Toledo Symphony

Beyond Toledo live four musicians. By casting wonderful spells, they turn the most ordinary night with the orchestra into a “Classical Mystery Tour.” If you let yourself go, the musicians will take you away ...

The musicians are Jim Owen (John Lennon), Tony Kishman (Paul McCartney), Tom Teeley (George Harrison) and Chris Camilleri (Ringo Starr). This fantastic foursome from the Broadway show “Beatlemania” will perform the songs of the Fab Four with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and conductor Chelsea Tipton II.

“It's a rare opportunity; it's the reason we're doing this — The Beatles were such an incredible group, and they don't perform anymore,” Owen said from his home in Huntington Beach, Calif. “It's fun and exciting to imagine you're at a Beatles concert.”

Owen grew up in California surrounded by classical music. But that changed when he was 8 years old.

“My aunt came up from New York. She came to stay with us for a couple years, so she brought her record collection, and I started to hear a lot of ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n' roll,” he said. “And one day she put on ‘Meet The Beatles,' and when I heard that, it was different from everybody else and I basically stopped in my tracks and said, ‘Who are those guys?'

“That was about 1973, which was interesting because they had already broken up,” Owen said. “Then from there out, every Christmas or birthday I had to get a new Beatles record.”

Then he got a guitar — and continued taking piano lessons.

At 18, he joined an international tour of “Beatlemania.”

“The first time I went on stage wearing a Beatles costume — I was playing George — I was quite nervous about it because we all know and love the Beatles music so well,” Owen said. “But then you quickly get the hang of it and then once you do, it's such an incredibly enjoyable thing to be able to re-create that music.”

It was natural for Owen to merge his musical loves.

“I had a friend who played saxophone, and I kept trying to get him to fill in with us and just play some riffs from ‘Lady Madonna' or something for fun,” he said. “And that idea of bringing one live player up to fill in with us quickly turned into getting all live players to re-create this stuff.”

That was 1996. The current lineup has been performing with symphonies for about seven years, he said.

“I think the fun of doing the show is to be as exact to the originals as possible. Whatever we've heard on the original Beatles recording, we try to re-create it with the instruments they used,” Owen said. “A song like ‘Yesterday' is a perfect example. They used a string quartet. ‘I Am the Walrus' with all the cellos and the French horns is another example.”

“Classical Mystery Tour” will be performed with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. Oct. 20, at Stranahan Theater. Tickets are $50, $45, $35 and $22.