Dudamel And L.A. Philharmonic Reunite For Socially Distanced Virtual Concert Series
NOEL KING, HOST:
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is launching a new season of streaming concerts today called Sound/Stage. Here's NPR's Mandalit del Barco.
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MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: After months of lockdown, on a glorious, sunny day, I got to watch the LA Phil rehearse at the near empty Hollywood Bowl. Only about seven others were scattered in the audience of the vast amphitheater. In sneakers and jeans, conductor Gustavo Dudamel led the orchestra in a piece by composer John Adams.
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DEL BARCO: On stage, the musicians were seated 12 feet apart, all wearing face masks except for the wind instrument players. They were each isolated with plexiglass partitions around them.
GREG ROOSA: So you're just by yourself. And as soon as you start playing, all you hear is yourself.
DEL BARCO: Greg Roosa is the second French horn player in the orchestra. His wife, Amy Jo Rhine, is the third.
ROOSA: It's really, really hard. You have to kind of hear off in the distance, and you have to really watch the conductor.
AMY JO RHINE: We have to be hypersensitive to everything that's happening around us, even more so than normal.
DEL BARCO: Dudamel says he and his orchestra were anxious to perform together, so they were up for anything, including the plexiglass walls.
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL: It creates, you know, a different acoustic environment that we are not used to. But, you know, we decided to take the challenge. And it was very, very, very challenging.
DEL BARCO: The concerts the LA Phil performed last summer and fall are featured on the Sound/Stage series streaming on its website. The first season opened with an episode called "Love In The Time Of COVID," complete with overhead shots of the lonely Hollywood Bowl in LA and a reading of a Pablo Neruda poem.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
DEL BARCO: The second season launches with a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' "The Carnival Of The Animals."
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DEL BARCO: And Dudamel's 9-year-old son, Martin, narrates an animated folktale.
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MARTIN DUDAMEL MATUREN: Deep in the jungle, there lived a fierce lion. He wanted to eat two young jackals that lived nearby.
DEL BARCO: In other episodes, Dudamel interviews his celebrity friends about their musical inspirations. The series includes virtual field trips to the Hollywood Bowl and Disney Hall and virtual experiences for schoolchildren.
ALEX ROSS: It's been a very difficult time for this orchestra, and it's great to see that they've been able to keep up their spirit of experiment and innovation through this period.
DEL BARCO: Alex Ross is the music critic at The New Yorker. He says the LA Phil is known for championing new and diverse music and that this series goes far beyond videotaped concerts some other big orchestras have made during lockdown.
ROSS: They haven't pretended like everything is normal. So you see the orchestra on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, but then you see all the empty seats. So you're reminded that, you know, the audience is absent, and there's a kind of loneliness. And I think they've been able to use that in a kind of expressive way to sort of show this yearning of the musicians and Gustavo Dudamel to reach out to the audience that's not there.
DEL BARCO: When he returned to the Hollywood Bowl to tape the Sound/Stage concerts, percussionist Matthew Howard said being back on stage together was amazing.
MATTHEW HOWARD: Even with these restrictions, it just feels so nice to make music with people not via Zoom.
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DEL BARCO: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
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