SPECIAL HOLLYWOOD BOWL 2021 EDITION
MAGAZINE
THE BOWL IS BACK! Summer Sparkles with Stars as Live Music and Audiences Return
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S PE C I A L H O L L Y WOOD B OWL 2 02 1 E DI T I ON
TABLE OF CONTENTS 72
48
70 DEPARTMENTS
6 Publisher’s Note
58 50 A Bowl’s Tale
After a season of silence, the music is back at the Hollywood Bowl and around the country.
From meet-cute beginning to epic production, the Hollywood Bowl has never lost its heart in the community.
80 Parting Thought
54 The Stars Recall
Performances’ new program platform. FEATURES
8 Welcome Back to the Bowl The Hollywood Bowl is the perfect spot for stargazing this summer.
38 The Beat Goes On
The Bowl makes memories for the stars on stage as powerfully as it does for audience members.
58 Picnic Paradise The Bowl brings out the best for your basket from L.A.’s music-loving chefs.
Several generations of LA Phil family lead the orchestra at the Bowl.
62 Symphonies in the Key of Cuisine
48 Symphonic Summer Cinema
Food + Wine bring their creative culinary flair to the Bowl’s in-house food options.
Film favorites, from blockbusters to classic family fare, dazzle on the Bowl’s big screen.
2 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
38
66 Of Wine, Art, and Landscape Haute culture meets horticulture at the Donum estate in Sonoma, a vineyard that is part sculpture garden.
70 Tradition Meets Innovation A new era begins at The Ford, refreshing its deep roots in L.A.’s varied arts communities.
72 Summertime U.S.A. Summer festivals around the country are awakening with renewed vigor and inspiration.
78 A New Season Awaits L.A. music-lovers follow the LA Phil in its annual migration from the Hollywood Bowl to Walt Disney Concert Hall, where a new season awaits.
Clockwise from top left: Christina Aguilera, The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, Bramwell Tovey, Watermelon & Cucumber Salad, Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince™, and TAIKOPROJECT.
COVER: COURTESY OF THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC. THIS PAGE FROM TOP LEFT: MILAN ZRNIC, JENNA SELBY, DAVID COOPER, VIVIANE RESTAURANT, 2009 WARNER BROS. ENT., HARRY POTTER PUBLISHING RIGHTS ©JKR, KNOCKING BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
8
MAGAZINE
PUBLISHER
Jeff Levy EDITOR
John Henken ART DIRECTOR
Carol Wakano PRODUCTION COORDINATOR
Michail Sklansky PRODUCTION ARTIST
Diana Gonzalez DIGITAL MANAGER
Whitney Lauren Han ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
Walter Lewis ACCOUNT DIRECTORS
Kerry Baggett, Jean Greene, Tina Marie Smith CIRCULATION MANAGER
Christine Noriega-Roessler BUSINESS MANAGER
Leanne Killian Riggar MARKETING/PRODUCTION MANAGER
Dawn Kiko Cheng Contact Us
PUBLISHER Jeff.Levy@CaliforniaMediaGroup.com ADVERTISING Walter.Lewis@CaliforniaMediaGroup.com WEBSITE Whitney.Han@CaliforniaMediaGroup.com CIRCULATION Christine.Roessler@CaliforniaMediaGroup.com HONORARY PRESIDENT Ted Levy California Media Group 3679 Motor Ave., Suite 300 Los Angeles, CA 90034 Phone: 310.280.2880 / Fax: 310.280.2890 Visit Performances Magazine online at socalpulse.com Performances Magazine is published by California Media Group to serve performing-arts venues throughout the West. © 2021 California Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
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From the Publisher WE ARE THRILLED to bring this special Hollywood Bowl Season Preview edition of PERFORMANCES Magazine to our fellow subscribers and ticket holders. For the past 50 seasons, save one, Friday nights would always find my family in box 472, armed with a well-planned picnic, special libations, a couple of blankets, and our copy of the Hollywood Bowl Magazine. My father chose this box because it is on the left side where he could watch the pianist’s fingers during the solos. To me, I just wanted to be there with him. As the Bowl’s official program publisher, I am particularly excited to present this Season Preview Edition of PERFORMANCES Magazine—sent to you in cooperation with the LA Phil as a thank you for supporting the Bowl through your ticket purchases. Leaving the Bowl empty last summer was heartbreaking. Beneath the death and devastation of COVID-19, the sounds of silence have been an unsettling underscore, as music venues around the world closed their doors. We may never be completely rid of the pandemic, but there is at least sound at the end of the tunnel now, and it is the sound of summer music, with stars on the stage and stars (and fireworks!) in the sky. In the following pages, you will be reminded of some of the great artists and music that await us, and see some of the Bowl’s storied history. We also take a look at what will be going on at other venues, locally and around the country. So, dust off the picnic basket—it’s summertime and the music is back! See you at the Bowl…
Jeff Levy PUBLISHER
PERFORMANCES Magazine
6 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
RACHEL LEVY
Cordially,
September 9—October 2, 2021
Based on Aristophanes’s Lysistrata
Thursdays–Saturdays, 8:00 p.m.
Adapted and directed by Matt Walker
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Co-produced by Troubadour Theater Company
© 2021 J. Paul Getty Trust
Annual outdoor theater production at the Getty Villa Museum
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WELCOME BACK TO The New Season Delivers a Star-Studded Lineup for Audiences Young and Old
The roll call of legendary artists who have appeared at the Hollywood Bowl is a star-driven summary of the last 100 years of musical performance. As our look at some of this season’s artists—some well-established icons, others rising stars—suggests, here is a tradition that the next century at the Bowl promises to continue.
8 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
THE BOW L
SUMMER 2021 PERFORMANCES 9
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Christina Aguilera July 16 & 17 When Rolling Stone placed CHRISTINA AGUILERA on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2008 (she was the only artist under 30 on the list), the magazine wrote that she “has had the finesse and power of a blues queen ever since she was a child star.” She has won six Grammy® Awards (including a Latin Grammy) and sold over 43 million records worldwide. She has also starred in films (Burlesque) and on television (The Voice), and is much admired for her social and philanthropic activism. And like her collaborator at the Hollywood Bowl this summer, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Aguilera’s performances at the Bowl are her first after a hiatus during the pandemic, and also her first full concerts with an orchestra. “What a way to come home to the stage again!,” she recently posted on Instagram, along with photos of herself touring the Bowl stage. “We all deserve a night of celebration and fun under the beautiful sky together! Performing my songs in a magical setting accompanied by the LA Phil is a dream come true.”
10 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
PREVIOUS SPREAD: COURTESY LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC. THIS PAGE: MILAN ZRNIC. OPPOSITE: MAX MONTGOMERY
“Christina Aguilera with the LA Phil”
James Blake Sept 25 “James Blake with Orchestra”
British musician JAMES BLAKE is another do-it-all multi hyphenate: singer, songwriter, keyboardist, and producer. He studied piano as a child and earned a degree in Popular Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. He released three EPs before his self-titled album debut in 2011. He has since added three more albums, another EP, and several singles to his discography. He has collaborated as a singer, instrumentalist, and/or producer/ arranger with a number of artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, and Frank Ocean. Blake co-wrote and performed with Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar, and Future on the single “King’s Dead” from Black Panther: The Album, winning a Grammy®. Blake's North American tour in 2019 wound up at the Hollywood Palladium. This summer, he makes his Hollywood Bowl debut, adding conductor Thomas Wilkins and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to his stellar list of collaborators.
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Viola Davis July 15 One of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world (2012 and 2017) and one of The New York Times’ 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (2020), VIOLA DAVIS has had starring roles in the broadest possible repertory in stage, film, and television productions. She is the first African American and the youngest actor to compile the “Triple Crown” of acting, with an Oscar®, Emmy®, and two Tony® awards. A graduate of the Rhode Island College and Juilliard School theater departments, she has also won Obie, Golden Globe, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild, and Independent Spirit awards... well, most awards available for acting. She too has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, like her conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, and she has committed her voice and her platform to a number of equality and social justice issues. This summer at the Holly wood Bowl, Davis narrates Prokofiev’s sly fable Peter and the Wolf, an assignment that has attracted many of acting’s most iconic voices, ranging from Hermione Gingold, Sharon Stone, and Mia Farrow to Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lee, Sean Connery, and Boris Karloff, as well as famous musicians and political figures. This will be her Bowl debut, but Davis has worked with the LA Phil before at Walt Disney Concert Hall, notably in Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final concert as the orchestra’s music director in 2009.
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“Peter and the Wolf with Viola Davis & Dudamel"
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Cynthia Erivo July 30 “Cynthia Erivo with the LA Phil”
Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, British actress, singer, and songwriter CYNTHIA ERIVO first appeared on British television programs, and then in stage roles. She made her Broadway debut in the revival of
14 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
The Color Purple, for which she won a Tony® for Best Actress in a Musical; that show also won a Grammy® for Best Musical Theater Album. She starred in the title role of Harriet in 2019, garnering two Academy Award nominations, one as Best Actress and the other for Best Original Song, “Stand Up,” which she co-
wrote and sang in the film. Erivo portrayed Aretha Franklin in the third season of National Geographic’s series Genius. She makes her Bowl debut with a “Legendary Voices” program that pays tribute to Aretha and other great female singers and will include selections from her debut album,
Ch.1 vs. 1, which is due out in September. “In storytelling, chapter one and verse one is the way you always begin, and because I believe I’m a storyteller, that’s what I wanted to do with my music,” Erivo said. “That’s what this is about, just starting [and revealing] the human parts of me that you don’t often get to see.”
TERRELL MULLIN
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Herbie Hancock Sept 26 “Herbie Hancock”
lished a volume of memoirs. Hancock has been Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for over a decade now, collaborating with the orchestra in many stylistically omnivorous pro jects (including a memorable performance at the Hollywood Bowl with classical superstar Lang Lang in Vaughan
Williams’ Concerto for Two Pianos, marking the beginning of his Creative Chair tenure in 2009). He guides the Phil’s jazz presentations, and appears almost every summer at the Bowl, including major milestones such as the massive “¡Bienvenido Gustavo!” and “Celebrate LA!” community spectaculars.
