WASHINGTON, IL -- The Heartland Festival Orchestra's New Year's concert, on Jan. 9 at Five Points auditorium, was brilliant, as usual.
It's always a home town version of the great Vienna concert broadcast by PBS stations to celebrate New Year's Day, complete with falling balloons to close the event.
The guest artists, a song and dance team of Bev and Kirby Ward, performed beautifully. These polished performers with Broadway voices, sing and dance, both tap and ballroom.
The program consisted of a few traditional classical waltz numbers, but more Broadway pieces, classics from Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and others. Some were familiar, others not, but all were cleverly done by the Wards.
Kirby Ward proclaimed "Trouble" from The Music Man as the first rap number, and did it.
The orchestra created a great big band sound to accompany the pop numbers. All in all it was a highly entertaining concert.
-- Elaine Hopkins
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