’s simply impossible. There are echo effects and other things that are very hard to recreate. Also, the band we have, it’s not Roger Waters. It’s not David Gilmour. It’s none of them. To find the sound of Pink Floyd, you need Pink Floyd.

“But I think the approach of it is like when you play a Mozart symphony today. ‘How did Mozart play it?’ It’s never going to be the same. Yet, we have the tools, we have the music, we have the scores, we have the recordings where we can try to recreate as close to possible what we hear. But they also let us discover the emotion of these recordings as a wonderful performance experience. This is going to be a shared experience with the lights and also the vibration. It’s about being live and having the vibration, the atmosphere and the communion of the people rather than just staying home and listening to a recording.”

The second half of the concert will venture into music from 1975’s “Wish You Were Here” album and “The Wall” but also into perhaps less expected ’80s compositions from “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.”

“I find this period of Pink Floyd very interesting because the band kept evolving,” Brunet said. “You have the late ’60s until ‘Dark Side’ and then you go to ‘The Wall.’ But after that there is a different style. The ’80s were very different for them. On ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’ and (1994’s) ‘The Division Bell,’ which I love, David Gilmour got back more to melody. It’s amazing music.”

“The Music of Pink Floyd” also underscores the prime motivation behind pops concerts — a sense of community outreach that has become a benchmark of Brunet’s still young tenure with LexPhil.

“Many people coming to the Pink Floyd show will either be hearing the Philharmonic for the first time or for the first time in a very long time. When we did the John Williams concert (a sold-out performance from November 2023), a lot of people heard us for the very first time. It was also the first time many of them brought their kids to a Philharmonic concert. That’s really essential to me because our mission is to bring orchestra music to everyone. And orchestra music is pops music. It’s movie music. It’s video game music. It’s classical music. It’s opera. It’s all of these things.

“I have very diverse tastes. I don’t like to be put in a box. I find everything very exciting. I find the different crowds coming out our concerts to be very exciting. We bring them entertainment. We bring them memories. So many people have memories associated with Pink Floyd, for example. Good memories. Emotional memories. All of those things. We are part of that. That’s what we do by being part of the city.”

Brunet and LexPhil intend to make the audience part of the Friday concert, as well. Earlier this week, they announced on social media a contest where one lucky patron will get to guest conduct the orchestra and Windborne musicians onstage during Pink Floyd’s wildly popular but openly subversive 1979 sing-along hit, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).”

An audience novice undertaking, even for one song, the kind of performance stewardship that requires the skill and guidance of a highly trained professional? Isn’t that like asking a patient in a doctor’s waiting room to perform heart surgery?

The comparison ignites a brief but pronounced round of laughter from Brunet followed a composed reply of reassurance.

“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “Nobody will die.”

The Music of Pink Floyd

Windborne Productions presents “The Music of Pink Floyd” with the Lexington Philharmonic

When: Jan. 17, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St.

Tickets: $28-78 for adults; $11 for youth and students through lexphil.org.