Looking for a new way to spend Saturday morning with the kids? Try the Charlotte Symphony's Lollipops concerts. Actors, mimes or other performers join the orchestra to take young people on storytelling adventures.
At around an hour, they're a congenial length. And they introduce kids to the world of the orchestra. This season's series opens Saturday morning with a new twist on a children's classic.
A WOLF IN THE CONCERT HALL The Magic Circle Mime Company, which subjected the Belk Theater to an extra-terrestrial invasion in "The Orchestra from Planet X," confronts another invader in its version of "Peter and the Wolf." The troupe transplants Sergei Prokofiev's beloved tale from a country meadow to a theater, where a wolf barges in and threatens the orchestra and audience. Peter, the conductor's assistant, helps three musicians fight back at the furry menace.
FESTIVAL OF MUSIC Beginning at 10 a.m., an hour before the concert, a preconcert festival in the Belk's lobby starts warming up the young people for what they're going to hear.
At the Musical Petting Zoo, the kids can get close to the instruments they'll soon see onstage. They can scrape on strings, toot on horns and bang on drums. Another exhibit introduces music to preschoolers.
Then Peter's adventures begin at 11 a.m. COMING UP The orchestra will have three more Lollipops programs this season.
Seemore Goodstuff, the adventurous little elephant from WTVI-Ch. 42, will come to the Belk with his pals Nov. 3.
They'll go exploring in the orchestra to figure out how such beautiful music comes from such funny-looking instruments. The U.S.
Naval Academy Men's Glee Club will arrive for a patriotic concert Jan. 19. And on April 5, a boy will encounter his new neighbor, a ornery man who spends a lot of time pounding on a piano, in "Beethoven Lives Upstairs.
" Tickets for each concert are $8-$20. AFTERWARD Lollipops concerts end around noon. By then, everybody's usually hungry.
There are kid-friendly places nearby to eat -- including Fuel pizza at College and Sixth streets and Brixx pizza at 225 E. 6th St. MEANWHILE, AT THE POPS Tonight and Saturday, the orchestra launches its Pops series with a return visit from Manhattan Transfer, famed since the 1970s for the smooth vocalism it has lavished on "Operator" and other hits.
Concerts are tonight and Saturday night at 8, at the Belk. Tickets: $16-$68. Next Friday, Grammy-winning pop diva Natalie Cole joins the orchestra for a one-night-only performance.
Cole's concert starts at 8 at Ovens Auditorium, 2700 E. Independence Blvd. Tickets: $32-$78.
MORE INFORMATION: 704-972-2000; www.charlottesymphony.org .
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