Needham’s Great Hall Concert Series Returns
September 3, 2025
• A 1970s pop rock band, a Boston-based chorale group, Broadway mainstays and a fiddler will grace the Needham stage over the next few months.
Across his 53-year musical career, Lance Hoppen has chronicled the highs and lows — nearly topping the charts with hits like “Still the One” and “Dance with Me” in the 1970s, touring 200 days out of the year, falling apart and coming back together again.
Hoppen, now 71, is “the last of the originals holding the fort, carrying the legacy forward,” he said. But his passion for making music and putting on a show brings him to Needham, where he and the latest Orleans arrangement will perform as part of the Great Hall Performance Foundation’s concert series.
Their return to Greater Boston follows a series of memorable performances. Orleans played on the Esplanade with Heart and Burton Cummings back in 1977 for more than 100,000 people, Hoppen recalled, and they opened for Bob Marley and the Wailers at Paul’s Mall. The band also cut an album in Harvard Square, where they have frequently played over the years.
“The Boston area has been a real stronghold for Orleans,” Hoppen said, “and we’re happy to come back.”
The ’70s pop rock group will take the stage Nov. 1, following a now sold-out show featuring Tony Award nominee Andrea McArdle and musician and radio host Seth Rudetsky on Sept. 20. The Cantata Singers, a Boston choral music group, will perform March 14, and American fiddler Eileen Ivers will close the series on May 2. All shows will take place in Powers Hall.
Since championing the Town Hall restoration, the Great Hall Performance Foundation has hosted concerts since 2012, featuring a range of artists and genres. Michael Greis, co-president of the foundation, said mariachi artist Veronica Robles in particular made an impression on audiences last year.
“That is actually one of my favorite things about doing this… because you’re not paying that much, you’re getting four artists that you might not think to see,” Greis said. “The best experience I always have is people come out of concerts and say, ‘Wow, I never heard of so and so, and this was great.’”
Broadway is always a hit in Needham, Greis said, and the foundation each year looks to host “popular music of the last generation.” Celtic music fits their miscellaneous slot and brings a “lively energy,” and the Cantata Singers round out their series with their classical stylings, he said.
Cantata refers to 15-25-minute musical pieces that contain smaller movements within, explained Noah Horn, the group’s music director. The Boston-based singers formed in 1964 to perform such pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, who has more than 200 cantatas in his catalogue, though they now sing a range of music.
For their Needham concert, however, the group will tap into its roots to perform Bach’s St. John Passion, a piece that recounts the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. While the piece dates back 300 years, Horn said its narrative — “how one person was thinking and speaking differently… and they punished him for it” — still resonates.
“I think the music asks you to reflect on that in a more direct way and a more sustained way. And yet I think there’s a lot of hope,” he said. “It’s not all, shall we say, downhill in that there’s a yearning, a hoping to do better, to treat everyone better and make a better world in this music.”
At least 50 vocalists will appear on stage — or in front of the stage, if they can’t fit, Horn said — and the group is made up almost entirely of Greater Boston residents. The acoustics of the Needham Town Hall play a big role, he said, and they look forward to performing in the space.
Such an intimate space is equally appealing to Orleans, who are accustomed to large-scale venues. But Hoppen said the smaller crowd will play into their own storytelling and audience interaction.
Orleans will play through their old hits, deep cuts and newer releases that will both appease fans and recount their arc over the years, Hoppen said.
“It really helps. It really enhances the show,” he said of the venue. “It’s kind of like a play, it unfolds. It’s a beginning, a middle and an end, and people get it, and everybody goes home happy.”
Echoing Greis’s comments, Horn encouraged attendees to step outside their comfort zone and experience music that inspires and lifts your spirits.
“I think the combination of the beauty and the music and the message is something that’s really hard to find anywhere else, and especially experiencing this live is so different,” he said, “when you see the faces of all of the 50 people bringing this to life and the passion that they have for it, no pun intended.”
Michael Greis is a member of the Needham Community Television Development Corporation, the board that oversees the Needham Channel and Needham Local. The NCTDC did not contribute to the reporting or editing of this article.