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Born in Chicago in 1940, HERBIE HANCOCK was a prodigy who played a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 11 and was playing jazz professionally with trumpeter Donald Byrd by the
time he was 20. Six decades and 14 Grammy® Awards later, Hancock is still leading from the cultural and technological front. He has collaborated with major artists in every genre and style of music, scored feature films (winning an Oscar® for Round Midnight), been a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, lectured at Harvard University, and pub-
16 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Open spαces. Open minds.
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H.E.R. Aug 13 & 14 A child star under her birth name, H.E.R. (an acronym for “Having Everything Revealed”) released the debut EP of her new persona, H.E.R. Vol.1, in September, 2016. Since then, her rapidly burgeoning projects have piled up 13 Grammy® nominations and four wins, four Soul Train Music Awards, and a host of other awards. And listeners love H.E.R. as much as award ceremonies, with over eight billion streams and audio sales world-wide. This year, she won the Oscar® for Best Original Song for “Fight for You,” cowritten with Tiara Thomas and co-composed and co-produced with D’Mile, from Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah. A California native from the Bay Area, H.E.R. made her Hollywood Bowl debut in late 2019 on a double bill costarring with Ms. Lauryn Hill. This summer, she joins Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for her first concerts ever with full orchestra.
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“H.E.R. with the LA Phil”
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Dave Koz Aug 8 Another native Angeleno (born and raised in the San Fernando Valley and a UCLA grad), DAVE KOZ began working professionally immediately after graduating college, performing as a session musician and touring with keyboard player Jeff Lorber and with singer Richard Marx. He started his solo career in 1989, which has earned him nine Grammy® nominations, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and appearances on many television and radio programs, including hosting several of his own shows. After an appearance on ABC’s long-running soap General Hospital, he wrote a theme song that was used for the show from 1993 to 2004. Koz’ Summer Horns project has been an annual outing since 2013, with a rotating cast of collaborator friends. (The first Summer Horns album was nominated for a 2014 Grammy® as Best Pop Instrumental Album.) He has been a Bowl favorite for years and was last there for the 2019 installment of Smooth Summer Jazz.
22 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
COLIN PECK
“Dave Koz & Friends Summer Horns / Tower of Power”
PTZ HollywoodBowl_6.2 _Layout 1 6/2/21 12:19 PM Page 1
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Ledisi July 24 “Ledisi Sings Nina Simone”
Civil Rights Movement. Her first play, which premiered at The Wallis in 2019, was The Legend of Little Girl Blue (the Rodgers and Hart standard was the title track of Simone’s debut album in 1959), and she turned to the same material for her PBS special Ledisi Live: A Tribute to Nina Simone. She returns to the Bowl with another exploration of Simone’s deeply engaged
work, pairing up with conductor Thomas Wilkins and the LA Phil. Nina Simone herself made many Bowl appearances, including one in 1964 (not long after the release of her epochal single “Mississippi Goddam”) on a bill headlined by the Miles Davis Quintet (his second famous quintet, with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Anthony Williams, and Ron Carter).
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Powerhouse vocalist (and songwriter, producer, actress, author, playwright, and label CEO) LEDISI has been nominated for 13 Grammy® Awards, and won Best Traditional R&B Performance this year for “Anything for You.” She performed at the White House many times for
President and Mrs. Obama, played Mahalia Jackson in Ava DuVernay’s 2014 film Selma, published two books, and is a passionate advocate for young musicians and artist’s creative rights. One of Ledisi’s greatest inspirations has been the life and music of Nina Simone, the fierce pianist and singer who was one of the principal voices of the
24 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
2021 AT
THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL
BEING TOGETHER AGAIN, ENJOYING LIVE MUSIC UNDER THE STARS, A PROGRAM FILLED WITH LOVE AND AN AUDIENCE FILLED WITH GRATITUDE.
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Yo-Yo Ma Sept 14 One of the world’s most beloved musicians, cellist Yo-Yo Ma crosses artistic boundaries as freely as he does geographical borders, making music as a form of cultural collaboration that reinforces our common humanity. Born in 1955 to a Chinese family living in Paris, Ma began to study cello at the age of four with his father. When the family moved to New York City three years later, he continued his cello training at the Juilliard School. He then attended Harvard University, graduating with a degree in anthropology. He has performed a huge body of music across multiple traditions and disciplines; in 2009, Sony Masterworks issued a lavish “30 Years Outside the Box” set containing 90 CDs recorded by Ma, and he has been adding to that imposing collection ever since. Yo-Yo Ma has been a welcome favorite at the Bowl for nearly half a century. His performances in just the most recent decades display the astonishing breadth of his interests: concerts with his Silk Road and Goat Rodeo ensembles, as well as standard repertory. In 2017, he played the six solo Cello Suites by Bach in an astounding performance that captured national attention; a single individual, alone on that vast stage, enthralling and uniting a capacity audience. He returns this summer for an encore of that epic event. “Bach’s cello suites have been my constant musical companions,” Ma writes. “For almost six decades, they have given me sustenance, comfort, and joy during times of stress, celebration, and loss.”
26 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
JASON BELL
“Yo-Yo Ma, The Bach Project”
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Ziggy Marley Aug 1 Winner of eight Grammy® Awards, ZIGGY MARLEY is a proud scion of reggae’s royal family. With his siblings in the family band Ziggy and the Melody Makers, occasionally fronting his father’s band The Wailers, and as a solo act, Ziggy has led reggae evolution from the front. His close family connections also play out in some less well-known ways. Family Time, his third solo album, featured family members and friends (including Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, and Jack Johnson) and won a Grammy® for Best Musical Album for Children. Ziggy is the author of the illustrated children’s book I Love You Too (based on one of his most popular hits) and the Ziggy Marley and Family Cookbook. He has appeared on Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer, and voiced the jellyfish Ernie in DreamWorks' Shark Tale. Ziggy Marley has been a popular mainstay of the Bowl’s annual Reggae Night. In the 2017 edition of the show, he made his first appearance with orchestra, playing some of his father’s songs with Thomas Wilkins and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra on Father’s Day. He has a new single out, “Lift Our Spirits, Raise Our Voice,” written amid the protests following the murder of George Floyd last summer.
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“Reggae Night XIX”
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Sergio Mendes Aug 15 “Sergio Mendes, Blame It on Rio!”
ing the Lifetime Achievement Award…16 years ago! He coproduced the soundtrack albums for the animated hits Rio and Rio 2, garnering a Best Original Song Oscar nomination for “Real in Rio” from the first film. He is also a much-loved favorite at the Hollywood Bowl, where he has appeared on almost every series: jazz, world
music, weekends, with and without orchestras. “It’s unique,” Mendes said in 2008. “You don’t have many places like that in the world. It’s just the atmosphere, the people. Everything about it. It’s very romantic. It’s just a wonderful place. I’ve played there many, many times and I really love very much playing there.”
KATSUNARI KAWAI
Brazilian legend SERGIO MENDES has been a star for 60 years now. A classically trained pianist, he began playing in nightclubs as a teenager, when bossa nova was emerging in the late 1950s. He released his first recording in 1961, toured
the U.S. (playing Carnegie Hall) and Europe, and recorded with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, before moving to the U.S. in 1964. Since then, he has continued to tour and record tirelessly, collaborating with many of the most important musicians in many styles, winning a Grammy® and two Latin Grammy® Awards, includ-
30 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Carlos Vives Aug 27 & 28 “Carlos Vives with the LA Phil”
Colombian superstar CARLOS VIVES has become a hero at home and abroad for his brilliant fusion of traditional styles such as vallenato and cumbia with rock and pop, winning two Grammy® Awards and 12 Latin
32 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Grammys®. He has had a productive parallel life on television; it was starring in a telenovela based on the life of vallenato musician Rafael Escalona that rebooted his musical career with two popular soundtrack albums, after several unsuccessful ballad albums. Also a socially conscious philanthropist, Vives founded
a music school for children in Bogotá and has launched an initiative called Tras la Perla (Behind the Pearl) to improve the quality of life in his native Santa Marta through educational and environmental programs. Last year, Vives was inducted into the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame, and at Billboard’s Latin
Music Conference he joined Gustavo Dudamel in a virtual Q&A, discussing the power of music, their approach to music education, and the arts as a global agent of change. Vives made his Hollywood Bowl debut in 2016. This summer, he returns to collaborate with Dudamel and the LA Phil for two nights.
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Kamasi Washington July 18 “One of today’s more popular musicians of any kind, as well as an ambassador for Los Angeles’ thriving scene” (The New York Times), KAMASI WASHINGTON is a multidisciplinary artist: virtuoso saxophonist, eclectic composer, widely praised bandleader, and highly sought-after collaborator. His 2015 debut album The Epic— which, at almost three hours, it certainly was—earned him the inaugural American Music Prize. He created the multimedia installation Harmony of Difference for the Whitney Biennial in 2017, and among his many collaborations, he played sax and did string arrangements for Kendrick Lamar’s hit album To Pimp a Butterfly. Formerly a student at Hamilton High School Music Academy and UCLA, Washington is a local L.A. hero. The LA Phil New Music Group, conducted by Paolo Bortolameolli, gave the world premiere of Washington’s Struggle from Within in January 2019 at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Washington last performed at the Bowl in September 2018, as a special guest with Florence + the Machine on their High as Hope Tour. (Washington had played tenor sax and done the horn arrangements for three of the tracks on that album.)
34 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
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John Williams Sept 3-5 “Maestro of the Movies”
If ever there was someone who needs no introduction, it is JOHN WILLIAMS at the Hollywood Bowl, where the “Maestro of the Movies” has been performing regularly for over 40 years. That’s almost
36 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
as long as he has been working with director Steven Spielberg, creating some of Hollywood’s most successful films. He is also a prolific composer for television and the concert hall. He has won five Academy Awards, 24 Grammys®, five Emmys®, four Golden Globes, the Kennedy Center
Honors, the National Medal of Arts, and he was the first composer to receive the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Whether it was leading the costumed character E.T. onstage at one of his concerts or leading the LA Phil with violinist Itzhak Perlman dur-
ing World Cup Week in 1994, Williams has been an iconic figure at the Bowl on countless occasions. He returns for his annual celebration of movie music, in which he and David Newman will conduct the LA Phil in a custom-crafted program, including selections presented with film clips.
