Here are a few shots from this evening’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl of Gustavo Dudamel’s first performance as LA Philharmonic Music Director.

On the day before the LA Philharmonic’s first classical concert of the summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, I’m thrilled to announce that KUSC will once again broadcast 10 concerts from the Bowl.

Here is the complete schedule.

As always, I strongly encourage you to attend as many concerts at the Hollywood Bowl as you possibly can. It’s a magical place for music…and a wonderful summer tradition. Then, relive your musical memories Saturdays at 3:00 pm, beginning August 1st, on Classical KUSC.

~Brian Lauritzen

Okay, we admit it. It’s a stretch. But when Gail Eichenthal and I were given a chance to interview Dodger Stadium organist Nancy Bea Hefley for Arts Alive, we jumped.

View from the press box at Dodger Stadium.

A bit of background: Gail is a lifelong Dodger fan who actually remembers the last time they won the World Series and, in her earliest years of fandom, got to thrill to the mastery of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, live at the stadium. My first team is the Minnesota Twins, but since moving to LA it’s been really easy to fall hopelessly in love with the Dodgers as my National League team.

Dodger Stadium is one of just a handful of Major League ballparks that still has an organ. It’s located in the press box behind home plate. In the 21 years Nancy Bea Hefley has been delighting fans as the Dodger Stadium organist, she’s missed a total of seven games! Four of them to catch the middle school graduation of her granddaughter. (If you’re doing the math, you’ve no doubt figured out that her debut year as organist was 1988—the last time the Dodgers were world champs.)

Shortly after she arrived at the stadium last night, accompanied as always by Bill, her husband of 52 years, Hefley kindly chatted with Gail and me about a wide range of topics: from her Dodger Stadium audition (she and the other finalists each played a few innings of a pre-season game), to how she relates the songs she plays with the action on the field (her repertoire includes more than 2,000 songs—and she knows them all by memory!).

 
Nancy Bea Hefley rehearsing the National Anthem with the evening’s soloist, Hayley Singley Kirkland

Catch Hayley Singley Kirkland’s performance by clicking here

Nancy Bea Hefley has been charming Dodger fans night after night with her witty performances. And she’s our guest this week on Arts Alive!

~ Brian “Dodger-Blood” Lauritzen

PS. I guess you could say as journalists, we hit one out of the park: When Vin Scully heard we were doing a feature on “Nancy Bea,” as he calls her, he couldn’t help but take a few minutes to share with us HIS admiration of her. Our EXCLUSIVE chat with Vin Scully, also this week on Arts Alive.

KUSC’s Gail Eichenthal, still slightly star-struck following our interview with Vin Scully

For the past several days I’ve been holed up in the production studio at KUSC, emerging only briefly for sustenance and to sleep. The reason I’m sequestered? I’m working with KUSC production director Mark Hatwan (an absolute wizard in the studio) on the final mix of E-P in LA: Reinventing the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

That’s the two-hour documentary looking back on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s tenure with the LA Philharmonic, airing Sunday afternoon, April 5th at 4:00 pm. Just part of Classical KUSC’s special programming during Salonen’s final weeks as LA Phil Music Director. (By the way, here’s a really great LA Times photo gallery of Esa-Pekka Salonen through the years.)

Throughout this entire season, we’ve been interviewing people who have been an important part of Salonen’s LA career: LA Philharmonic president and CEO Deborah Borda, Ernest Fleischmann (the orchestra’s longtime executive director and managing director), Frank Gehry, Peter Sellars, musicians in the orchestra, and others.

E-P in LA is a symphony for Salonen in four movements, each with the title of one of Salonen’s major compositions:
1. Foreign Bodies – a young 20-something conductor sweeps an orchestra off its feet
2. LA Variations – the Finnish composer finds his voice in California
3. Wing on Wing – how a concert hall became a living, breathing member of the orchestra
4. Helix – Salonen and his colleagues capture the creative energy of Los Angeles and infuse the LA Philharmonic with that spirit

Along the way, we’ll hear rare concert recordings with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phil, including some of the first notes ever performed in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

There’s such a wealth of material—I’m in the process right now of cutting the documentary down to two hours. Salonen is so incredibly articulate, every time I talk with him I wish I had as strong a command of English (my first language) as he does (probably his third or fourth language).

I hope you’ll tune in for E-P in LA: Reinventing the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Here’s a preview. In this clip, Salonen has just made his debut with the LA Philharmonic in November, 1984 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion conducting the West Coast premiere of the Lutoslawski Symphony No. 3, the Ravel Piano Concerto in G, and the Mendelssohn Italian Symphony.

Excerpt from E-P in LA #1

That’s from the first movement, Foreign Bodies. Here’s another brief clip from the second movement, LA Variations. Here, Esa-Pekka Salonen the composer is shaking off the shackles of European modernism and discovering a new aesthetic for his music…finding it here in Los Angeles.

Excerpt from E-P in LA #2

E-P in LA: Reinventing the Los Angeles Philharmonic airs Sunday, April 5th, at 4:00 pm here on Classical KUSC.

~ Brian Lauritzen, KUSC Producer

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And check this out! The LA Phil is giving you a chance to win tickets to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final performance as LA Philharmonic music director. Of course, if you don’t win, you can listen to that final performance live on Classical KUSC, Sunday, April 19th, at 2:00 pm.

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Update: For those of you who missed the program, the LA Phil and Deutsche Grammophon have allowed us to stream the program for the month of April. Click here to listen to it.

 

Today I had the great pleasure of interviewing former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky in advance of his appearance this week with the LA Chamber Orchestra.  While preparing for the interview I was reminded of a wonderful program he started when he was Poet Laureate called the Favorite Poem Project.  The premise is simple: record everyday Americans reading poems they love. 

 

Pinsky’s point was that poetry is not some abstract or esoteric endeavor only for the culturally elite.  Poetry, in fact, touches all of our lives deeply.  As Pinsky told me today, from “the construction worker who reads Walt Whitman [to] the attorney who carries an Elizabeth Bishop poem around with him, first in his wallet, now on his Blackberry.”

 

That idea is the inspiration behind a new series we’re kicking off on Arts Alive.  For our annual celebration of April as National Poetry Month, we want to know what poems touch your life.  For me, a favorite is “Credo” by Matthew Rohrer, a brief, but touching reflection on falling in love.  Gail Eichenthal read it at my wedding last summer. 

 

Drop us a line at artsalive@kusc.org and tell us about your favorite poem.  Then be sure to tune in to Arts Alive Saturdays at 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. to see if we select your poem to be read by one of our hosts on the air.

 

Here’s a clip from my interview with Robert Pinsky talking about the Favorite Poem Project.  The complete interview is part of the LA Chamber Orchestra’s new podcast series.

 

Robert Pinsky on the Favorite Poem Project 

 

Don’t forget to send us your favorite poem at artsalive@kusc.org.

 

Cheers,

Brian Lauritzen