Critics are Raving About Our New Series with KUSC
We recently debuted a new series, called “Classical KUSC @ Pacific Symphony.” Over the past weekend, we had some great coverage of this new series – check out some excerpts, and links to the full articles, below!
Cocktails, cake pops and no intermission. This wasn’t your typical night at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall but an entirely new format geared toward wooing non-traditional audiences.
The 90-minute Vegas-length concert came with onstage program notes by radio personality Alan Chapman and Maestro Carl St.Clair.
It wasn’t your typical scene, i.e. squares need not apply. Concert black was ditched for casual wear and that wasn’t to one couple’s taste, “Can you believe what they’re wearing?!,” the outraged woman said.
via the Orange County Register
As an L.A. resident who also attends concerts in the OC and environs, I have been time and again impressed by the scrupulous care and thoughtfulness from the OC concert presenters – something that the LA Phil, for example, is sorely lacking. A case in point – at last week’s all-Bernstein concert, the Pacific Symphony celebrated Bernstein’s centennial year with music inside and an afterparty outside in the plaza. The Segerstrom Concert Hall lobby became an impromptu Bernstein exhibit with display boards and a pianist playing show tunes of West Side Story and Rodgers & Hart. It was all very festive, immersive and fun!
Friday, however, happened to be one of those less formal nights orchestras sometimes offer, with less music and more chitchat, no intermission and post-concert festivities.
The jazzy “Prelude, Fugue and Riffs” featuring principal clarinetist Joseph Morris was almost too hot to handle. “Chichester Psalms,” with the Pacific Chorale and boy soprano Angel Garcia, was startlingly bright. Soprano Celena Shafer sang “Glitter and Be Gay” brilliantly, though overacted. The performances were such that Bernstein, along with baseball, became a theme of the weekend, since all the other programs had works he was known for conducting.
