Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Liza Minnelli at the Hollywood Bowl
Photo: mine 2009

What can you say about Liza Minnelli in this day and age? At 63, she’s embarking on a tour following a successful run in Liza’s at the Palace… in New York, and this weekend she was at the Hollywood Bowl. I saw Saturday’s performance, and no matter what else it was, it was certainly remarkable. Minnelli is a performer who has an effective shtick and easily-lampooned style, but she doesn’t back down from any of it. She is beyond camp. She revels in those very things that would seem to detract from her image. She approaches the show with a gee-whiz-what-a-surprise stance and clings to gestures from decades ago. Her penchant for name dropping, including that of Michael Jackson, persists unabated. But what would seem to derail much lesser performers, not only work here but make Minnelli all the more endearing to the audience. She's funny and her jokes about ex-husbands and her age really go beyond just being able to laugh at herself in a way. By the time she got around to Every Time We Say Goodbye, her admonition that “we” all did “it” together made perfect sense.

The voice is what you’d expect. Often fractured and with canyons of vibrato at times. But she plays to her strengths with material that is unequivocally hers – “New York, New York”, “Cabaret”, “Maybe this Time.” She is a star from a world of stars that no longer exist and she knows it, making the proceedings all the more enjoyable despite the ravages of time. She careens over the barrier between fearless and foolhardy with abandon offering up Al Jolson’s “Mammy” with an apology that she can't go down on her knees for it as she may have in the past. She also performed "Comme ils disent", a classic Charles Aznavour song, well received by her many gay fans. In the end, though, like most great live performers, Minnelli rises above the rest by maintaining an incredible energy level and communicating with an audience in a way they want and understand. Even with introductions between each number, she keeps the evening up and energized, and most, including myself, walked away more than satisfied. A really enjoyable show from a real living legend.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 09

Marin Alsop, the LA Philharmonic and, PercaDu
Photo: mine 2009

The Hollywood Bowl can be brutal with big orchestral works that are highly reliant on dynamic range to produce their desired effects. Case in point, Tuesday’s performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Marin Alsop. Although the amplification at the outdoor venue has clearly improved over the last two years with a smoother more consistent quality, it’s still just like listening to someone play music in the next room. Or maybe play music on the TV in the next room. Of course, Alsop’s rather slow and plodding approach didn’t help. I tend to think this was just an off night given the less than ideal circumstances of their performance, though. I still thought the Adagietto was lovely, but a lot of the rest felt doubly deadened in these acoustics. It was also clearly a long haul for many in the audience who barreled in increasingly large numbers as the second half moved on.

Unfortunately, the program was not lopsided in that the first half was as weak as the first. Strike that. It was actually weaker considering that the Symphony at least benefited from being Mahler’s. The show opened with the West Coast premiere of Israeli composer Avneh Dorman’s Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!, a double percussion concerto. The soloists were Tomer Yariv and Adi Morag, collectively known as PercaDu, the young ensemble for which the piece was originally composed. (The overly enthusiastic spellings and capitalizations are theirs, not mine.) The three movements were intended to “reflect young Israeli culture” according to Dorman, and I suppose that may be true for all I know. More often than not though, it sounded overly eager-to-please and dangerously bordering on a sort of Middle Eastern kitsch. Take the three words and imagine what John Williams might come up with to represent them in a Spielberg film and you just about have it. There was plenty of activity between marimbas and other various and sundry percussion instruments, but it never really got anywhere. As an encore, PercaDu took two (staged) failed attempts at starting a Bach transcription for Marimba and abandoned it for “Flight of the Bumblebee.” I kid you not. And while this may have been nothing more than a crowd-pleasing gimmick, it encapsulated what had gone before quite appropriately. But, this is Summer and this is the Hollywood Bowl. It's part of the package.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 09

Grace Jones at The Hollywood Bowl
Photo: mine 2009

In case anyone still thought “World Music” couldn’t be highly theatrical, the ever-present KCRW put together a program on Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl to correct that misconception. Of course the KCRW-sponsored “World Music” programs at the Hollywood Bowl take that category very, very loosely with bands that are just as likely to be American or Canadian as they are from somewhere else. But this is Los Angeles, and borders do mean less and less over the years so maybe it isn’t that unfair after all. Sunday’s headliner was Grace Jones. Yes that is one name I never imagined would be associated with a Los Angeles Philharmonic associated event, but there she was performing in front of a huge and very enthusiastic crowd. And despite the ups and downs of the years and her career, there is still no one that does theatrical rock quite like Ms. Jones.

Grace Jones at The Hollywood Bowl
Photo: mine 2009

The evening was about half material from Ms. Jones latest release, Hurricane, which sadly has not yet been released in the US, although it was just about everywhere else in the world last year. (I guess that’s the “world music” part.) After a lengthy tour around the world in support of the new recording, Ms. Jones surprised me first and foremost with the fact that even in the midst of the many songs that made her famous two decades ago, the new material was by far the most intriguing in her set. “Hurricane”, “William’s Blood”, and “Corporate Cannibal” all delivered the grooves one might expect from Ms. Jones, but seemed more urgent and frankly deeper than some of her well know dance-floor anthems.

Grace Jones at The Hollywood Bowl
Photo: mine 2009

The crowd was on its feet for most of the set through “Pull Up to the Bumper”, “My Jamaican Guy”, “Demolition Man”, “La Vie en Rose”, and “Love is the Drug”. Of course all of this was augmented with multiple audacious costume changes. In fact, there was a different outfit for almost every number in the show. This did slow things down, and it left Ms. Jones to chat with the audience while behind screens at the back of the stage where all of the quick changes took place. It created a sort of clunky intimacy. But Grace Jones is about an entrance and this is half the fun of the show.

