Guthrie’s move to symphony a heartwarming surprise

You can picture Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant. You can picture Arlo Guthrie in a folk festival. But Arlo Guthrie in a tux? Arlo Guthrie with a symphony orchestra? Arlo Guthrie in a tux with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra?

Whoa, what a concept.

Indeed, nearly two years ago, that scene was the brainchild of John Nardolillo, a classically trained musician and conductor who snuck backstage at one of Guthrie’s concerts to pitch the idea. With 30 years of folkosity under his belt, as well as a few stints as a TV star, Guthrie, it turns out, was looking for a new outlet for his creativity.

That concept turned into “An American Songbook,” a program combining American symphonic music and folk classics by Guthrie, his father, Woody Guthrie, and other seminal folk figures. The world premiere of the show occurred Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts, where just under a thousand concert goers participated in a little bit of American music history as well as a most heartwarming, feel-good concert.

Nardolillo held the baton for the evening and directed members of the Bangor Symphony in pert renditions of Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide,” the first movement of Hershey Kay’s “Cakewalk Suite,” and several sections from Aaron Copland’s ballet “Rodeo.” Concertmistress was Nardolillo’s sister Jo, whose occasional solo work was finely crafted with a light touch.

Halfway through the first half of the program, Guthrie arrived onstage in concert blacks (in cowboy boots and no tie, naturally) with long, English barrister-style white hair rippling down his back. At the piano, he began with the Steve Goodman hit “City of New Orleans,” which is one of Guthrie’s signature tunes. Although the audience was a mix of old-timers and newcomers, there must have been a lot of people going through historical recall about where they were when this song was playing the first time around.

“Who would-a thought?” Guthrie said dryly when the song was over — referring to the seemingly oxymoronic scene.

And it’s true: Who would-a thought, all these years and political issues later, that Guthrie would bring the looseness of folk and the tightness of classical music together for a concert that inched its way toward pops but really was a format altogether new and slightly mind-boggling?

For nearly two hours, Guthrie regaled the audience with symphonic arrangements of songs that made and have kept him a major folk force through the years. He played “Darkest Hour,” “Streets of Laredo,” “Last Train,” and his famous motorcycle ditty. “You Are the Song,” a love ballad by the actor Charlie Chaplin, was about as sweet as you’d ever want a song to get in public. Unless you did “This Land Is Your Land,” written by Woody Guthrie. After having performed this song throughout his life, you’d think the younger Guthrie might crack under the volume of its weight. But he sang with an integrity that was artistic and emotional — and not likely to be forgotten by anyone who heard and sang along with him.

Guthrie also amused the audience with his infamous shaggy-dog tales, including one about his father being immortalized in a postage stamp this year. “He worked his entire life against being respectable,” said Guthrie. And joshingly added: “This comes as a stunning defeat.”

Great excitement overtook the audience during three encores in which Guthrie and the symphony played a drop-dead darling version of the Huddy Ledbetter-John Lomax tune “Goodnight Irene.” Guthrie also recited “Mooses Come Walking,” one in a series of wry moose poems he’s writing. In the final encore, he wowed the audience with the blues song “Keys to the Highway,” for which he played a wind-out guitar solo accompanied eventually by pianist Jamie Burton.

“It’s been very nice, embarrassingly nice,” said Guthrie of the Maine premiere. “I never thought I’d see me looking like I do at this moment. I feel like my dad — this is a stunning defeat for me.”

By which, of course, he meant success. Guthrie’s music doesn’t really need symphonic backing, and more than a few people might have longed to hear just his guitar and his nasal vocals, which were too often overpowered by the orchestra. But as with the Beatles, who also played with an orchestra at one point, the broadness of the sound adds another level of imagination to the music. The result on Saturday was a smashing triumph, a meeting of low and high, improvised and studied, organic and ornate. It was also among the most raucously enjoyed concerts in recent Maine Center history. The show moves on to other venues with other orchestras now, and will undoubtedly make its mark as one of those truly American moments in music history.