Traffic-stopping overture for Jerry’s kids

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

It was a bizarre request - even for Las Vegas.

Comedian Jerry Lewis' people call the Las Vegas Philharmonic's people. They want to know whether Lewis can conduct the orchestra playing the overture to Leonard Bernstein's "Candide." The performance would open the "Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon" on Labor Day.

Throwing together the orchestra's 80 musicians? No problem.

The time and location? A shocker. Lewis wants it done at 2:30 a.m. on the Strip: the southbound lanes of Las Vegas Boulevard.

Tuxedos, gowns, instruments, stands.

But it happens. Metro shuts down traffic. Musicians arrive, drink complimentary coffee and mingle on the warm asphalt. Some complain.

"There was some kvetching," says Chris Davis, contra bass player, who was up for the adventure. "It was late. It was hot."

But, cellist Robin Reinarz explains, "They had a nice setup: cool drinks, coffee, fresh pastries. Even cereal."

The telethon's production crew arranges and delivers everything: chairs, stands, even the percussion instruments. Richard McGee, associate conductor for the Las Vegas Philharmonic, likens it to the Normandy invasion: Trucks arrive at once and unload in 30 minutes. The musicians, who are watching from the sidewalk, file into their seats and run through the piece several times to the version they had recorded earlier at UNLV's Ham Hall - sans honking traffic and helicopters overhead.

The 80-year-old Lewis, who has worked with the group during the rehearsal runs, looks a little tired when he returns in his tuxedo. He takes his baton and - in a slightly comic fashion - conducts the overture, which he has also conducted with the Tucson Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. Spotlights on the walkway over the musicians shine brightly. A portable air conditioner cools Lewis. They nail it in one take.

Shortly after 4 a.m., the musicians are on their way home.

"It was very weird, but a lot of fun," McGee says. "There were a lot of surreal moments that night. A lot of people got there early. All these people were standing on the corner of Flamingo and the Strip in their tuxedos and evening gowns.

"The fear was that nobody would show up. But everybody did."

Reinarz, a private music teacher whose husband Karl plays viola with the orchestra, admits that she originally thought: "You gotta be kidding. Two-thirty in the morning? No way."

But, she says, "it's national exposure. It's for Jerry Lewis and it's for a good cause."

To make it happen, she and her husband wake at midnight, slip into their performance clothes - she in her concert black, he in his tuxedo - and drive from their Summerlin home to the Barbary Coast.

Davis, who also performs for "Phantom: Las Vegas Spectacular" at the Venetian, is already awake: "We get done about midnight. I had my monkey suit in my car."

For Davis, the most bizarre moment was sitting in the bass section in the far left-hand turn lane, facing the Bellagio.

McGee, who was honored that the Philharmonic was asked, says he was amazed that Metro shut down the Strip for three hours.

"I think Jerry Lewis was one of the few people who could ask for that and get it."