Two classic-rock music fans will have the opportunity to sit onstage during Riverbend’s Mystery Rock Revue, featuring the Waybacks, Joan Osborne and John Cowan with the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera on June 13 during the Riverbend Festival. The winners also will be given a hotel room for the night at The Chattanoogan.
The musicians will be performing a classic-rock album, which will not be revealed until the first note is played, in its entirety during the show. Between now and June 10, fans can go to fyi.timesfreepress.com and guess which album will be performed.
Participants who guess the correct album will be put into a pool, and one winner will be chosen. That person will receive two Riverbend pins and the special seating and hotel room.
In addition, one person will be selected each week (a total of four) from all participants and will be given a pair of admission pins. A different clue will be included in a promotional ad appearing in the next four Friday FYI Weekend sections (beginning May 14) that will help narrow the list of possible answers.
The Waybacks are a San Francisco-based “jamgrass” band that have done fullscale versions of classic-rock albums in the past, including “Led Zeppelin II,” but not with a symphony. Osborne is perhaps best known for her hit “One of Us.” Cowan is a vocalist who founded the Newgrass Revival.
Friends of the Festival has commissioned Nashville artist Jim Gray to create the charts specifically for the show.
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” said Talent and Production Coordinator Joe “Dixie” Fuller. “We think it is going to be really special.”
CSO Music Director and Conductor Robert Bernhardt said he is excited to be a part of this symphony first, pointing out that both the symphony and the guest artists will be stretching their usual boundaries by doing a rock show.
“It’s an excitement of a different sort,” he said. “It is being built and not a show that is coming all complete with staging and charts. In this case, the orchestral charts are being created literally as we speak.
“It’s going to be – I don’t want to overstate this, but – a virtuoso display of individual effort and teamwork. I hope it will be an evening long remembered.”