“If there is a single takeaway from the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s centennial season, technically completed last month but now bleeding into summer, it is that a symphony orchestra can be and do pretty much any meaningful thing it damn well pleases,” writes Mark Swed in Friday’s (7/12) Los Angeles Times. At the LA Phil, “that means intimate installation art for an audience of one or an experimental crowd-sourced piece … It means opera and theater and education and parades and community outreach. It means new music by masters and by teens…. Right now, dance is the ticket…. Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl, the L.A. Phil revived the Siudy Flamenco Dance Theater’s version of ‘El Amor Brujo’ … conducted by the orchestra’s newly named associate conductor Paolo Bortolameolli…. The extensive new parts [of this staging of ‘El Amor Brujo’] are Garrido’s hair-raising dance over the coffin at her husband’s funeral and, later, [Manuel] Gutierrez’s spectacular grandstanding solo … Gorgeous lighting helped. There was room for the expert corps de ballet, although much of their work was lost on the large video screens…. The ‘Ritual Fire Dance’ once more fired the blood… The L.A. Phil’s lyrical sweetness … added a glow to the night.”
Posted July 16, 2019
In photo: Siudy Garrido in Manuel de Falla’s “El Amor Brujo,” performed by her Siudy Flamenco Dance Theater and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Paolo Bortolameolli, at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night. Photo by Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times