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| CENTERSTAGE | FEATURED ARTISTS
Attacca Quartet Timo Andres
Samuel Adams
Miranda Cuckson
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi Dylan Mattingly
Víkingur Ólafsson Gabriela Ortiz Carlos Simon
Gabriella Smith
LA Phil New Music Group
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra
“A Musical Utopia” –
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| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE PODIUM
THE BEAT GOES ON Familiar heroes and rising stars take the Bowl podium this summer
Gustavo Dudamel Music & Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, Gustavo Dudamel is now a major international cultural force. He was born into a musical family in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, in 1981 and began violin lessons as a child. He began conducting youth orchestras as a teenager and became Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony
Orchestra at the age of 18. Since then, he has led orchestras and operatic productions around the world. He was recently appointed Music Director of the Paris Opera and is the conductor for Steven Spielberg’s new version of West Side Story, due out this December. He has conducted for several other major films (including his own score for the Simón Bolívar biopic Libertador) and his 57 recordings have won multiple
Grammy® awards. The Hollywood Bowl is a venue very close to Dudamel’s heart and sense of musical mission. He made his U.S. debut there in 2005, conducting the LA Phil in works by Revueltas and Tchaikovsky. His first performance with the Phil as its music director came at the Bowl in October 2009 with a mammoth free concert featuring a broad range of L.A. musicians, capped
with a performance by YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) and then Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring massed community choruses. He has devoted significant time to the Bowl every summer since, and he turns to it for important festivals and events, including several live video recordings and the free concert that was the climax of the LA Phil’s Celebrate LA! day launching its centennial season.
2021 BOWL DATES July 15, “Peter and the Wolf with Viola Davis & Dudamel” July 16 & 17, “Christina Aguilera with the LA Phil” August 10, “Dudamel Conducts Gershwin” August 12, “Dudamel Conducts the New World” August 13 & 14, “H.E.R. with the LA Phil” August 17, “Dudamel Leads Elgar and Grieg” August 19, “Dudamel Conducts Beethoven and Falla” August 24, “Dudamel Leads Márquez and Tchaikovsky” August 26, “Piazzolla & Tchaikovsky with Dudamel” August 27 & 28, “Carlos Vives with the LA Phil” September 28, “Mozart Under the Stars with Dudamel”
38 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
COURTESY LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC. OPPOSITE: DANNY CLINCH FOR LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC
Great conductors and the Hollywood Bowl are an iconic pairing—think of the Stokowski parody in LongHaired Hare, for example. For this summer of renewal and return, podium leadership at the Bowl is a family affair. All of the conductors are either current or former titled members of the LA Phil or Bowl artistic staff.
| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE PODIUM
Paolo Bortolameolli Aug 31, “Beethoven’s Fifth” Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, PAOLO BORTOLAMEOLLI is also Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Esperanza Azteca in Mexico, Principal Guest Conductor of the Santiago Philharmonic in Chile, and a very busy guest conductor with orchestras around the world. Bortolameolli earned piano and conducting diplomas in his native Chile, and a Master of Music degree from Yale and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Institute in this country. He is also a committed opera and theater conductor, including a landmark new production of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS among his performances with the LA Phil. In 2018, Bortolameolli delivered a widely viewed TED Talk in New York City, and last year he released his first book, Rubato: Musical Processes and a Personal Playlist.
Polish conductor MARTA GARDOLINSKA has been a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and she collaborated with Dudamel as second conductor in his Grammy®-winning recording of Ives’ Symphony No. 4. Also a professionally trained athlete, Gardolinska studied flute and piano before entering the Frederic Chopin Music University in her native Warsaw to study conducting, which she continued at the University of
Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She was Young Conductor in Association at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for two seasons and has guest conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival. She is also a versatile opera conductor and this coming season becomes Music Director of the Opéra National de Lorraine, following her triumphant 2019 debut there in a new production of Zemlinsky’s Der Traumgörge.
FROM TOP: MICHIKO TIERNEY, BART BARCZYK
Marta Gardolinska Sept 9, “Beethoven & Schumann”
1951 2021
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| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE PODIUM
Tianyi Lu July 20, “Tianyi Lu Conducts Pictures at an Exhibition” Former LA Phil Dudamel Fellow TIANYI LU is rapidly making a name for herself as a rising podium star. Born in Shanghai, Lu moved with her family to New Zealand, where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Auckland; she completed her Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. “I was studying many different subjects at school, but nothing thrilled my heart more than experiencing the powerful, vibrant, and nuanced sound of an orchestra,” Lu says. “When I stepped onto the conducting podium, I knew I was hooked for life.” Last year, she won the first prize at the Georg Solti Conducting Competition in Germany and the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Italy. Tianyi Lu is currently Principal Conductor of the St. Woolos Sinfonia in the U.K., and she has guest conducted concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony, among many others.
A much-awarded young conductor, GEMMA NEW is Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. New graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance degree from the University of Canterbury in her native New Zealand, where she had played in all the Wellington youth orchestras and became inspired. “The orchestra provides something very special, nourishment for the soul,” New says. “It helps us grow as human beings.” She went on
to earn a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting degree from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and she has conducted the Seattle Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony, among many others. She is a former Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was Resident Conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for four years.
FROM TOP: ANTONY POTTS, ROY COX
Gemma New Aug 5, “Schumann & Schumann”
| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE PODIUM
Enluis Montes Olivar July 22, “Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky” Conductor ENLUIS MONTES OLIVAR is a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he has led the orchestra’s Toyota Symphonies for Youth concerts and conducted YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles). Born in Guanare, Venezuela, in 1996, he grew up musically in El Sistema as a versatile trumpeter. He made his conducting debut within the system in 2007 at the age of 11 and has since studied widely, at home in Venezuela and in masterclasses abroad. Among his special interests are performing with the White Hands Choir, which interprets choral masterworks in choreographed sign language, and producing virtual concerts during the pandemic, for which he founded the Venezuela Virtual Chamber Orchestra.
A former Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, RUTH REINHARDT was also Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden for two years. She has guest conducted the Cleveland Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Malmö Symphony, the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur (in a concert televised nationally in Switzerland), and the
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. Born in Saarbrücken, Germany, Reinhardt studied violin as a young child and sang in the children’s chorus of the Saarbrücken opera company. (She also composed an opera at age 17 for the Saarbrücken children and youth.) She studied violin and conducting at Zurich’s University of the Arts and earned a Master’s Degree in Conducting at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Alan Gilbert.
FROM TOP: KEI MORENO, JESSICA SCHAEFER
Ruth Reinhardt July 27, “Mozart and Mendelssohn with Ruth Reinhardt”
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| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE PODIUM
Bramwell Tovey Aug 6 & 7, “Tchaikovsky Spectacular with Fireworks” Company before the COVID-19 pandemic. Internationally, he is Principal Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra and Artistic Advisor to the Rhode Island Philharmonic, former Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, and former Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed described Tovey’s account of Berlioz’ Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale as “one of the greatest occasions in the history of the Bowl.”
Thomas Wilkins Charismatic musician and speaker THOMAS WILKINS has been Principal Conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra since 2014, after serving six years as its Principal Guest Conductor. “I’m a firm believer in no-labels music,” Wilkins says, “and the Bowl is just like a giant version of how I live my life.” Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Wilkins is a graduate of the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. He just completed a long and successful tenure as Music Director of the Omaha Symphony and has guest conducted major orchestra throughout the United States, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic. An esteemed and much-awarded educator, Wilkins is Artistic Advisor, Education and Community Engagement for the Boston Symphony and Chair of Orchestral Conducting at Indiana University.
