Music & Theater

The Ford says take a seat. Or two.

Maybe you’ve settled into one on a clear autumn evening and basked in the cool stylings of the Angel City Jazz Festival. Perhaps you took a load off to catch Jane’s Addiction in 1989—or their sold-out return in 2011.  Possibly you leaned back as Elvis Costello performed songs from a new album in 1996, or sat up straight in amazement at the tap-dancing virtuosity of Fayard Nicholas in 2000.

L.A. audiences have been parking their posteriors in the sturdy brown seats of the Ford Amphitheatre for more than three decades—ever since its original wooden pew-style seating was ripped out in 1980.

Whether you’re an aficionado of Mexican folk ballet, Outfest movies, exuberant Brazilian Nites or the family-friendly antics of Big!World!Fun!, chances are you’ve made yourself at home in one of the historic amphitheatre’s 1,200 seats.

Now one of those seats can make itself at home with you.

The chance to own a piece of Ford history comes as the old seats were removed this winter to make way for waterproofing the amphitheatre’s floor, and new seats, in shades of soft gray and green, are being installed this spring. The work is part of a larger overhaul, to be completed by the summer of 2014, in which the stage will be redesigned, lighting and sound systems replaced and the scenic hillside behind the stage re-landscaped. Architect Brenda Levin, whose firm masterminded recent improvements at Dodger Stadium and in 2006 completed the historic renovation of Griffith Observatory, is heading up the project, with Mia Lehrer overseeing the landscaping.

 This off-season’s work is all about making the outdoor facility much more water-tight.

“We were leaking like a sieve,” said Laura Zucker, executive director of the county Arts Commission, which manages the Ford. She said leaks through the amphitheatre floor have seeped into everything underneath, including the facility’s restrooms, bar area, storage room and small indoor theatre.

The old seats are still in good shape but were major culprits in the leaking because each required 8 bolts to secure.

The Ford Theatre Foundation, the non-profit organization that supports the amphitheatre and its programming, is selling the retired seats for $50 each ($90 for a pair, and greater discounts for larger purchases up to four.) The form to order the seats is here; information on when and where to pick up the seats will be noted at the bottom of your emailed receipt. Please note: the seats are not freestanding, and must be secured with bolts.

Any seats not sold during the fundraising drive will be donated to local parks or other outdoor venues that could use them, Zucker said.

The Ford, originally called “The Pilgrimage Theatre” in a nod to the religious play that in the early days was regularly performed there, opened in 1920 and was rebuilt after it was destroyed in a 1929 brushfire. It has been owned by Los Angeles County since 1941 and was renamed to honor former Supervisor John Anson Ford in 1976. Its “Partnership Program,” focusing on showcasing and developing local performing arts groups, started 20 years ago and is still going strong.

“The Ford is the only performing arts venue in Los Angeles that exists to support and present Los Angeles-based artists,” Zucker said, quipping that the “locally-sourced” programming comes with a guarantee that “all performers are grown within 100 miles of the venue.”

Tickets for this summer’s season go on sale April 10. [Updated: The Ford's summer schedule is here.]

Posted 4/3/13

What’s up at the Bowl?

Ladies and gentlemen: start your picnic planning. From Bugs Bunny to Tchaikovsky, the upcoming summer season at the Hollywood Bowl promises a multi-course feast for every musical appetite.

Featured artists include the L.A. Philharmonic’s maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who’ll be conducting the orchestra and soloists in Verdi’s Aida and Requiem.

Other superstars on the roster include Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, Willie Nelson and Itzhak Perlman. Yo-Yo Ma plays against type as part of Goat Rodeo.

Josh Groban is headlining a series of July 4th Fireworks Spectaculars, while She & Him, Pink Martini, Blue Man Group and Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers will be making appearances this summer as well. Also on tap: Kristen Chenoweth, Queen Latifah and ABBA Fest, featuring the tribute band Waterloo.

This year’s musical is Chicago. And everyone, regardless of vocal ability, can get in on the act at the Grease and Sound of Music sing-alongs (costumes optional.)

New and renewed subscriptions are available now. Tickets for five events or more go on sale March 19, with single ticket sales beginning in early May. Check out the 2013 schedule here and start planning your summer Bowl excursions. After all, in the words of the great Bugs Bunny himself, “the acoustics are poifect.”

