Pop Music Reviews : An Updated ‘Messiah’ Manhandled in Anaheim

The idea of the “Young Messiah Tour” is to lift Handel’s “Messiah” from its classical pedestal and bring it to fans of contemporary Christian pop in a modernized form that combines a rock rhythm section with orchestra and chorus.

Reverential hands did the lifting Thursday night at the Anaheim Convention Center--which proved to be a mixed blessing.

For the 11 soloists, stars of the Christian pop world, the “Messiah” presumably is foremost an expression of deeply felt core beliefs, not just a cultural monument of some 250 years’ standing. That religious reverence was all to the good: it made for peak passages full of passion and immediacy--notably from top-billed Sandi Patti.

Still, this “Messiah” (at 68 minutes, it was resequenced, and pared down by more than half from the original by producer Norman Miller) could have used a dash of iconoclasm. There was a certain stiffness in the singers’ bearing, as if they didn’t want to commit any lapses of decorum in the face of a classic. Nobody cut loose on the cross-shaped, poinsettia-festooned stage set up in the middle of the arena.

The use of rock instrumentation (drums, digital keyboards and electric guitar augmented a locally-recruited 40-piece orchestra and a 200-voice choir) was far too reverential: not toward Handel, certainly, but toward the dull pop conventions it preserved.

The best vocal passages more than made up for those instrumental lapses. Patti brought a soaring, dignified voice and a commanding, unforced presence to her two emotionally weighty solos. Phil Driscoll was a soulful, Joe Cocker sound-alike.