2021 BOWL DATES July 3 & 4, “July 4th Fireworks Spectacular with Kool & the Gang” July 24, “Ledisi Sings Nina Simone” July 30, “Cynthia Erivo with the LA Phil” September 2, “Gershwin and Bonds” September 25, “James Blake with Orchestra”
FROM TOP: DAVID COOPER, BILL SITZMANN
Conductor BRAMWELL TOVEY is beloved at the Bowl for his witty introductions to the music at hand, as well as for his mastery of wide-ranging styles. A versatile artistic triple threat, Tovey is also an accomplished pianist and widely performed composer. Born in England in 1953 and trained at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of London, Tovey has in recent decades become Canada’s leading classical musician. He was Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony for 18 years and was Artistic Director for the Calgary Opera
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| CENTERSTAGE | ON THE SCREEN
SYMPHONIC SUMMER CINEMA
Catch movie favorites this summer on the Bowl’s big screen, with their memorable scores played live! WHEN THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC screened Alexander Nevsky in 1987, with the orchestra playing Prokofiev’s score live-topicture, it was something of a stunt, culturally and technically. And a remarkably successful one, as that was a watershed moment for a new entertainment industry, synergizing the broad appeal of films classic and new with the vibrant energy and “special occasion” sensibilities of symphonic concerts. The Hollywood Bowl has been at the forefront of this new field. (The LA Phil subsequently encored Alexander Nevsky at the Bowl.) Indeed, the Bowl and Hollywood have been as inseparable in deeds as they are in the venue’s name. There have been industry stars on the stage and in the boxes since the beginning, and studios started presenting their music and artists at concerts with a “Paramount Night of Stars”
48 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
in 1936 (featuring the Bowl debut of conductor Leopold Stokowski, then appearing in two Paramount films). The Bowl itself first starred as a film location in 1928, with The Symphony (aka Jazz Mad). But presenting entire films with the score played live-to-picture is a more recent phenomenon. Hard on the heels of Alexander Nevsky came “Bugs Bunny on Broadway at the Hollywood Bowl” in 1992 (and encored in 1994, with many subsequent editions). It featured Chuck Jones’ 1949 classic cartoon, Long-Haired Hare, in which Bugs appears disguised as Stokowski to disrupt a performance by tenor “Giovanni Jones” at the Bowl. The show presented these mini masterpieces with their rambunctious scores played live. Since then, the programming of feature films with live orchestra has expanded exponentially. This summer is no exception, con-
tinuing what can hardly be considered a “trend” at this point. Some favorites return, of course, but there are also a couple of world premieres. First up is THE PRINCESS BRIDE, with industry stalwart David Newman conducting the LA Phil in the first performance of an orchestral arrangement of Mark Knopfler’s score. Although only modestly successful on its initial release in 1987, Rob Reiner’s film of William Goldman’s enchanting fantasy love story has become an intergenerational favorite, appearing on many lists. Knopfler’s dreamy, funny, romantic score utilizes synthesizers and acoustic instruments, performed by just two musicians: Knopfler himself and Guy Fletcher. On July 31, the Bowl audience will hear the first performance of this magical score expanded for full orchestra. In September comes a double premiere
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: 2009 WARNER BROS. ENT., HARRY POTTER PUBLISHING RIGHTS ©JKR; BFA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO. OPPOSTIE: GLASSHOUSE IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
of sorts, with the first performances of the first film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to get the live orchestra treatment: BLACK PANTHER (September 10-12). Ryan Coogler’s 2018 superhero blockbuster scored many other firsts, including the first Academy Awards for an MCU film, winning Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score. Ludwig Göransson, who had worked with Coogler since their days together at USC, went to Africa to research and record traditional music for that score, traveling with Senegalese musician Baaba Maal, who is featured in two of the tracks. Göransson’s brilliantly fused, emotionally rooted music, which also won a Grammy®, was recorded in Senegal and completed at Abbey Road Studios in London with a full orchestra and choir. The Bowl has been making its way through the enchanted Harry Potter canon in recent years. The sixth installment in the beloved series, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE™ IN CONCERT, arrives on September 17. The score for David Yates’ 2009 film was written by British composer and guitarist Nicholas Hooper, who also scored Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix™. For this perfor-
mance, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra will be conducted by Justin Freer. Hooper’s score, of course, references several of the themes that John Williams composed for the first Harry Potter films. Williams is indeed the MAESTRO OF THE MOVIES, and a one-man tradition at the Bowl, with appearances now going back over 40 years. Several films burnished by his iconic scores have been screened with live orchestra at the Bowl, but his annual Labor Day weekend shows are personally curated surveys, not complete movies. Some of the
selections will be accompanied by film clips, however, as Williams and David Newman lead the LA Phil (September 3-5). Though it does not have a live orchestra, no season survey of film music at the Bowl would be complete without a mention of the SING-A-LONG SOUND OF MUSIC. The Hollywood Community Sing was one of the main forces behind the founding of the Bowl, and the Hollywood Hills will again be alive with the sound of communal singing as families and friends join in this beloved tradition, hosted by Melissa Peterman (August 21).
SUMMER 2021 PERFORMANCES 49
| BACKSTAGE | BOWL HISTORY
A BOWL TALE
The Hollywood Bowl has always been a home to the stars, but from two ladies on a plank to hi-tech behemoth, it has never lost its community spirit.
IN A SOMEWHAT blurry photograph from 1919, two women in voluminous, dark, lateEdwardian dress—complete with bonnets —stare out at us through the soft focus. They are contralto Anna Ruzena Sprotte and composer Gertrude Ross, and, alone with a piano on a makeshift stage in the chaparral of the southern California foothills, they are giving the first documented performance at the Hollywood Bowl. More accurately, they were testing the acoustics for potential concerts in what was then known as Daisy Dell, a natural amphitheater in Bolton Canyon, which opened off the Cahuenga Pass, just a half-mile above the
50 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
By JOHN HENKEN
heart of Hollywood. Several similar demonstrations quickly followed and enthusiasm ran high at the Theater Arts Alliance, which came into formal being in May of 1919. According to its “Articles of Intention,” the purpose of the TAA was to acquire “land for a community park and art center and kindred projects of a civic nature and not for personal, individual, or corporate gain or profit. To encourage and develop, through a community spirit and civic patriotism, the finest forms of the arts and crafts and individual talents, and to promote appreciation of, to inculcate love for, artistic and beautiful creations and productions of every sort…
Opposite: the Bowl shell at night, c.1930s; Gertrude Ross and Anne Ruzena Sprotte, 1919. This page: the Hollywood Bowl in 1929; Artie Mason Carter; Easter Sunrise Service in a postcard of the Bowl, c.1930-45.
produced by men and women and children dedicating themselves in a spirit of devotion to the work and to upholding the highest possible standards…”
COURTESY LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC
Looking for a Home in the Hills THE MEMBERS OF the TAA and its circle of cultural visionaries who founded the Bowl were a very diverse lot. At the beginning, pageants, arts education, and community events were more prominent in their thinking than the symphonic concerts for which the Bowl soon would become known. The president of the TAA was a wealthy heiress from Philadelphia, Christine Wetherill Stevenson,
a devoted theosophist whose dream was a cycle of seven plays about great religious leaders from around the world. The first of these was Light of Asia, a dramatization of the life of the Buddha, which received a spectacular outdoor staging at Krotona, the western center for the Theosophical Society, where it ran for 35 very successful performances in 1918, demonstrating quite effectively the viability and attractions of outdoor theater in the Hollywood hills. Other members of the TAA and its circle considered theosophy to be something of a cult and felt that an emphasis on religion might inhibit broader artistic developments. Stevenson ultimately split from the group and established the Pilgrimage Theater (later the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, named for a Los Angeles County supervisor, and now simply The Ford) across the Cahuenga Pass as the home for her Pilgrimage Play about the life of Christ, before she died unexpectedly in 1922. (The steel cross above The Ford and visible from the Bowl was originally erected in 1923 in memory of Stevenson.) But she was the lead donor of the money to purchase the land where the Hollywood Bowl was developed. After more than a year of often fierce discussion and argument, the Theatrical Arts Alliance was dissolved and reformed as the Community Park and Art Association in
1920. The secretary of the new association was a piano teacher named Artie Mason Carter, whose prodigious efforts earned her the nickname “Mother of the Hollywood Bowl.” She was also the leader of the Hollywood Community Sing, which numbered over 1,000 members and participated in many early Bowl events. (Community Sings were a product of populist wartime fervor around the U.S.) It was Carter who brought the recently founded Los Angeles Philharmonic into the picture through the Easter Sunrise Service, first held in 1920 at what is now Barnsdall Park and then again in 1921 at the Bowl site.
Making Music the Possession of the People ANOTHER YEAR OF discussion, doubts, and fundraising followed, including at the 1922 Easter Sunrise Service, but Carter persevered and finally saw her “Symphonies Under the Stars” vision fulfilled in 1922. “Big musical
SUMMER 2021 PERFORMANCES 51
| BACKSTAGE | BOWL HISTORY
projects are not impossible to put through, provided you get the people themselves to work and divide the financial burden,” Carter said. “We raised the first thousands by popular subscription. Then see how interested they all were in the Bowl, because it was their own! In no other way than by sharing the responsibility can we make music the veritable possession of the people.” The music director that first summer was Alfred Hertz, the German-born conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. The concerts that summer included French-, Spanish-, and Russian-themed programs, a “Pasadena Day” and “University of California Night,” several children’s concerts, and a program of audience favorites, chosen from requests sent to him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Programming and presentations at the Bowl were remarkably progressive and populist during its first decade, thanks in large measure to Carter’s inclusive vision and Hertz’ maverick sensibilities. There was new and recent music by composers such as Stravinsky, Copland, Falla, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar, among many others. The first radio broadcast from the Bowl came in 1927, and, in 1928, the Hollywood
52 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Bowl Orchestra, under Eugene Goossens, made the first recordings from the Bowl stage (in sessions during the day, not live at concerts)—indeed, probably the first commercial symphonic recordings made outdoors anywhere! Women were not neglected, in repertory or on the stage. In 1925, Ethel Leginska, a British pianist, composer, and conductor, made her Hollywood Bowl debut at the end of a U.S. tour that began at Carnegie Hall. Her program included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Weber’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with herself the soloist, and her own Nursery Rhymes for soprano and orchestra. In 1930, Dutch-born American pianist and conductor Antonia Brico was the second women to lead a regular orchestral concert at the Bowl, and Brico also led the third concert there conducted by a woman… when she returned in 1975, the intervening years being less hospitable to unorthodox cultural elements.
Stages of the Stage THE BOWL STAGE that first summer was not greatly advanced over the impromptu one Sprotte and Ross first used, just
larger, with an awning over it and the wings screened by cylinders. The next three years saw grading and landscaping developments, but the stage covering was still temporary, which facilitated the theatrical productions that opened and closed each season. In 1924, the decision was made to deed the Bowl property to Los Angeles County, which would fund capital improvements and lease the Bowl back to its board. After the 1925 season, the County allotted $300,000 to the Bowl for upgrades. Symphonic orchestral programs were increasingly driving the planning at the Bowl, and, in the summer of 1926, it got its first curved shell, designed by Myron Hunt, who had also designed the Pasadena Public Library and had worked on the Rose Bowl. It was not an acoustic success, however, and the following year, Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright’s oldest son) designed a radical departure, a pyramidal shell evoking Southwest Indian shapes. This was an acoustic success, but still a temporary building and it went unappreciated by some Bowl patrons and board members. For 1928, he designed an elliptical Streamline Moderne shell, which was also acoustically successful but also
COURTESY LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC
Clockwise from left: Zubin Mehta, c.1961; Lloyd Wright-designed elliptical shell, 1928, and during its construction; orchestra conducted by Bernardino Molinari, 1929. Opposite: the Bowl currently
found opposition from some board members. It was left up over the winter, and its deterioration from weather allowed its safety to be questioned. An engineering firm designed a new shell, a semicircular arch, for 1929. Though it had many problems, its weight, literal (55 tons of cement and asbestos) and figurative, kept it in place until the summer of 2004. Much around it and in it changed: a lawn in front of the stage was replaced by a reflecting pool in 1953, which was in turn replaced by additional boxes in 1972; in 1970, architect Frank Gehry and acoustician Christopher Jaffe added Sonotubes (cardboard forms for shaping concrete columns) to improve the onstage acoustics for the orchestra, and in 1980, Gehry replaced those tubes with fiberglass balls, which remained through 2003. The current shell was designed by Hodgetts+Fung and Gruen Associates. It retains the concentric arcs of the old one, but along an elliptical line closer to Lloyd Wright’s much flatter 1928 shell. The stage is big enough for a large orchestra and chorus, and hanging over it is an oblong acoustic canopy which also serves as a platform for the latest sound and lighting technologies.
