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Land of plenty
California's city of glitz and glamor makes room for the arts, with three architectural wonders standing guard over Los Angeles' reputation as an important cultural center.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published August 7, 2005
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[Getty Images]
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The industrial look of the exterior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is tempered by an interior flowing with warm woods and natural light. Frank Gehry designed the building, which the Los Angeles Philharmonic calls home.
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LOS ANGELES - Tinsel Town, La-La Land, Celluloid City.
The stereotype is that Los Angeles is an airhead sort of place, completely consumed by the movies and show business. Outsiders might have figured there was not much else going on here in terms of arts and ideas.
Maybe that was true once. But not anymore.
"The city has got taste lately in a big way," is how film critic David Thomson puts it in his compulsively readable history of Hollywood, The Whole Equation.
Of course Los Angeles has always been beguiling. It even has that consummate storyteller, Vin Scully, broadcasting Dodgers games six months a year.
Now the city has visual proof of its importance in the cultural big leagues by virtue of three high-profile works of dazzling architecture that have sprouted in recent years:
- Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Frank Gehry-designed home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
- The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, just a long block down Grand Avenue from Disney Hall, in downtown Los Angeles.
- The J. Paul Getty Center, which includes what is considered the world's richest art museum, perched on a hilltop like a gleaming white spaceship.
I was in Los Angeles recently, mainly to hear a couple of concerts by the Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Gehry's design combines shiny industrial modernism, in the swooping lines of its stainless steel exterior, and the warmth of oak, Douglas fir and natural light from skylights within the concert hall. The hall has been likened to the inside of a giant cello - or the hull of a ship.
Lillian Disney, widow of Walt Disney, gave the initial $50-million that made the concert hall possible. Gehry paid homage to her love of gardening in the fussy floral design of the fabric for chairs and the carpet. Mrs. Disney died in 1997 so she never saw the hall, which took 16 years to plan and build. The price tag: $274-million.
My favorite description of the hall came from Philharmonic violinist Roy Tanabe, giving a preconcert talk one night. He called it "this virtual moon rocket," a turn of phrase that neatly suggests not only the futuristic visual impact of the building but also the experience of hearing music there.
Twice I heard the L.A. Phil in Daphnis and Chloe, with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium. With its wide dynamic range, Ravel's sensual ballet score was the perfect piece in which to take the acoustical measure of Disney Hall. This is a rare thing in a world of multipurpose venues - a true music listening chamber.
Never have I heard all elements of a symphony orchestra so vividly, even subtleties in the double bass section. This was especially true the night I sat in the front row of the center balcony.
The orchestra platform is in the middle of Disney Hall, surrounded by seating, similar to its role model, the Berlin Philharmonie. But the Disney is without the slightly clinical air of the German hall. Behind the orchestra is the Gehry-designed organ, with 6,000 pipes, splayed in a manner reminiscent of the architect's most famous work, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
The chorus in the Ravel occupied bench seats behind the percussion and below the organ, but for repertoire without a chorus, seats in that section are sold for just $15, providing a musician's-eye view of Salonen in action.
A 47-year-old Finn, he has been music director in L.A. for 13 years. From a technical standpoint - in his baton work and body language - he is one of the most exciting conductors around.
On its outside, Disney Hall sports an aerial walkway - "like a grownup jungle gym," I overheard someone say during intermission - that leads to airy vantage points providing amazing views at night. You look down Grand Avenue toward the skyscrapers of downtown in one direction, the lights of Dodger Stadium in the other.
The L.A. Phil has been enjoying a splendid honeymoon in its new home, playing to near-capacity in the 2,265-seat hall since it opened two years ago. During the summer, the orchestra performs in the fabled Hollywood Bowl.
Not that the Philharmonic is the only musical game in town. L.A. has the country's longest-running contemporary music series, the Monday Evening Concerts, which began as "Evenings on the Roof" in 1939 and have lately been held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Royce Hall on the UCLA campus is another excellent venue that presents an adventurous season, with the likes of pianist Christopher O'Riley. He played his transcriptions of music by arty rockers Radiohead and Elliott Smith the night I attended.
The Hollywood studios employ many fine musicians who moonlight as members of symphony orchestras in Pasadena, Long Beach and Orange County. As Alan Rich, the dean of L.A. music critics says, "They play symphonies at night to earn their ticket to heaven."
Los Angeles Opera is the city's youngest major musical institution, established in 1986, but its general director is Placido Domingo. The great tenor also does a little singing with the company. I saw a new production of Der Rosenkavalier, directed by Maximilian Schell, that featured first-rate performances by Adrianne Pieczonka as the Marschallin and Alice Coote as Octavian.
The opera performs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, former venue for the Academy Awards ceremony. It's across a plaza from the Mark Taper Forum, the top theater in Los Angeles and one that has done plenty of groundbreaking work. When I was there, it was staging the American premiere of Stuff Happens, David Hare's play on the diplomacy (or lack of it) leading up to the Iraq war.
The nearby Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is on the north end of the burgeoning Grand Avenue arts district, looming over the Hollywood Freeway like a giant sun-baked California mission.
Designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 2002, the 11-story complex of earth-toned cement was the first Roman Catholic cathedral to be built in the western United States in 30 years. Inside, light through the 50-foot alabaster windows casts a dusky, peaceful glow over the spacious sanctuary, with the figures of 136 saints looking down from the walls.
A pleasant tour is given of the cathedral, with a chatty docent supplying all manner of information, from why there are nine angels on the candelabra (there are nine ranks of angels) to the location of Gregory Peck's tomb in the basement. Visitors can even sit in the archbishop's ornate wood chair by the altar.
The Getty Museum is in suburban Brentwood. To reach it, visitors take a tram up a steep hillside, like a journey to some new-age Valhalla. On a clear day, Santa Monica can been seen in the distance, and TV news helicopters flit past the museum's terrace.
Designed by Richard Meier and opened in 1997, the Getty has a sensational treasure trove. Here are all the Monets, Cezannes, Van Goghs, Pollocks and other masterpieces you would expect in a museum of such staggering wealth: the Getty Trust has a $4.9-billion endowment.
I enjoyed an exhibition of Paul Strand's photographs, drawn from the Getty collection, that included a rare showing of Strand's Manhatta (1923), an ode to New York that is also America's first avant-garde film.
As glorious as the Getty galleries are, I found myself seeking relief from sensory overload in the Central Garden, "a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art" in the words of its designer, Robert Irwin.
It is an immaculate creation of weirdly artificial lushness, from the travertine pathway that zigzags over a bubbling brook to the putting-green lawn, from huge steel bowers overflowing with bougainvillea to a reflecting pool and maze of azaleas. It's impossible not to think of Southern California's desert environment and the preciousness of water while wandering through this fantasy world of flowers and landscaping.
- John Fleming can be reached at 727 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com
If you go
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact the following venues:
Los Angeles Philharmonic: 323 850-2000; www.laphil.com
Hollywood Bowl: 323 850-2000; www.hollywoodbowl.com
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels: 213 680-5200; www.olacathedral.org
J. Paul Getty Museum: 310 440-7300; www.getty.edu
UCLA Live! at Royce Hall: 310 825-2101; www.uclalive.org
Mark Taper Forum: 213 628-2772; www.centertheatregroup.com
Los Angeles Opera: 213 972-8001; www.losangelesopera.com
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 325 857-6000; www.lacma.org
[Last modified August 5, 2005, 11:45:03]
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