Hollywood Bowl
April 1, 2025
When I saw the ads for this concert to honor first responders and fire victims of the Eaton and Palisades fire, I texted Julie and sent her the info to register. Julie is a rock star? Have I mentioned that? She spent more than 24 hours non-stop evacuating pets and then continued driving into the fire zone to give pets (who were safe but still at home) their medications. At one point I think she had 6 cats and 4 dogs in her tiny apartment. She loves the Bowl as much as I do and she totally deserved to go to this concert. I was lucky enough to tag along as her guest. I was happy to see they were running buses from Culver City. They were in fact running all of the buses from all of the places and since it was an LA Phil event, tickets were the cheaper prices.
As soon as I got on the bus, it was clear to me that most of the people riding either had never been to the Bowl or had not been for a long time. Someone sat next to me which usually doesn’t happen, but he was okay. He did talk to me most of the way there, but fine. We crawled along the 405 in heavier than usual traffic and an hour and a half later pulled into the bus stop. They have new signage up in lot B2 which makes it really, really easy to find your bus on the way back, so yay! I still managed to get there before Julie. She texted to say there were at least 300 people at the Zoo lot with no buses. Eventually a ton of buses showed up and she got there with plenty of time to spare (or I should say 15 minutes before the concert to use the restroom, but since they started about 10 minutes late we had time to eat a bit as well). When we got to our seats, it was cold but not the coldest I’ve been at the Bowl. As the evening progressed, I did put on my gloves, but I didn’t need to put my hood up.
The evening began with the national anthem performed by the LA Phil with the LA Master Chorale and Palisades Charter High School Band. The Master Chorale was sounding exceptionally. Next was a lively piece by Gabriela Ortiz called Kauyumari and then Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No. 5. The first special guest took the stage and it was a surprise guest: Yo Yo Ma! This was my first time seeing Yo Yo Ma and he totally lived up to the hype. He performed a solo piece after which they rolled a piano onstage for Gerald Clayton. He performed Variations on “I Got Rhythm” with the LA Phil. Julie mentioned before he started that his house burned down in the Eaton Fire. The final special guest was Christina Aguilera. It’s amazing that such a powerful voice comes out of such a tiny person. She opened with At Last and then sang Beautiful. As great as she was, I really have to give a shout out to the arranger. Those arrangements were soooo good! It was also fun to watch her mike technique. Her belt isn’t quite to Alanis Morissette levels, since I have seen Alanis actually hold the mike BEHIND her, but still pretty powerful. There were several speakers between these numbers, county supervisors, the Bowl president, etc. and we really could have done without that, but it wasn’t nearly as emotional as I was afraid it would be. At one point Julie made a sound but when I checked to make sure she was okay, she was just making herself laugh thinking about how inappropriate it would have been if they had done fireworks (which thankfully they did not).
The second half of the show was all John Williams and thankfully no more speakers (except for Dudamel who said a few words). They played Superman March, Theme from Jurassic Park, Selections from Harry Potter and Selections from Star Wars. At the end of the Star Wars piece, I turned to Julie and said, “How do you play selections from Star Wars and not include Darth Vader’s March?” at which point Dudamel returned to the stage, lightsaber in hand, and conducted the Darth Vader March using the light saber as a baton. It was a wonderful way to end the evening.
I have to say though, that they really did miss an opportunity to get Randy Newman on stage to sing I Love LA.