Jan 12, 2018 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

Your take on Bob Dylan just might match that of singer Mary Kay Gottermeyer.

“I always enjoyed a lot of his songs,” the Bethel Park resident said. “But being a little more on the musical end of things, I haven’t always enjoyed his voice that much.”

She will be among those replacing the Nobel Prize winner’s trademark nasal twang for the majesty of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh during the world premiere of the oratorio “The Times They Are A-Changin’: The Words and Music of Bob Dylan,” scheduled for Jan. 25-28 at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale.

If you’re used to hearing Dylan with just his acoustic guitar and harmonica, the performance represents quite a departure.

“You’re going to hear it fleshed out quite a bit with a hundred-voice plus choir,” Gottermeyer, a soprano who has sung with the Mendelssohn since 1986, said. “I think it will give it kind of a beauty you haven’t heard in it before.”

The oratorio’s composer, Steve Hackman, will serve as conductor, continuing a relationship with the choir highlighted by his collaboration for the headlining performance at the Three Rivers Arts Festival in 2016.

“It’s always exciting to work with Steve, because he’s such a creative and skilled arranger,” Mendelssohn assistant conductor and Mt. Lebanon resident Ryan Keeling said, observing about the Dylan piece: “I think trying to do a project like this could go really badly if you have the wrong type of an arranger, who doesn’t know both idioms really well.

Hackman specializes in combining classical and popular repertoire for musical “mashups.” Examples include Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia,” Brahms’ First Symphony with Radiohead’s “OK Computer,” and the Dies irae from Mozart’s “Requiem in D minor” with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”

“I think it’s so wonderful for him to combine the old-school composers with these modern artists and more contemporary artists,” Mr. Smalls owner and Rusted Root vocalist Liz Berlin said. “The composers were the ‘rock stars’ of that day. To take that magic and bring it up into the present, and merge it with the magic that happened in the ’60s and the magic that’s happening now, I think it’s groundbreaking work, and I’m super excited to watch it.”

Berlin, whose parents sang in the Mendelssohn Choir, also likes the idea of tapping Dylan’s extensive musical catalog.

“I think that his messages are just as relevant today as they ever were, if not more,” she said, “and it’s excellent to see his music being taken to other audiences and merged with other musical genres.”

Another soprano in the choir, Amelia D’Arcy of Mt. Lebanon, said she is impressed with Hackman’s efforts to emphasize the lyrical content.

“You can see that he’s really showing tremendous respect for the words and for the text,” she said. “Each setting is completely different and really is a work of art in its own right. He never really allows the movement of the melody to take over from the text, as he might have done.”

The oratorio as performed will draw on 14 Dylan compositions, and D’Arcy complimented the manner in which Hackman interconnects them.

“It’s almost like each movement has its own pulse and beat and drive, and is like a highway or a road or a country lane, and they’re all sort of coming together,” she said, referencing examples such as the laid-back approach of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and the grander scale of “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Then there’s the proto-rap of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which D’Arcy likened to “sort of like your urban alley.”

“He’s telling stories in his poetry, and so his songs are telling stories,” she explained. “And they really take you from one place to another.”

Keeling credits Mendelssohn Choir director and Upper St. Clair native Matthew Mehaffey with looking for ways to draw a wider audience for the ensemble.

“That’s something Matthew is really interested in and does well, which is programming high-quality and well-performed music, but finding new markets and people who probably have heard of the Mendelssohn, if they live in Pittsburgh, but have never gone to a Mendelssohn concert before,” Keeling said. “That’s one of his great strengths, I think.”

For more information, visit www.themendelssohn.org and www.mrsmalls.com.