“As American as Apple Pie” WHATEVER THE STAGE, it has been home to superstars of every style of music, and a broad range of dance and allied arts, as well. “I don’t think that there has been an important musical artist in the 20th century, either classical or pop, who has not enthralled thousands at the Hollywood Bowl,” said conductor Zubin Mehta a generation ago. “It is ‘as American as apple pie.’ To be invited to appear on its stage is as prestigious to the West Coast as Carnegie Hall is to the East.” (A beloved former LA Phil music director, Mehta made his Bowl debut in 1961 and conducted there many times afterwards.) At the same time, the Bowl has never lost touch with its roots in the community spirit of the Theater Arts Alliance and the populist Hollywood Sing. In 2005, the Bowl found a new champion for this deeply nurtured spirit when 24-year-old Gustavo Dudamel made his U.S. debut there, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in music by Revueltas and Tchaikovsky. Four years later, Dudamel returned to the Bowl for a monumental free community concert that launched his tenure as the Phil’s new Music Director. It featured a stellar cast of L.A.’s finest musicians and,
significantly, YOLA, the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles inspired by El Sistema of Venezuela, the pioneering youth program in which Dudamel grew up.
A Resurrection “THE POSSIBILITIES ARE infinite at the Bowl,” Dudamel said two years ago. “That is the thing, how this place embraces so many people, so much diversity—it’s a place of inclusion.” Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hollywood Bowl had survived many prior crises, but those were only financial shortfalls and management dissensions. The pandemic endangered audiences and performers, and for the first time in almost a century, there was no summer season at the Bowl. Music returned to the Bowl that winter, but without a live audience. Dudamel and the LA Phil streamed a virtual season of short concerts recorded at the Bowl, where the stage is large enough for the musicians to sit the canonic six feet apart. This summer, the new season began with free concerts for first responders, and Dudamel greeted them with the words: “To see this place filled with people, with you, it feels like a resurrection.”
SUMMER 2021 PERFORMANCES 53
| BACKSTAGE | BOWL MEMORIES
The STARS RECALL Agnes de Mille
“THIS WAS THE BOWL, cratering up into the ringing sky, my mother’s Bowl. (Hadn’t she and Artie Mason Carter, their hats askew, dashed home to say you could hear a 50-cent piece drop in any quarter of it?) During the first summer’s performances, I sat four nights a week on a blanket in the sagebrush. The next summer, there were wooden benches, but the spring rain had rotted them and they tilted back on their moorings, so that we sat with our feet in the air staring straight into the stars. In the mornings, the hot expansive mornings, I had permission to attend rehearsals and listened to ‘Papa’ Alfred Hertz put the boys through their paces. I was present when Galli-Curci rehearsed [in 1924; the audience for the popular coloratura soprano was said to be a record 27,000], standing very tiny in a white silk coat and holding an adorable little flower cretonne parasol over her face lest she faint. When she finished, all the musicians beat their bows on the stands, and I was so overcome I had to rush to buy an ice-cream soda
54 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Agnes de Mille
to settle my feelings, but found I could not swallow it. The night before I had to enter the university [UCLA], Hertz played [Wagner’s] Valhalla music, and my heart nearly burst within me. So much of my inner life had transpired in musical experience, so much of that music had first been heard here! “In 1924, at the head of the long road we had just plodded up [with her dancers in 1935], there once stood a large papiermâché bowl, and Mother and the stars she commandeered, Wallace Reid, Milton Sills, Conrad Nagel, Thomas Meighan, called for pennies as the audience streamed out. ‘Give your pennies to buy the Bowl! Pay off the mortgage of the Bowl!’ The mortgage was burned by Artie Carter on stage on the last night of the first season. Mother had stood by that bowl every night until the audience had left, and had then taken her group home for hot chocolate and cookies.” —Dancer/choreographer Agnes de Mille in her autobiography, Dance to the Piper, describing her memories when she returned to the Bowl in 1935 to produce a dance concert with her
company. Her uncle was the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille, and the DeMille family held boxes at the Bowl for many years.
Eugene Goossens “EVERYONE HAS HEARD of the Hollywood Bowl, but few people realize the acoustic marvels of this enormous natural amphi theater in the California hills, where the metaphorical pin dropped on the orchestra stage can be heard on a hilltop a quarter of a mile away. During eight weeks of cloudless summer weather, concerts are held at the Bowl on four evenings out of seven. And the sensation of conducting a fine orchestra under that marvelous blue vault studded with blazing stars, with an audience of twenty or thirty thousand thronging the darkness of the hillsides, remains unforgettable and indescribable. “Immediately before the concert begins, the brilliant searchlights illuminating the amphitheater are switched out. Except for the powerful light focused on the orchestra shell, the Bowl is in complete darkness.
LYNN GILBERT
The unique spirit of the Holly wood Bowl is felt onstage as keenly as it is in the audience
THANK YOU! Because of the dedication of our generous donors, the LA Phil and the Hollywood Bowl are back! In a time of so much uncertainty, the steadfast commitment of donors provided a critical lifeline to our orchestra members, staff, teaching artists, and the young musicians of YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles). Our donors’ generosity gave us more than simply essential resources–they kept us filled with hope.
Thank you also to our great season sponsors
Walking out onto the platform, one sees nothing but a few pale blurs of faces immediately below the stage, and only the sudden flash of a smoker’s match far up on the hillside betrays the presence of the waiting multitudes. The uncanny consciousness of those thousands of invisible eyes focused on the small of one’s back, the unique sense of contact with and response from that unseen audience, has made those California nights the most inspiring of memories.” —British conductor Eugene Goossens, writing for The Gramophone in 1930. Goossens made his Bowl debut in 1926, and in 1928 he led the orchestra in the first recordings made on the stage of the Bowl, and the first commercial symphonic recordings made outdoors anywhere.
Dave Brubeck
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“I’VE PLAYED THERE so many times and in so many ways. [...] The first time Barbra Streisand sang there, she followed me. I had never heard of her. Neither had the audience. She was trembling like a leaf backstage before she went on. Then she walked out and killed that crowd. “Sammy Davis followed her, and he presented every bit of his showmanship. He sang, he tap-danced, he played the drums, until he got the applause he wanted. But it wasn’t easy, after Streisand. There was a cross on a hill that you could see from the stage. Sammy looked up and said, ‘Do you think they are trying to tell me something?’ He broke up the whole crowd.” —Jazz giant Dave Brubeck
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56 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
“I HAVE HAD a lot of experience playing outdoors, but nothing is as special or as exciting as playing the Hollywood Bowl. Looking at 18,000 people who are practically sitting in your lap is an experience that is unforgettable.” —Legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman, who made his Bowl debut in 1966
Bonnie Raitt “I DON’T THINK there’s another place in America that has the heart-shaking
Jazz musician Dave Brubeck, 1962
impact of the Hollywood Bowl. It’s a fantastic place to play and it has so much history. “When I was a young girl, my dad [Broadway musical star John Raitt] sang at the Bowl for Easter sunrise services. To reach the point where I could headline at the Bowl, and be able to bring my dad out to sing with me, was absolutely a lifetime dream come true.” —Rock & Roll Hall of Fame blues singer-guitarist Bonnie Raitt
NATIONAL JAZZ ARCHIVE/HERITAGE IMAGES
Sara Bareilles “AS A BRAND-new UCLA student, the very first concert I ever saw in Los Angeles was at the Hollywood Bowl. My roommate and I went to see Faith Hill and Deana Carter, and we sat in the very, very back, and I will never forget it. I was experiencing that venue in my new city of Los Angeles and just all of the expansive feelings that it carries with it. The Bowl in and of itself just has a warmth to it and the environment of it has such a warmth to it. So that will forever be imprinted as my first musical experience in Los Angeles. “To come full-circle and actually get to step onstage and to be onstage there— also because I’d had little tastes of being onstage there; I was there as the Little Mermaid [in a live musical production], and I was there doing a show with Katy Perry—but to get to be the headliner, it felt like a real milestone moment. [...] So, I will never forget that night.” —Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, in a Billboard interview about her Amidst the Chaos: Live at the Hollywood Bowl album, recorded in November 2019
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| OFFSTAGE | CHEFS PICNIC
PICNIC
Paradise!
Some of L.A.’s most creative and music-loving chefs share their DIY inspirations for picnic basket success
Charcuterie with Piccalilli Serves 4
Level of Difficulty: Easy Prep Time: 20 minutes, plus 24 hours to brine vegetables Cook Time: 2 minutes
CURTIS STONE CELEBRITY CHEF Curtis Stone also handles picnic duties, taking time from his Beverly Hills restaurant Maude and Hollywood butcher shop/eatery Gwen to recommend some easy, crowd-pleasing recipes for enjoyment at the Bowl.
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Chef’s Note: Piccalilli can be made up to 1 month ahead, cooled, covered, and refrigerated. INGREDIENTS
1 cup very small cauliflower florets (from about 1/4 small cauliflower head) 1/2 cup finely diced red bell pepper (from 1/2 red bell pepper) 1/2 cup thinly sliced green beans (from about 10 green beans) 1/3 cup finely diced Persian
cucumber (from 1 peeled deseeded Persian cucumber) 4 small red radishes, cut into wedges 1 tablespoon kosher salt 4 teaspoons cornstarch 1 teaspoon English mustard powder 1 teaspoon turmeric 1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 cup white wine vinegar 3 tablespoons sugar Assorted charcuterie, such as bresaola, coppa, country pâté, duck speck, salami DIRECTIONS
1. In a colander, toss cauliflower, bell pepper, green beans, cucumber, radishes, and salt to coat.
Place colander inside large bowl. Refrigerate for 24 hours. 2. Rinse vegetables very well and drain; set vegetables aside. 3. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch, mustard powder, turmeric, mustard seeds, and coriander. Whisk in 2 tablespoons water to make a smooth slurry. 4. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, bring vinegar and sugar to a boil, whisking to dissolve sugar. Whisk in slurry until smooth. Mixture should thicken immediately. Stir in reserved vegetables and remove pan from heat. Cool slightly and then pack into a jar. Refrigerate piccalilli until cold. 5. Arrange charcuterie on a platter and serve with piccalilli.
