Richmond Symphony heads down to New Orleans without leaving Grace Street

On Friday, Oct. 30, Byron Stripling leads the Richmond Symphony's second Pops program of the season, a night of New Orleans jazz, blues and gospel at the Carpenter Theatre.

Some nights at the Carpenter Theatre are about hushed attention and a program note you read twice. This Friday the plan runs the other way. The house is built to finish with a whole room on its feet for one song everybody already knows.

The Richmond Symphony brings *When the Saints Go Marchin' In* to the Carpenter Theatre at Dominion Energy Center on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. Doors open an hour before showtime. Byron Stripling leads the program. The orchestra bills it as an evening of New Orleans jazz, blues and gospel that "captures the heart and soul of a uniquely American sound," and it closes, as the title promises, on "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." Tickets are on sale through the symphony and the Dominion Energy Center.

It's the second show of the orchestra's 2026–27 Pops series. That subscription also carries *Let It Snow!* and a *Rodgers & Hammerstein* program later in the season. If you've been on the fence about signing up for the main classical series, the symphony's Symphony Series subscription page currently lists this concert as a free extra for new subscribers. That's worth a look before you buy a single ticket.

The Pops nights are one half of a season that already showed its range in September. The Symphony Series opened Sept. 19–20 at the Carpenter with *Bernstein, Foley & Still*: Bernstein's *Candide* Overture, artist-in-residence Xavier Foley playing his own bass concerto *Soul Bass*, and William Grant Still's Symphony No. 1, "Afro-American." A season that opens with Still and a living bassist-composer, then turns a month later to the music that came up the river from New Orleans, is telling a fairly consistent story about American sound. The Pops series is the version of that story you can clap along to.

Nobody in town needs to be told that the Richmond Symphony is a hometown act. Even so, the numbers are striking. Our records count 299 Richmond Symphony shows in Richmond, more than in any other market. Most of them happen in rooms like this one, the restored downtown theater the orchestra treats as home. That familiarity is part of why a Pops night works here. People in the seats know the hall, know the players, and know the night isn't going to be stiff.

A program that ends on "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" isn't asking you to sit still.

If you only make one orchestra date before the holidays, there are good arguments for a night of Mahler or Beethoven. There's also a good argument for taking somebody who has never been to the symphony. Show them that the same musicians can swing a blues and then raise the roof on a gospel number. Friday is that kind of night.

Get downtown early. Grace Street fills fast on a show night, and you'll want the extra hour after the doors open. Then stay for the last tune. That's the one the whole evening has been building to.

Sources: Richmond Symphony — Pops (richmondsymphony.com); Richmond Symphony — Pops calendar (richmondsymphony.com); Richmond Symphony — 2026-27 Pops Series Subscriptions (richmondsymphony.com); Richmond Symphony — 2026-27 Symphony Series Subscription (richmondsymphony.com); Dominion Energy Center — When the Saints Go Marchin' In (dominionenergycenter.com); Dominion Energy Center — Carpenter Theatre (dominionenergycenter.com); Richmond CultureWorks calendar — Bernstein, Foley & Still (calendar.richmondcultureworks.org)