Barry Manilow says he's thrilled to sing before a full orchestra in Atlantic City

POP QUIZ time:

What's the hippest show this summer at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall?

A. Lady Gaga.

B. Black Eyed Peas.

C. Barry Manilow.

Take a bow if you answered C.

The beloved crooner's Caesars Atlantic City-sponsored show on Saturday night at the historic oceanside auditorium is the coolest gig because it is far and away the most exclusive. While Gaga and the Peas are in the midst of full-blown, multiple-city tours, Manilow's program is the only one he's doing on the East Coast this year and, as you read this, the only one of its kind even scheduled.

"A couple of months ago I did the Hollywood Bowl for the very first time. We did it with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, and it was one of the thrills of my life. I would put it up there in the top two of my life," said Manilow during a recent phone call.

"To hear my arrangements played by 75 talented musicians . . . When these musicians started to play the arrangements, "Even Now" and ['Copacabana'] and all the hits . . . it just brought me to my knees. I said to my manager, 'If you can [book] another night like this, I'd be happy to leave [his residency at the Paris casino-hotel in Las Vegas] for that night and do it. The first one we got was the New York Pops in Atlantic City."

Manilow rhapsodized about the experience of hearing his formidable canon of hits recreated by an army of symphonic instruments. "It's like floating. I can barely sing," he offered. "As beautiful as the arrangement is, you can't imagine what it sounds like with real string players, and real harps and oboes. It's like hearing it for the first time. Sometimes I forget to sing."

Traveling clear across the country for a one-night stand with a full orchestra seems a bit extravagant, not to mention inconvenient. But the 67-year-old pop titan, whose latest CD is "The Greatest Love Songs of All Time" (Arista), explained he's happy to do it because, unlike past tours, this show won't emphasize nonmusical elements.

"There's not very much production . . . it's all about the music," he said. "There will be some beautiful lighting, but it's not a big production with props and stuff like that. It really is all about these musicians on stage with me."

With hundreds of songs from which to choose, one would think selecting the repertoire for orchestral performances would be difficult for the singer-composer-pianist who famously wrote commercial jingles before becoming singer Bette Midler's musical director in the early 1970s. But, Manilow suggested, it was really a piece of cake, because he never lost sight of his audience's needs and desires.

"I would go for 30 [songs]. I think 30 is a good number. After 30, you're going to the album cuts, and I think the audience will get tired."

He added that he wasn't worried about any of the songs not being appropriate for the symphonic treatment.

"Because I've been making songs and records like this for so many years, all of them work, all of them. From the little 'When October Goes' to the huge 'I Write the Songs,' they all work beautifully."

Incidentally, unlike other stars who need arrangers, Manilow did his own charts using computer software. "It's a lot of fun," he said. "That's what I did for Bette. That's what I did for [the singers] I played with before I became a recording artist. That was gonna be my life."

For so many of Manilow's contemporaries, be they pop or rock artists, a common trick has been to compensate for the passage of time by lowering the keys of their songs. Manilow boasted he hasn't yet needed to do that.

"If I have a good monitor guy - thank God, I do - my voice stays alive as long as I want it to. I don't even warm up."

He claimed that's because "I don't consider myself a singer. I consider myself a musician. The singing part always surprises me. It always surprises me that anybody likes that part.

"I've always believed . . . I connect with an audience. I'm an acting singer. Even if my voice goes away, what I try to do is tell the story of the song. If you do that, I think [the audience] forgives you if you can't hit the high notes."

It can be assumed that Manilow, who said he's fully recovered from several hip operations during the past few years, isn't coming to Atlantic City in search of a big jackpot. Besides having to pay the members of the New York Pops, his own band and the crew it takes to mount such an extravaganza, he has pledged a chunk of change for a cause near and dear to his heart: helping fund music programs in eight Atlantic City public schools.

"Over the last four years I realized the government is cutting the music classes [from public schools]. It's just killing me," he said. "When I speak to the music directors and principals of various schools, they tell me the music classes keep [students] coming back, and that if they didn't have music classes, they doubt very much if the children would come back."

This concern, he insisted, isn't just a case of trying to be a celebrity do-gooder. Instead, it stems from his own life.

"I don't know where I would have been without the music classes," said the Brooklyn, N.Y., native. "I wasn't very good at sports, I really wasn't Mr. Personality, but I joined the orchestra. I didn't join a gang, I joined the orchestra. The orchestra was my gang, and it made me a better person."

Boardwalk Hall, Boardwalk at Florida Avenue, 8 p.m. Saturday, $255, $155, $95 and $65, 800-736-1420, www.ticketmaster.com.