COURTESY MAUDE RESTAURANT AND VIVIANE RESTAURANT
“Food and music are some of life’s most beautiful gifts—they bring people together! Just like cooking and food, music plays a huge part in my everyday life. As my fellow Angelenos would appreciate, we spend a great deal of time getting from point A to point B in our cars, and I don’t know how I’d pass the time without music. Most recently in my restaurant Gwen, based in Hollywood (in fact, just a stone’s throw from the Bowl), music has been key to getting the team psyched before service and it also sets the pace and tone for the dining room floor. My wife Lindsay has such a beautiful way with music—she can sing, she can dance, and she always knows the right song to play for the right moment; hence the fact we’ve got her to curate the perfect playlist for Gwen! Happy picnicking and I hope you have a rocking time at the Bowl!” —Curtis Stone
“What I love about music and food is that they are often so powerfully tied to our memories of people, time, and place. A song can evoke a vacation from years passed. A dish reminds us of a summer barbeque with family. In this way, music and food become more special and give us a deeper connection to life.” —Michael Hung
Watermelon & Cucumber Salad Serves 4
Level of Difficulty: Easy Prep Time: 20 minutes Cooking Time: 7 minutes INGREDIENTS
2 cups red watermelon, 1-inch dice 2 cups yellow watermelon, 1-inch dice 1 cup Persian cucumber, sliced to 1/4 -inch thick 1/4 cup lemon tahini dressing (See Recipe Below) 1/2 cup toasted Marcona almonds (See Recipe Below)
2 tablespoons mint, sliced 1/4 cup scallions, finely sliced Salt and pepper to taste DIRECTIONS Combine all ingredients and mix well.
Lemon Tahini Dressing INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh-squeezed) 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons crème fraîche 2 tablespoons tahini, mixed well Salt and pepper to taste DIRECTIONS
In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and whisk to incorporate.
Marcona Almonds MICHAEL HUNG HUNG CURRENTLY runs the Viviane kitchen at Beverly Hills’ Avalon Hotel—a splendid display of Mid-Century Modern design, by the way—where he strikes the perfect balance between refinement and approachability. Hung, who worked with Michelinstarred chefs on both coasts, clearly knows how to put together a picnic.
INGREDIENTS 1/4 cup Marcona almonds
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil Salt to taste DIRECTIONS
1. Dress Marcona almonds with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt. 2. Roast in 400°F oven until golden brown, approximately 7 minutes.
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TIM HOLLINGSWORTH ONE OF THE most exciting stages on the local dining scene is downtown’s Otium, where chef Timothy Hollingsworth works his magic with a sophisticated New American fare. “The Hollywood Bowl is quintessentially L.A. It brings together people of all types, hosting shows from music of all genres, and always remaining the perfect place to spend a summer night in L.A. The best part of going to the Bowl is being able to make your own experience out of it, whether that’s ordering dinner at one of the boxes or putting together a quick picnic with friends and family.” —Timothy Hollingsworth
Grilled Corn Salad Serves 6
Level of Difficulty: Easy Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes INGREDIENTS
6 ears of corn, husked 1/4 cup crema Mexicana 1 teaspoon ancho or guajillo chili powder 2 cloves roasted garlic, smashed 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped Juice of 1 lime Zest of 1 lime Salt, to taste 1/2 cup cotija cheese DIRECTIONS
1. Heat the barbecue to about medium-high. 2. Brush your grill top with oil and grill corn, turning occasionally. After about 10 minutes, corn should be cooked through and slightly charred on the outside. 3. Cut kernels off the cob by standing corn cobs vertically and slicing downwards. 4. Mix the grilled corn kernels with the remaining ingredients. Plating: Top with chopped cilantro and sprinkle with cotija cheese. Chef’s Note: One of my favorite things about this grilled corn salad is the flavors, a variation on elote, or Mexican street corn. It can be hard to eat corn on the cob though, so I wanted to make a corn salad that used those great elote flavors, but in a way that would be easier to eat and transport.
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| OFFSTAGE | DINING & QUICK BITES
SYMPHONIES in the KEY of CUISINE From supper in your box to portable picnic baskets, the Bowl’s FOOD + WINE team has something for everyone THE CULINARY PROGRAM at the Bowl is guided by James Beard Award-winning chef Suzanne Goin and restauranteur Caroline Styne (of celebrated local restaurants Lucques, a.o.c., Tavern, and The Larder). All of the dining options have been updated this summer to ensure the safety of all guests and employees. All employees are health screened before starting work, personal protective equipment is worn, sanitation measures have been amplified, and social distancing is required.
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Torchio pasta with heirloom tomato, young spinach, and garlic breadcrumbs. Opposite: Caroline Styne and Suzanne Goin; bittersweet chocolate torta with wild honey and crushed Marcona almonds
ROB STARK. OPPOSITE FROM LEFT: RAY KATCHATORIAN, DYLAN + JENI
Supper in Your Box Seats Suzanne Goin’s summer supper menus include four different main course options, ranging from torchio pasta with heirloom tomato, young spinach, and garlic breadcrumbs to slow-roasted salmon with green rice, radishes, and cucumbers
in crème fraiche; her desserts include cornmeal shortcake with local strawberries and mint, plus a bittersweet chocolate torta with wild honey and crushed Marcona almonds. For familystyle dining there is a BBQ package for two, with fried chicken, pork ribs, and braised beef brisket. Caroline Styne’s extensive
wine list ranges over the world and many varietals. Pre-order online by 4 PM the day before your concert and your meal will be delivered to your box.
Picnic Boxes Let the Bowl pack your picnic for you and enjoy Suzanne’s picnic-perfect menus, featuring
delicious options for anyone’s palate, including a vegan box. Pre-order online by 4 PM the day before your concert and your picnic box will be waiting for you at the Plaza Marketplace.
Marketplaces The Bowl’s onsite marketplaces feature a wide selection of
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options to build the perfect picnic, from specialty sandwiches and seasonal graband-go salads to cheese and charcuterie plates, plus beer and wine. Marketplace entrances will be monitored to allow for a safe experience inside.
Ann’s Wine Bar Inspired by Suzanne and Caroline’s a.o.c. restaurant, Ann’s Wine Bar features a wide selection of Caroline’s favorite old- and new-world wines, ready to be explored by both experienced and novice wine lovers. These are all paired with Suzanne’s signature small-plates menu. Reservations are encouraged, as walk-in space is very limited.
the backyard
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Lucques at the Circle This exclusive fine-dining experience is for subscribers of the Pool Circle, with a seasonal made-to-order menu and exceptional wine list styled from the award-winning restaurant Lucques.
DYLAN + JENI
G G G G G TT T T T T T
Two large wood-burning grills are the focus of this farmers market-driven restaurant. For the 2021 season, however, Ann’s Wine Bar will utilize the backyard’s dining area as an extended patio dining space.
Fattoush salad with cucumber, fried pita, cherry tomatoes, and French feta. Below: Cornmeal shortcake with local strawberries and mint.
Street Food & Snacks With a range of offerings from L.A.’s diverse foodscape, the Bowl’s street food stands serve up tacos, specialty all-beef hotdogs, vegetarian- and vegan-friendly fare, gourmet pizza, burgers, BBQ, and popcorn. And don’t forget, they’ve got dessert, too!
Catering Special Events at the Bowl
PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY
The Hollywood Bowl is the perfect setting for special group events. A variety of enchanting spaces and a menu curated by Suzanne Goin will elevate your event to the next level.
Mobile Ordering at Concerts Text “hbfw” to 474747 or scan a QR code throughout the Bowl to place your order for pickup at one of the street food pickup locations. Take advantage of ordering as you arrive or from your seats, and the Bowl will text you when your order is ready. See menus, make reservations, and pre-order: HOLLYWOODBOWL.COM/ FOOD+WINE * 323.850.1885
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OF WINE, ART, and LANDSCAPE
The sculpture collection at the Donum Estate in Sonoma County THE BREEZE IN the Carneros wine region of Northern California begins gently, strengthens with the day and subsides by evening, cooling the grapes for which the appellation is known. Los Angelesbased artist Doug Aitken incorporates the phenomenon in an ethereal site-specific stainless-steel work at the Donum Estate in Sonoma County. Installed in a eucalyptus grove, 45 feet across, the commissioned Sonic Mountain (2019) uses 365 chimes of differing lengths, one for each day of the year, arranged in three concentric circles. Aitken collaborated with composer Terry Riley to conceive frequencies for the chimes that, with the wind,
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By BE N JAMI N E P ST E I N
would produce a chance music. And that is just one of more than 40 enormous works that dot the property. Most are figurative sculptures. All are from the collection of Donum owners Allan Warburg, also co-founder and co-CEO of a behemoth clothing retailer in China, and his wife, Mei. Their goal was to combine wine, art, and landscape. They succeeded. Monumentally. The ranch and stunning art—by the likes of Ghada Amer, Lynda Benglis, and Keith Haring—occupy 200 acres. Donum began placing the sculptures in 2014; the collection officially launched in 2018. Winemaker Dan Fishman produces only
single-vineyard estate wines; in addition to its Carneros vintages, the Donum portfolio includes hand-harvested pinot noir and chardonnay from Russian River Valley and Anderson Valley. Ai Weiwei, whose exhibition Trace is at L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center through Aug. 1, designs many of the labels. Weiwei’s prominently displayed bronze Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2011) is the artist’s personal interpretation of 18thcentury Chinese animal heads that represent the 12 signs of the zodiac. In 2016, Donum commissioned Weiwei to create labels for its wines that would pair the vintage year with its corresponding zodiac sign.
