Beatles Guitar Project revisits 1967 in Santa Rosa concert

Where were you in 1967?

Benjamin McClara’s mom, a major Beatles fan, was listening to that year’s new albums by the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” released in the U.S. in June, and “Magical Mystery Tour” in November.

Now you can hear both albums played live, in their entirety, by a 50-piece orchestra led by McClara and featuring both professional musicians and student players in “The Beatles 1967” on Nov. 12 at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.

“My mom saw the Beatles at the Cow Palace in 1964, when she was 16,” McClara said. Her devotion carried on to 1967 and beyond.

McClara, 46, grew up in the ’90s listening to Phish and Primus, but he also became a lifelong admirer of the Beatles’ music. He has scored and arranged their music for the students at his Sacramento Preparatory Music Academy, founded in 2015 and now serving 350 students.

He started his Beatles Guitar Project the following year and taught his students to play the contents of entire Beatles albums for fundraising concerts for his school, which needed renovations, and for other schools’ music programs.

“We had come up with the idea for an extravaganza guitar concert,” McClara said. “We knew a lot of the Beatles albums, and one student said, ‘We know almost all of the “Sgt. Pepper” album.’”

McClara joins roughly a dozen of his guitar students with a full orchestra including strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, guitar, bass, keyboards, and lead and backup singers.

“We feature students two at a time on different songs throughout the show,” he explained. “What the audience experiences is a professional orchestra.”

The orchestra is made up of Sacramento-area professionals who frequently perform throughout the region.

Since the first benefit show in 2016, the Beatles Guitar Project students have learned all the songs from six Beatles albums: “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” “The Beatles” (better-known as “The White Album”) and “Abbey Road.”

For the Luther Burbank Center concert, McClara plans to include all the Beatles’ 1967 releases, both singles and albums, plus extra songs with various release dates around that time.

“It’s the 55th anniversary of 1967,” he noted.

So the show will open with “Paperback Writer” and “Rain,” followed by “Sgt. Pepper.” The second part of the show will start with “All Together Now” and George Harrison’s “Only a Northern Song,” leading into “Magical Mystery Tour.” The encores will include “Lady Madonna,” “Revolution” and “Hey Bulldog.”

“For somebody who was young in 1967, like my mom, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” McClara said.

As creator of the Beatles Guitar Project, McClara aims for more than just nostalgia. He wants audiences to experience classic Fab Four tunes played by a full orchestra, while giving students a rare experience.

Other acts have performed whole Beatles albums, and tribute shows abound, but McClara finds those shows lacking.

“It’s always four guys in wigs who show up in your town and say, ‘We’re the Fabulous Fabs from Los Angeles.’ Cover bands are what they are,” he said. “We would never do that. It’s so cheesy.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.