Grace Jones at The Hollywood Bowl
Photo: mine 2009

These are not kitschy Bob Mackie confections one might see on Cher, but Gaultier-inspired designs that were witty and amazingly revealing. Time has done nothing to Ms. Jones that would lead her to eschew donning a mountain of bright red pleats with no back. And I mean no back - top, bottom or otherwise. She opened the show covered from head to toe in a silver reflective sheet that was pulled away at the start of the second song to reveal a white lattice body suit with accompanying headdress. Ms. Jones was having as much fun as everybody else, and she ended the show running right up to the Hollywood Bowl Sunday curfew with house lights coming up even as she continued to speak from the stage inviting all her friends to give her cell phone a ring and join her backstage at the after party. It’s reassuring to see that even with time, some things do stay the same.

Kevin Barnes and pugs
Photo: mine 2009

I’d be remiss to end this post without mentioning the other great performance of the evening from Georgia art rockers Of Montreal. It was a tight and hilarious set with their own freewheeling street theater crew. Think of The Flaming Lips with a more narrative flair. With Of Montreal, we were treated to pug-walking lead singers, a Christmas tear gas attack, a Cardinal led exorcism, and a knife fight between two single-leg neon unitard clad drag queens. I know it may sound like just another day in Los Angeles, but you'd be wrong. Even in the giant space of the bowl, the band unleashed a lot of energy and was quite exciting. So even though it was world music mostly from northwestern hemisphere on Sunday, it didn't really matter. Everyone was having too much fun to worry about any geographical concerns.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 09

Philip Glass with members of the Philip Glass Ensemble, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the L.A. Master Chorale
Photo: mine 2009

Say what you will about his music, but Philip Glass has been enjoying a resurgence in notoriety over the last few years. Past are the days of jabs from the writers of South Park and now Glass enters the era of big revivals at the Metropolitan Opera and, this week, a solo show at the Hollywood Bowl with the Philip Glass Ensemble and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I’ve often suspected that it is much more fun playing music at the Bowl than listening to it there, and my curiosity was confirmed when Glass spoke from the stage at the opening of the show about his dream to play his music at the “Triple Crown” of concert venues: Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, and now, the Hollywood Bowl. And though the comparison is flattering to our lovable landmark, I’m not sure I buy it.

But it was a good night to see thousands of people show up for a program with none of the usual standard comfort foods that make up classical concerts. It was an enthusiastic and loving crowd for this composer on a roll. The evening was mostly centered on a performance of his score for Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance in a new arrangement by the composer to include full orchestra, accompanied here with a screening of the film. It’s intriguing to see this admittedly dated film at this point, particularly in that it, more than anything else, established Glass in the American conscience. It's not his strongest work. The score pales in comparison to most of his operas, and it can be listless in the first ten minutes. The film itself can be heavy handed even for a 90 minute music video. But there are many wonderful passages and the performance at the Bowl was very, very good. As the score enters "The Grid" and "Microchips," things begin to come alive with the teeming energy that the composer is famous for. I'm not sure how necessary the new orchestration was. Despite the occasional tuba or strings, the new arrangement sounded much like the old one in the Bowl with the majority of sound coming from the Philip Glass Ensemble. I should also note a completely great performance from the L.A. Master Chorale that again proved why they are a first choice ensemble for new music.

But it wasn't solely about Koyaanisqatsi. The evening opened with three short pieces - the solo piano "Opening" from Glassworks as well as "Facades". There was also the final "Sapceship" sequence from Einstein on the Beach. Glass played in all of the segments and the short snipets were reminders of just how good his music can be. So maybe it wasn't my dream Philip Galss concert, but for this huge venue in this city on a Thursday no less, it was an event to remember.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 09

Juho Pohjonen, Lionel Bringuier, and the LA Philharmonic
Photo: mine 2009

My Hollywood Bowl season got under way Tuesday with one of those golden nugget of a shows buried among the Beethoven and easy listening favorites that typically make up summer in the Hollywood Hills. It almost feels like an evening intended for someplace or someone else, but there it was, another outing of the Esa-Pekka Salonen Piano Concerto. But this time it was without its composer at the podium or the soloist for which it was written, Yefim Bronfman, at the keyboard. Instead we had the L.A. Philharmonic’s Assistant Conductor, Lionel Bringuier, lead the orchestra with the devilishly speedy piano part left to the very talented young Finnish musician, Juho Pohjonen. The good news is that the piece lives on. In fact, to be completely honest, I liked it much better here than in either of the Salonen/Bronfman performances I’d seen previously. I’ve been somewhat ambivalent about this piece since its premiere, but tonight I felt it really burst into life for me.

Part of it was Pohjonen. Whereas Bronfman attacks the piece with zeal punching through rapid passages in bursts of activity, Pohjonen seemed to take things in stride. His hands were moving faster than anything, but he was calm, cool, and collected throughout the whole run. It was a more connected, flowing interpretation that emphasized the relationships with each of the orchestral soloists who get a chance to interact with the piano directly. Bringuier delivered the work cut from the whole cloth with shimmering fibers instead of patches of arch juxtapositions before. The work with paired with Paul Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which couldn’t have been a more fitting introduction. The Pairing pointed out the whimsy that can underlie Salonen's work as well with its almost comical references to robot-birds and Stanislaw Lem. That all of this happened in the crappy Bowl acoustics is even more remarkable.

It's worth noting that at least based on last night's performance, someone spent some time on the acoustics issue in the last year. This is the first concert I remember there in a long time that was not marred by the snap, crackle, and pop of amplification problems. The show ended with Ravel's arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work I always feel is about 10 minutes longer than it should be. Bringuier made the most out of Ravel's lush and rather French orchestration. It was a nice start to the season and here's hoping that everything at the Bowl this year comes off this well.

Labels: Hollywood Bowl 09