Posted 1/30/13

Bringing down the (White) House

Every performer loves a standing ovation. And for a troupe of young mariachis from the northeast San Fernando Valley, the only thing better than bringing a White House audience to its feet was having Michelle Obama in the front row as Applauder-in-Chief.

Put your hands together for the city of San Fernando’s Mariachi Master Apprentice Program, fresh from an engagement at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the group received a prestigious National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award worth $10,000, and enough incredible moments to last a lifetime—from first trip in an airplane to first visit to the Lincoln Memorial to first photo-op with the First Lady.

“It was surreal,” said 16-year-old Anthony Fino, who plays trumpet in the organization’s Mariachi Tesoro performance ensemble, which wowed ‘em in Washington, D.C. over the Thanksgiving break.

“As an educator, you can’t simply prepare for that kind of emotional hurricane, the feeling of standing in the White House,” said Sergio Alonso, one of the group’s musical instructors. “Gosh, how can you even envision playing in an atmosphere like that?” (A recent gig at Disneyland was also pretty cool. Next stop: the Board of Supervisors, where they’re being honored on January 15.)

The national award recognizes after-school “arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people, particularly those from underserved communities.”

The San Fernando group, started on a shoestring twelve years ago, certainly fits the bill. It brings together local kids with professional musicians, including those who’ve played with the legendary Nati Cano, a co-founder of the organization with Virginia Diediker, the city of San Fernando’s cultural arts supervisor.

The rigorous program doesn’t just introduce students to the cultural and musical richness of the mariachi tradition; it also gives them a leg up on future academic and professional success.

“We are helping these young musicians learn life skills, through the discipline that music provides,” Diediker said.

Its participants have a stellar graduation record, in an area where only 58% of students finish high school. Some, like 17-year-old Ernesto Lazaro, hope to use their mariachi talents as a springboard to studying music at a famed conservatory like Juilliard. Others head in another kind of professional direction, like Stefanie Espinoza, a UCLA freshman who aims to become a surgeon.

Espinoza, 19, who plays violin and sings with the ensemble, is still feeling a motivational buzz from the group’s White House debut.

When she stepped forward to solo on “¡Viva Mexico, Viva America!” as part of the medley the group performed in the East Room on November 19, Espinoza smiled and looked directly at the First Lady.

“She looked at me and I looked at her. She looked so great,” said Espinoza, who’s majoring in physiological science. Equally thrilling: being praised by the First Lady for choosing to study science.

In honoring this year’s 12 award-winning groups for pushing students toward excellence, often against long odds, Obama also threw down a challenge to the young artists:

“Your job now is to pass it on—to find someone in your life that you’re going to mentor, that you’re going to pull up. And whether it’s in the arts or whether it’s academically, your job is to find the next you.”

That resonated with Fabian Narez, 17, who pays it forward by coaching younger students, members of the organization’s “Tesoritos” program, on the violin.

For Narez and many of the other musicians, mariachi is a way to connect with their heritage—and their parents’ and grandparents’ music, even if many of their peers are more into rap or hip-hop.

“The school’s 98% Hispanic. It’s part of our roots,” Narez said. And even if he ends up with a business degree and achieves his dream of becoming a CEO, he said, he intends to keep the mariachi tradition alive.

“I would love to keep performing till the day I die,” he said. “It’s one of my many dreams.”

There’s also a certain “big musician on campus” status that erupts when you return to your high school with a White House gig under your belt.

“Some of them were pretty jealous, to tell you the truth,” said San Fernando High School student Alejandro Ascencio, 15, who performs in the group along with his two brothers. “Everybody knows about it and would like to be in it.”

Watch their performance in this White House video.

Posted 1/9/13

Happy finale for opera loan

Talk about ending on a high note. LA Opera announced this week that it has fully repaid a $14 million loan that the county had guaranteed in 2009 in order to help the company through a financial crisis.

The loan’s final payment was announced by LA Opera’s general director Plácido Domingo. Nearly a year ago, Domingo appeared before the Board of Supervisors to thank them for guaranteeing the loan, from Banc of America, and to announce that the company had repaid the first half of the loan early.