THIS PAGE AND AITKEN COURTESY DONUM; DONUM HOME, ERIC PETSCHEK; WEIWEI, ROBERT BERG
| OFFSTAGE | ON THE VINE
Clockwise from left: Carneros vineyards at Donum, Latin for “gift of the land.” Tastings at newly imagined Donum House look out onto the property. Doug Aitken’s Sonic Mountain (2019) uses the wind to produce an ethereal inharmonic music. Ai Weiwei’s prominently displayed bronze Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2011) inspires Donum labels.
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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13 ORPHEUM THEATRE
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PHOTOS COURTESY DONUM
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For the estate’s 20th anniversary, the winery catalogue offers the Ai Weiwei Vertical Collection: It presents the 2015 Ten Oaks Pinot Noir from Donum’s Russian River Vineyard, the 2016 Angel Camp Vineyard Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley and the 2017 Russian River Reserve Pinot Noir from Donum’s Winside Vineyard in a handcrafted wooden box. Also honoring the milestone year is Donum’s inaugural sparkling wine, a 2016 blanc de blancs made from its Carneros Estate old-vine chardonnay. That label depicts Subodh Gupta’s commissioned work People Tree, a 33-foot-high stainless-steel banyan tree with utensils for leaves. The label on a 2019 rosé released in time for Valentine’s Day features Richard Hudson’s Love Me (2016), a huge polished-mirrored-steel sculpture of a heart. Several walking tours of the property are offered. The 60-minute Carneros Experience is new; it takes in the working farm, lavender fields, sculpture collection and a tasting of several estate wines. The 90-minute Discover Experience adds wines of the Anderson and Russian River valleys and bites using ingredients from the estate gardens. The elevated two-hour Explore Experience pairs tastings of reserve, single-block and library wines with small seasonal dishes. All require reservations and include access to the Donum Home—originally designed by Matt Hollis of MH
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Pinot noir label by Ai Weiwei and, left, Jaume Plensa’s towering Sanna (2015) at the winery’s entrance.
Architects, recently reimagined by Danish architect and designer David Thulstrup—for private tastings that look out onto the property’s natural beauty. Among other collection highlights: Yue Minjun’s Contemporary Terracotta Warriors (2005), featuring 25 identical bronze manically laughing men. The work is a reinterpretation of the legendary terra-cotta army, statues representing the armies of China’s first emperor and buried with him in the second century B.C. Louise Bourgeois’ original Crouching Spider (2003) has its own building. Bourgeois (1911–2010) created a giant spider for the inauguration of the Tate Modern in London. The “Maman” spider sculpture at Donum—inspired by the artist’s mother!—is also steel rather than bronze, allowing the welding marks to be more visible and giving it a more lifelike appearance. The sculptures of Barcelona-born Jaume Plensa populate the outdoor spaces of cities including Chicago, Dubai, London, Tokyo, and Bordeaux. Plensa is known for his giant heads; Sanna (2015) is the elongated head and neck of a young woman, her eyes closed in meditation, the alabaster-colored head stretched to such a degree that it looks like a hologram. Sanna is at the entrance to the estate. When you see it, you’ll know you’ve arrived—you can’t help but pull over to gaze at it—and that it was well worth the pilgrimage.
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TR ADITION MEETS INNOVATION
A new era begins at The Ford, the Bowl’s historic sister venue THE FORD, like the Hollywood Bowl, returns to live in-person performances this summer. This will be its first season under the stewardship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. (The Ford, along with the Bowl, is a Los Angeles County Park.) Programming this summer honors and renews The Ford’s deep and diverse connections with L.A.’s own unique cultural communities, while adding new artists, including international music legends as well as local acts. It begins with six free performances, starting July 30 with indie-pop band The Marías, in their Ford debut, and the return of the CONTRA-TIEMPO dance company, joined by YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) in a special appearance. The Improvised Shakespeare Company will create an entire play based on audience suggestions on July 31, and the L.A.-based percussion group TAIKOPROJECT returns on August 1. The LA Phil presented seasons of chamber music at The Ford in the 1990s, and members of the orchestra revive that tradition August 3. SyrianAmerican singer-songwriter Bedouine performs August 6 with special guest Steady Holiday, both in their Ford debuts. The opening weeks of free concerts conclude August 8 with the West African dance company Le Ballet Dembaya. But Father John Misty and the LA Phil add two more free concerts, September 22 & 23. Opera performances include a coproduction of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar with Long Beach Opera (August 14 & 15). Pacific Opera Project returns with
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La Cenerentola, Rossini’s spirited treatment of the Cinderella tale. Other season highlights include Boleros de Noche (August 21); Patti Smith with Jackson Smith and Tony Shanahan (September 2 & 3); Flypoet, celebrating 10 seasons of their All-Star Spoken Word & Music at The Ford (September 4); Rodrigo y Gabriela (September 17 & 18); Cécile McLorin Salvant (September 24); and Billy Childs (October 14, in partnership with Angel City Jazz). The season concludes with storyteller-singer Moses Sumney (October 30 & 31). Originally built in 1920, The Ford has an important place in Los Angeles arts history. It was founded by Christine Wetherill Stevenson, a wealthy woman from
Philadelphia who also played a significant role in establishing the Hollywood Bowl across the Cahuenga Pass. She established the Pilgrimage Theater (later the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, named for a Los Angeles County supervisor, and now simply The Ford) in 1920 as the home for her Pilgrimage Play about the life of Christ. She died unexpectedly in 1922, and the steel cross on a hill above The Ford was originally erected in 1923 in memory of her. The original theater was destroyed by a brush fire in 1929, and a new, concrete theater was opened in 1931. Among the highlights of the venue’s post-Pilgrimage Play performance history are a production of King Lear directed by John Houseman in 1964 (and later, several seasons of Shakespeare Festival/LA), and concerts by jazz legends such as Chet Baker, Stan Kenton, and Louis Bellson, and by punk bands Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, and The Ramones. Major multi-phased renovations to the facility were begun in 2013 and completed in 2017. Last summer would have been the centennial for The Ford. That milestone will be celebrated instead in 2022.
KNOCKING BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY. OPPOSITE FROM TOP LEFT: LONG BEACH OPERA, EMMA TILLMAN, MOISES GALVAN, RAJ NAIK, EBRU YILDIZ, PRIMARY TALENT, TIMOTHY NORRIS
| OTHER STAGES | THE FORD
Clockwise from top left: Long Beach Opera, Father John Misty, Bedouine, Billy Childs, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Patti Smith, and a full house at The Ford
| OTHER STAGES | AROUND THE COUNTRY
Summertime U.S.A. After the unsettling silences of the pandemic year, music and fans return to festivals around the country
The Hollywood Bowl, of course, was not the only concert venue affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Theaters everywhere went dark, and outdoor festivals were no exception. This summer is one of widespread reopening and renewal, and we survey a few fan favorites here. If you are traveling and would like to attend any of these events or others elsewhere, do check venue websites, since health protocols vary around the country and are subject to change.
Blossom Music Center SUMMER HOME OF the Cleveland Orchestra since it opened in 1968, Blossom seats 5,700 people in its pavilion, with room for about 13,500 on the lawn, in an outdoor setting about 25 miles south of Cleveland, surrounded by the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Guests who have not been vaccinated are required to wear a mask, and seating capacities will be limited. The Cleveland Orchestra returns this year with 10 weeks of concerts, beginning with a fireworks program July 3 & 4. The Orchestra offers three composer-themed programs: Jane Glover conducting an all-
Mozart program, with pianist Benjamin Grosvenor; Herbert Blomstedt leading an allBeethoven program, with soloist Garrick Ohlsson playing Piano Concerto No. 4; and Jahja Ling on the podium for an all-Brahms program, with Sayaka Shoji playing the Violin Concerto in his Cleveland Orchestra debut. Other conductors include Rafael Payare, Karina Canellakis, and Elim Chan; Broadway star Capathia Jenkins is featured in an American Songbook program; there is a concert pairing a Beatles tribute band with the Orchestra; and Stewart Copeland’s Police Deranged for Orchestra comes to Blossom
shortly after its world premiere in San Diego. Blossom has canceled its two movie concerts with orchestra, hoping to reschedule the events in a future season when large audiences and a full orchestra can be safely accommodated, but it is offering two performances of a Salute to John Williams. The non-classical offerings at Blossom this summer include James Taylor and Jackson Browne, The Black Crowes, Hall & Oates, Kings of Leon, Zac Brown Band, Maroon 5, Alanis Morrissette, The Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald, and the Dave Matthews Band.
Fireworks display at Blossom Music Festival
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| OTHER STAGES | AROUND THE COUNTRY
Ravinia Festival Orchestra since 1936. Alsop and seven guest conductors will lead 15 programs from July 9 through August 15. Highlights include Cynthia Erivo making her CSO debut on July 18 in a gala program benefiting the festival’s Reach Teach Play education programs, which serve more than 75,000 children and adults each year. There is chamber music through the summer, and the Joffrey Ballet returns on September 17 for the first time in more than a decade. Nonclassical artists include the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Judy Collins and Madeleine Peyroux, Gladys Knight, Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, and Ziggy Marley.
