Mystery Tour blends Beatles, classical music

It's taken more than a decade, but Classical Mystery Tour's long and winding road finally leads back to Las Vegas - and to The Smith Center's Reynolds Hall.

That's where Classical Mystery Tour: A Tribute to the Beatles will take the stage tonight, as four performers re-create the look and sound of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - with the backing of a symphony orchestra.

The show last played Las Vegas in 2000, at Mandalay Bay, recalls Classical Mystery Tour founder Jim Owen, alias the show's John Lennon.

At that appearance, Owen and his fellow "Beatles" performed with the Las Vegas Philharmonic.

This time around, they're still working with local musicians - 28 performers contracted specifically for tonight's show.

Their presence means audiences will hear beloved Beatles tunes as originally recorded, complete with orchestral accompaniment, Owen explains during a telephone interview.

And some of those orchestral requirements are quite specific.

For example, before Las Vegas-based music contractor Mark Barrett began rounding up orchestra members, Owen notes, "we let him know right away" that one of the trumpet players needed to double on piccolo trumpet - to re-create one of "Penny Lane's" most distinctive elements.

"We sent the part early," Owen adds, because "it sounds so easy on the record, but it's so difficult" to play live.

When it comes to difficult, coming up with orchestral arrangements for the 30 Beatles songs in the Classical Mystery Tour repertoire took some doing, he says.

When Owen first "decided to get this show together" in the 1990s, he contacted George Martin, the Beatles' legendary producer, to see if he would allow them to rent "the original charts and film scores," Owen recalls.

Martin's representatives "declined - very politely," so Owen hired an orchestrator to re-create them.

It took six to nine months for orchestrator Martin Herman (who often conducts Classical Mystery Tour performances) to come up with note-by-note transcriptions of "the first round of 24 to 25 charts," Owen says.

Among the most difficult: "A Day in the Life," which took Herman "a couple of tries," according to Owen. "He went and redid it, trying to re-create the nuances" on the recording.

Rounding out Classical Mystery Tour's Fab Four: Tony Kishman as McCartney, John Brosnan as Harrison and Chris Camilleri as Starr. (Owen and Kishman previously toured in "Beatlemania," while Camilleri founded the Beatles cover band Liverpool and Brosnan has performed with various Beatles shows.)

"All of us in the group are definitely Beatles fans," Owen notes, but "when I was very young, I only knew classical music," he says. (He started studying piano at age 6 - and, two years later, first heard the Beatles, which prompted him to add guitar to his musical studies.)

Because Owen discovered the Beatles at "such a young age," he explains, the notion of blending Beatles music and classical music "kind of comes naturally."

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.