On Wednesday, he announced that the payback was complete. “This is a direct testament to the generosity of our donors and the dedication of our ticket buyers,” Domingo said in a statement. “Thanks to their support and commitment to LA Opera, we will continue to grow and thrive. I am profoundly grateful to the Board of Supervisors for their longstanding trust and confidence in LA Opera, and for recognizing the important and prestigious role that a world-class opera company plays in the greater Los Angeles community.”

Christopher Koelsch, the opera’s president and chief executive officer, echoed that thanks, calling the supervisors’ action “an amazing leap of faith when one of their assets was in trouble.”

The opera was about to unveil an ambitious and long-planned staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle just as the great recession hit—creating a “perfect storm” of fiscal strains that made the bridge loan necessary, Koelsch said.

While there are still challenges ahead, the outlook now is brighter, Koelsch said, noting that ticket sales revenues are $1 million ahead of where they were last year at this time, with a 21% increase in single-ticket sales and subscriptions up 8% to 10%.

The final performances of the current production, Madame Butterfly, are playing to sold out crowds (the opera ends with a matinee on Sunday, December 9.) But enthusiasts and passersby alike can enjoy two free holiday-themed Songs of the Season recital performances in Grand Park on Tuesday, December 11. The Opera’s also bringing its program to local hospitals and to two Salvation Army residences. (Details of the free performances are here.)

Meanwhile, Koelsch said the company, which will announce the lineup for its next season on January 8, is planning to ramp up its programming gradually as the economy improves.

Paying off the loan, he said, “is a wonderful opportunity for us…it allows us to build toward the future.”

Posted 12/5/12

Way to go, Hollywood Bowl

With legendary headliners ranging from Glen Campbell to Smokey Robinson to Plácido Domingo on the 2012 bill, it’s not easy for a newcomer to break through at the Hollywood Bowl.

But it’s a safe bet that the new restrooms designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios will have audiences cheering when they make their Bowl debut this summer.

With sustainable features like Dyson hand dryers, LED lighting, water-saving fixtures, graphics inspired by the Bowl’s Art Deco architecture, and glossy green floors intended to bring the outdoors in, the restrooms represent a stark departure from the old, dark spaces that used to make intermission such a drab interlude.

[Updated 9/20/12: The Bowl’s bathroom re-do is a finalist in the America's Best Restroom contest sponsored by Cintas. Cast your vote here.]

The Bowl is a Los Angeles County park—albeit one with a worldwide reputation for glamour, fireworks and star-studded concerts—and the $3 million makeover was funded by Proposition A park improvement funds.

The bathrooms also feature reengineered layouts, dramatic mirrors, new privacy partitions between urinals and lighting accents to make sure patrons keep moving toward unoccupied facilities in the back, rather than creating unnecessary bottlenecks at the front of the line.

The new facilities were unveiled Monday evening at a Bowl reception along with some less noticeable but equally important off-season improvements like $600,000 in concrete repairs, including the replacement of a stairway built in 1954. Also underway, and expected to be finished in coming weeks, is the $2 million replacement of the moving sidewalk (also known as a speed ramp) that helps 75% of Bowl patrons get up the hill to their seats.

If you’d like to test drive the new and improved Bowl—and listen to some world-class music while you’re at it—tickets are on sale now. The season gets off to a big start June 22, with opening night festivities hosted by Julie Andrews and featuring Reba McIntyre, Chaka Khan and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted by Thomas Wilkins.

 

Posted 5/7/12

Gather ’round the piano, L.A.

The pianos are coming—and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra hopes Southern California is ready to play.

In an initiative that will involve artists, community groups and businesses from throughout the region, 30 upright pianos will be dispatched to street corners, public parks and assorted outdoor locations throughout Greater Los Angeles this month just to see what transpires around them.

They’ll be free, available 24-7, tuned by professionals, decorated by some of L.A.’s most talented artists and equipped with plastic covers in case of bad weather. All the public will have to do will be to follow the instructions that will be written on each one:

“Play Me, I’m Yours,” the inscription will say.

“I’d read about this in London and New York, and thought it was a spectacular idea,” says LACO Executive Director Rachel Fine, who began laying the groundwork for the initiative even before she officially started her job at the orchestra in late 2010.

The pianos will be placed across the Southland, from North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre to the Watts/Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club, from Atlantic Times Square in Monterey Park to Union Station and the Santa Monica Pier.