Lawn screen at the Ravinia Festival. Above: The Pavilion at night
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: ROGER MASTROIANNI, THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA THIS PAGE: COURTESY RAVINIA FESTIVAL. OPPOSITE: SHAWN LACHAPELLE, BEN EALOVEGA
THE 85TH SEASON of the Ravinia Festival runs from July 1 to September 26, and includes 64 performances. Changes this summer at the historic venue 20 miles north of Chicago include shorter concerts without intermission, reduced audience capacity, and shortened park hours before concerts. New programming this summer includes Carousel Concerts, a series of casual evening performances of jazz, folk, and bluegrass music at the rotunda on the North Lawn, with general admission lawn seating only. This is also the inaugural year for Marin Alsop as the festival’s Chief Conductor and Curator. Ravinia has been the summer home of the Chicago Symphony
Saratoga Performing Arts Center THIS CELEBRATED VENUE is located within the Saratoga Spa State Park in Saratoga Springs, New York. The amphitheater seats 5,200, but another 20,000 may sit on the sloping lawn. The project was initiated in 1962 with a financial pledge from the State
of New York and a local capital campaign in Saratoga Springs. Ground for the amphitheater was officially broken in 1964, and the Center was dedicated by Governor Nelson Rockefeller June 16, 1966. This summer, all attendees, in the amphitheater or on the lawn, will be seated in safe, socially distanced pods. Many of the performances are shorter and without intermission. The first season in 1966 featured New York City Ballet for four weeks and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy; those illustrious ensembles have been in residence at Saratoga every summer since then. Since 2014, they have been joined by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (whose concerts are already sold out). New York City Ballet presents a “Short Stories” program
of excerpts and another of Balanchine excerpts. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, including from the piano as the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12. The season opens with three evenings with Trey Anastasio (already sold out). Other artists presented by Live Nation include Daryl Hall & John Oates, James Taylor, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alanis Morissette, and Maroon 5. Opera Saratoga has a Spanish theme this year, with offerings including the musical Man of La Mancha and Telemann’s one-act comic serenata Don Quichotte at Camacho’s Wedding. Just heard in Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival were Dianne Reeves, Christian McBride’s New Jawn, Joey Alexander, and Hot Club of Saratoga.
Clockwise from top: Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Al Di Meola, Dianne Reeves, Joshua Bell
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| OTHER STAGES | AROUND THE COUNTRY
Tanglewood
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Keith Lockhart. For the first time ever, Tanglewood’s live performances will be augmented by select weekly live video streams on the BSO NOW page at the orchestra’s website. Other highlights include an all-star trio of pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma in an allBeethoven program, Jazz at
Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, and periodinstrument band Apollo’s Fire. The Popular Artist Series includes performances by Brandi Carlile and very special guest Mavis Staples, plus Judy Collins and Richard Thompson with special guest Jesse Colin Young. Tanglewood also offers family and community programs.
HILLARY SCOTT, FRED COLLINS. OPPOSITE: SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY, JENNA SELBY
THE BOSTON SYMPHONY Orchestra returns to concertizing post-COVID at Tanglewood on July 10. BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the same work that had opened the inaugural season at Tanglewood in 1937. (The Berkshire Hills venue in western Massachusetts has been the summer residence of the BSO ever since.) Safety protocols this summer include universal mask wearing, physical distancing within the open-air Koussevitzky Music Shed and on the surrounding lawn, and hand hygiene. The summer slate of events is about half of the Festival’s usual offerings, and all performances will be 80 minutes or less, with no intermission. Nelsons will lead eight programs. John Williams conducts the BSO in a program including the world premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2, with soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Williams and his music are also featured in the three performances by the Boston Pops with conductor
The San Diego Symphony’s new outdoor venue. Opposite: the Tanglewood Shed, Andris Nelsons conducting
The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY opens a brand-new outdoor performance venue this summer: The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, in the heart of San Diego’s scenic Embarcadero. Music Director Rafael Payare and the orchestra inaugurate the venue on August 6, with a festive program including the world premiere of Soundcheck in C Major by Mason Bates, SaintSaëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 with Alisa Weilerstein, arias and songs with bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Safety protocols this summer
include requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test and masks, without physically distanced seating. Highlights of the San Diego Symphony concerts include the world premiere of Stewart Copeland’s Police Deranged for Orchestra (August 27), the orchestral debut of singer Jason Mraz (September 26), and three films presented with their scores played live: Rocketman— Live in Concert (September 3), The Goonies—In Concert (September 4), and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (September 18 & 19). Other artists include Gladys Knight, Ledisi, Goat
Rodeo (Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Aoife O’Donovan), Roger Daltrey, Smokey Robinson, Brian Wilson, and Sergio Mendes. The San Diego Symphony projects The Rady Shell as a year-round venue, and is mov-
ing its fall season, which would normally take place at Copley Symphony Hall, seamlessly to the new facility. That takes the orchestra through the weekend of November 13 & 14, for two performances led by Principal Guest Conductor Edo de Waart.
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A NEW SEASON AWAITS
Indoor venues are also returning to exciting action, as this LA Phil peek shows AFTER THE DISRUPTIONS of the past year, the migratory patterns of L.A. music lovers are returning to form. One of the most venerable and distinctive is the switch from the Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to its winter quarters at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a few miles south down the Hollywood Freeway. Gustavo Dudamel closes out the summer at the Bowl on September 28 with “Mozart Under the Stars,” featuring the LA Phil, with its concertmaster, Martin Chalifour, and principal viola, Teng Li, the soloists in the joyful Sinfonia concertante. A week later, they will be downtown for a special “Homecoming” benefit concert, marking the reopening of Walt Disney Concert Hall. Dudamel then leads the first two weeks of orchestral programs, with an emphasis on luscious, late-Romantic orchestral songs. On the first, South African soprano Golda
78 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
Schultz sings the endlessly poignant Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. In one remarkable week during the LA Phil’s centennial celebrations, Schultz sang Sibelius’ Luonnotar under Esa-Pekka Salonen, joined Dudamel for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and then Zubin Mehta for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. The next week, Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling joins Dudamel and the orchestra for Mahler’s delightful, song-filled Symphony No. 4. Tilling has a rich collaborative history with the LA Phil, and, in March this year, she sang Mahler’s Fourth with Dudamel and the Concertgebouworkest, recorded live in Amsterdam for broadcast. The program in L.A. also features the world premiere of Steven Mackey’s Trumpet Fantasy, with LA Phil principal Thomas Hooten the soloist. Susanna Mälkki, the Phil’s Principal Guest Conductor, also leads two programs this fall. Her first opens with the U.S. premiere of
another LA Phil commission, Kaija Saariaho’s Vista, and has the beloved Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto as its centerpiece, with soloist Beatrice Rana. Leila Josefowicz joins Mälkki in her second week as the soloist in John Adams’ Violin Concerto, a specialty of the dauntless champion of new music. The non-orchestral offerings also start with formidable flair, including two featuring the Hall’s iconic pipe organ: Cameron Carpenter playing Bach’s kaleidoscopic “Goldberg” Variations, and the annual Halloween silent film accompanied by organ, this year the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Australian singer-songwriter RY X joins the LA Phil in a Songbook program, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Yuja Wang team up for a stellar Colburn Celebrity Recital. Artists and programming are subject to change; please visit laphil.com for the latest info.
ADAM LATHAM. CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE RIGHT: DANNY CLINCH FOR LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC, MARCO BORGGREVE, CHRIS LEE, NORBERT KNIAT, DARIO ACOSTA
| OTHER STAGES | WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
OPENING WEEKS AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL Oct 9
Homecoming: A Special Concert & Fundraiser Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Oct 14-17
Dudamel Conducts Strauss Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor Golda Schultz, soprano Schoenberg Transfigured Night Strauss Four Last Songs Strauss Death and Transfiguration
Oct 17
Organ Recital Cameron Carpenter, organ Bach “Goldberg” Variations
Oct 21-24 Clockwise from top left: Gustavo Dudamel, Leonidas Kavakos, Leila Josefowicz, Yuja Wang, and Golda Schultz
Mahler, Montgomery, and Mackey with Dudamel Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor Thomas Hooten, trumpet Camilla Tilling, soprano Jessie Montgomery Strum Steven Mackey Trumpet Fantasy (world premiere, LA Phil commission) Mahler Symphony No. 4
Oct 29-31
Tchaikovsky and Saariaho with Mälkki Los Angeles Philharmonic Susanna Mälkki, conductor Beatrice Rana, piano Kaija Saariaho Vista (U.S. premiere, LA Phil commission) Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto Scriabin The Poem of Ecstasy
Oct 30, Nov 6
Nov 6 & 7
Reich, Adams, and Rachmaninoff Los Angeles Philharmonic Susanna Mälkki, conductor Leila Josefowicz, violin Steve Reich Runner John Adams Violin Concerto Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances
Nov 10
Toyota Symphonies For Youth
RY X with the LA Phil Anthony Parnther, conductor
Oct 31
Nov 11
Halloween Organ, Film, & Music: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Clark Wilson, organ
Colburn Celebrity Recital Leonidas Kavakos, violin Yuja Wang, piano
| OFFSTAGE | PARTING THOUGHT
R EPROGR A M M ED! Performances Magazine unveils a digital program platform for shows and concerts
DROP DOWN MENU Table of app contents. REGISTER Stay arts-engaged, access past programs.
THE ESSENTIALS Acts, scenes, synopses, repertory, and notes.
CONTRIBUTORS Donors and sponsors who make it all possible—you!
NO RUSTLING PAGES, no killing trees.... Of all the innovations to have come out of the pandemic, the new Performances program platform, accessed on any digital device, may be least likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. Not only has its time come—it was long overdue. Performances provides the programs for 20 SoCal performing-arts organiza-
80 PERFORMANCES SUMMER 2021
tions, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Ahmanson to San Diego Opera, where the app made its debut. The touchless platform provides cast and player bios, donor and season updates and arts-centric features. Audiences receive a link and code word that instantly activate the app; QR codes are posted, too. Screens go dark when curtains rise and return with the
SEARCH Find whatever it is you want to know—easily. SIGN IN Link to your performing-arts companies and venues.
THE PLAYERS Bios and background for cast, crew, and creators.
WHAT’S ON What’s coming at a glance with ticket information.
house lights. Updates—repertory changes, understudy substitutions, significant donations— can be made right up to showtime, no inserts necessary. Other features include video and audio streams, translations and expanded biographies. For those who consider printed programs keepsakes, a limited number, as well as commemorative issues for special events, will continue
to be produced. Collectibles! Meanwhile, there will be less deforestation, consumption of petroleum inks, and programs headed for landfills. For the ecologically minded, the platform gets a standing ovation. Theaters and concert halls are reopening after a yearlong intermission. The stage is set, excitement is mounting. Activate your link and enjoy the shows.—CALEB WACHS