1812 Overture w/ LIVE CANNON BLASTS, dedicated to Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops

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Happy 4th of July everyone! My favorite part of every Independence Day? The 1812 Overture played with synchronized LIVE CANNON BLASTS, here dedicated to the longtime conductor of the Boston Pops who started this grand tradition, Arthur Fiedler, by their current music director, Keith Lockhart.

My brief internet research suggests Arthur Fiedler started this annual tradition going back to at least 1974, and it was broadcast nationally for the bicentennial celebration in 1976. This TV broadcast on WBZ (a CBS affiliate) was in 2012, I believe.

Not sure if it is still true, but in some years the signaler who gives the instruction for the cannons to fire was Arthur Fiedler’s son! A touching continuance of this great tradition.

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16 thoughts on “1812 Overture w/ LIVE CANNON BLASTS, dedicated to Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops”

  3. God bless Maestro Fiedler’s soul. I am sad tonight, … no… more liked broken-hearted that I cannot be home in Boston tonight to see the Pops and the fireworks live .. is been a few years that I have not been able to be near home or in my hometown of Newburyport because of my mothers health and Covid lockdowns etc.

    But finding this wonderful dedication of the 1812 Overture to a great BOSTON music legend I met when I was in my 20s (thanks to my mothers spunk in sneaking us into the reception after the Pops played at the Lowell auditorium.

    She walked by the doorway after the concert a couple of times, looking in to survey the situation. Eventually she said to me and her friend Mary whatever I do, just follow me. On the third pass by the door to the reception, she took a quick right …we both followed.

    She went straight to the champagne fountain filled up champagne flute and we both did the same. Three times in a row. We filled the champagne flute and downed that delicious bubbly beverage before she was able to calm down and realize that we were actually in the party.

    Before it was over, we made our way towards our hero. We actually ended up having a private audience with maestro Fiedler. As he sipped on his Turkey, my mother told him the story of how when my dad and her had first married, they lived in an apartment on Park Drive behind Fenway Park, where the Red Sox play she had tickets to go to the Pops on a regular basis, but that particular week she was due to give birth to me her first child, and only child, but told my dad Paul that she was going to go to the concert anyway because she felt fine.

    Maestro Fiedler looked at her and said, and so Josephine what happened was she born right afterwards?

    To which my mother replied “no, she was three weeks late” to which I added” I’ve been catching up ever since!”

    We all had a good laugh, he gave us trays of food to take home, and a bouquet of roses that had been given to him, it was a very memorable experience and now here I am my mom passed a little over a year ago at 99 years old here in Florida and I am ready to go home with her ashes and lay her to rest south of Boston.

    Meanwhile here I sit on tye beach at Lake Worth, Florida under the almost full moon, watching the Pops perform one of my favorite pieces of music. I miss New England, miss Boston and my home in Newburyport and can’t wait to get my suitcases, food, and paperwork packed up and point my SUV towards New England.

    My birthday is in two days and I can’t wait to get the heck out of South Florida for a while. I need to get back to nature I’m back to my Plum Island beach and my family.

    God bless you, Mr. Fiedler and Mom & Dad

    I’m sure you are all having a conversation over some wild turkey and champagne right about now watching me on the beach …crying and singing, along with the Pops choir as the howitzers explode along the banks of the Charles river.

    “Cuz I Love that Dirty Water. . Boston your my home!!!” As the lyrics of that 1965 song by the Standells goes.

    Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Bostonians and the rest of America. 🇺🇸💥👍

    Time to go home and get something to eat and to light some sparklers in honor of my dad
    The moonlight has been spectacular.

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  7. Thank you for posting this. I was blessed to attend a performance by The Boston Pops under the direction of Arthur Fiedler on July 4th 1978 or 79 Ithink – I went by myself a year after my parents had gone with my sister Pam who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1976 and she was getting a shunt placed to drain fluid off her brain that bicentennial year – and when I couldn’t go with my family a year after she started treatment for her brain tumor, because I had to work, the following year I did go, by myself and I stood on a ledge of a pole and cried my way through this amazing performance – I cried – because I love my country, I loved growing up in Ludlow MA and going to school in Boston- and will be forever grateful for the one time I saw Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Miss you mom, dad and Pam. See you in heaven someday I hope.

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  8. Just substitute the Hymne de l'OTAN for the Marseillaise and envision Russia's glorious victory over the NATO-pawn Ukronazi-scum and you got yourself an anthem!
    Hat's off to Lockhart and the Pops for performing Tchaikovsky for two years running in the midst of the vile ongoing anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

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  11. An annual performance of a piece of music by a great Russian composer Tchaikovsky glorifying the might of Russia following the victory of the Russian Army over Napoleon – and performed on the 4th of July – truly an example of a Freudian slip)

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