The endeavor, which will run from April 12 until May 3, is part of a worldwide public art project launched in 2008 in Birmingham, England, by British artist Luke Jerram. Placing temporary pianos outdoors where people can stumble upon them and, perhaps, make music, the “Play Me, I’m Yours” street piano project has so far set up more than 500 pianos in 22 cities.

Though “Play Me” has generated random acts of community and music from Sao Paulo to Sydney, it has been little known in this country, Fine noted. So far, the only American cities in which the project has appeared are Austin, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids and New York. This year’s schedule includes Salem, Ore., and Salt Lake City, in addition to L.A.

Fine called the project “a major undertaking,” but said she and the orchestra’s board members felt early on that it would be a perfect way for the orchestra to celebrate Music Director Jeffrey Kahane’s 15^th anniversary with LACO and to reach out across L.A.’s metropolitan sprawl. Kahane, she noted, is a renowned pianist, and one of the orchestra’s priorities has been to remind Angelenos that it’s there as a community resource.

In fact, the organizers were still reaching out on Twitter this week for the last couple of uprights, although by the end of the day Friday, pianos had been secured for all 30 locations, thanks to donations facilitated by the Hollywood Piano Company.

Fine said that wherever “Play Me, I’m Yours” has gone, it has generated thousands of impromptu concerts, YouTube videos, dance parties, sing-alongs and jam sessions. Some artists have made it a point to play every piano.

And, she noted, the pianos themselves might be seen as “blank canvases”, which is why more than a dozen well-known Southern California artists, including muralist Kent Twitchell and painter Frank Romero, have been commissioned to decorate them, as will community groups such as the Braille Institute, the HeArt Project and Homeboy Industries.

“I’ve seen some of the painted pianos already,” says Fine, “and they’re exquisite.”

Backers include corporate citizens such as the Wells Fargo Foundation and community partners such the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs, Fine says.

The event will kick off precisely at noon on Thursday, April 12, with a free, countywide, performance of Bach’s “Prelude No. 1 in C Major” from the “Well-Tempered Clavier,” played simultaneously on all the pianos by Kahane and 29 other accomplished pianists and music students from around L.A.

After that, each musician will play one more Bach prelude and a selection of pieces of their own choosing. And then, for the next three weeks, it will be first-come, first-served for anyone else who wants to tickle the ivories.

“This is by far the most ambitious presentation of the installation to date,” the artist, Jerram, said in a statement. “I hope the public enjoys the project and takes advantage of the opportunity to perform, express themselves and go out and play.”

For the piano nearest you, go to streetpianosLA.com or click here. And for even more video highlights of “Play Me, I’m Yours” in other cities, click here.

A Bowl full of summer superstars

Even by the standards of the star-studded Hollywood Bowl, this season’s lineup features an unusual concentration of needs-no-introduction talent.

From Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow and Smokey Robinson to Yo-Yo Ma, Gustavo Dudamel, Itzhak Perlman and Plácido Domingo, the schedule unveiled Tuesday offers a rich blend of popular entertainment and artistic innovation.

Garrison Keillor, Juanes, Rubén Blades, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Anita Baker and Ben Harper will be among the featured performers. Also on tap: a fully staged production of The Producers, crowd-pleasing Grease and Sound of Music singalongs, and Pixar in Concert, blending film clips and musical scores from Toy Story and beyond.

Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, meanwhile, will be experienced in a new way—with video imagery celebrating Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze accompanying the Ode to Joy finale. (The performance is a Los Angeles Philharmonic-Getty Museum collaboration.)

Among the artists listed as making their Hollywood Bowl debut this season is this promising newcomer: Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who will take the stage on Sept. 11 to narrate Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait. (He has previously narrated the work, but not at the Bowl.)

Subscription series tickets are on sale now. Single concert ticket sales start May 5. Check out the full lineup here.

Posted 1/24/12

Payback is sweet for L.A. Opera

When L.A. Opera was singing the blues, L.A. County chimed in with an urgently-needed high note, guaranteeing a bridge loan to help see the company through some deep financial woes.

On Tuesday, the opera company—led by its world-renowned maestro, Plácido Domingo—said thank you in a big way.

As in $7 million big.

Domingo announced to the Board of Supervisors that the opera company had repaid half of the $14 million bridge loan a full year early. The early payment, negotiated with lender Banc of America by the county’s Chief Executive Office, will save the opera $350,000 in interest.

“I am really very deeply touched by you having confidence in our company, trusting us,” Domingo, the opera’s general director, told the board. The loan, he said, came at a “most critical time in our young history, helping to stabilize the company during the first part of the economic downturn.”

Even on a day when reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Shervin Lalezary was being honored for his role in apprehending the New Year’s arson suspect, Domingo’s presence sent a thrill through the Board of Supervisors’ hearing room. Domingo posed for photographs with everyone from secretaries to chief deputies to Sheriff Lee Baca.

For one fleeting, only-in-L.A. moment, the longtime musical superstar (who will appear in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra next month) greeted and shook hands with the suddenly famous reserve deputy hero (who appeared on “Ellen” this week) as both men awaited their turns before the board. (Both received proclamations from the supervisors but only Domingo received a serenade in honor of his upcoming birthday.)

Accompanying Domingo in his supervisors’ boardroom debut were L.A. Opera board chairman Marc Stern and CEO Stephen Rountree.

Supervisor and board chairman Zev Yaroslavsky praised the three leaders for successfully managing the company under “very difficult circumstances” and for paying back part of the bridge loan ahead of schedule.

“If we had not had confidence in you, we probably would have been fools to guarantee that loan,” Yaroslavsky said. “Keeping the opera going is a very important thing for us because you are one of our important tenants at the Music Center and we can’t afford to lose you…We’re glad we were able to help and we’re glad that you made us look good.”

“There were many skeptics who said we shouldn’t have made this loan,” added Supervisor Gloria Molina. “We’re so grateful that not only was it repaid, it was repaid early.”

The accelerated payment was made possible by donors making good on their pledges to the opera company. Rountree said the opera is on course to repay the remainder of the loan when it comes due in January, 2013.

The loan guaranteed by supervisors was a “very, very important bridge to our continued success,” Stern said after the meeting. “In retrospect,” he added, “it was a good bet.”

Posted 1/10/12

 

Bowl, bath and beyond

The 2012 summer lineup has yet to be unveiled, but Hollywood Bowl patrons can already start looking forward to one sure-fire crowd-pleaser:

New and improved restrooms.

A $3 million makeover, unanimously approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, calls for reengineering restroom layouts, replacing plumbing fixtures and in general rethinking how to make the intermission bathroom break a better, brighter part of the concert-going experience.

Bathroom traffic has long tended to freeze up outside the first stalls, so bold new graphics inspired by the Bowl’s Art Deco architectural style are being developed to let patrons know that they should keep moving in order to get to more facilities inside.

The design as currently proposed would include state-of-the-art sustainable features, such as waterless urinals and lightning quick Dyson hand dryers. The green theme wouldn’t end there. Green floors are being proposed as a way of bringing a suggestion of the outdoors into stylish white-black-and-stainless-steel interiors. Indirect lighting would help illuminate what are now dark and dated spaces.

There are other practical improvements envisioned as well, such as new partitions to provide greater privacy around the urinals.

“We’re trying to really increase the experience, the magic of the Hollywood Bowl” by making the restrooms “more accessible, more usable and lighter,” said Mark Rios of Rios Clementi Hale Studios, whose firm is undertaking the renovation project during the Bowl’s off-season. (The firm also designed the new Civic Center park, now under construction as part of the Grand Avenue Project.)

Julie Smith-Clementi, who is heading up the Bowl bathroom project for Rios Clementi Hale, said the idea is to keep things durable while losing the current “park restroom” ambiance. “Because it is the Bowl, it’s dressed up a little bit,” she said of the new look being developed.

In all, a dozen restrooms—six men’s, six women’s—will be renovated at the county-owned facility. The money for the refurbishing will come from Proposition A park improvement funds.

It’s high time for a makeover, according to Russ Guiney, director of the county Department of Parks and Recreation, which operates the Bowl in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“These facilities show signs of deterioration due to their age and the extremely frequent usage during the performance season,” Guiney said in a letter to supervisors. The loo re-do “will enhance the function and appearance of the facilities for patrons and help to reduce maintenance costs.”

The supervisors’ action Tuesday enables the Philharmonic Association to obtain funding for the project while the final design planning progresses.

Posted 12/20/11

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