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Music

‘La La Land’ heads to San Diego in concert tour

By George Varga
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What does a multiple-Oscar-winning hit film musical do for a second act? In the case of “La La Land,” the answer is to hit the road for a world tour.

“La La Land in Concert: A Live-to-Film Celebration” will debut May 26 and 27 at the Hollywood Bowl with a 100-piece orchestra, choir, and jazz ensemble performing - under the direction of “La La Land” composer Justin Hurwitz - while the film is shown.

It will be followed by an extensive tour that includes an Aug. 12 San Diego performance. The concert here, under the auspices of the San Diego Symphony, will be at Embarcadero Marina Park South during the symphony’s upcoming Bayside Summer Nights summer season.

Cities announced thus far for the tour include Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Nashville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. An announcement of dates is pending. Tickets for the Hollywood Bowl concerts go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at Ticketmaster.

“La La Land” won six Oscars last month, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle, Best Actress for Emma Stone and Best Score and Best Song (“City of Stars”) for Hurwitz.

The tour will also stop in Mexico, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

It is unclear at this time if Hurwitz will be the conductor throughout the tour, or only at the Hollywood Bowl. It is also not yet known if the jazz ensemble for the tour will be the same throughout, or vary from city to city. Musicians featured on the film’s soundtrack include former Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine and guitarist Graham Dechter, a regular San Diego performer.

In a statement issued Monday morning, “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle said: “For me, one of the most thrilling and fulfilling parts of making ‘La La Land’ was scoring the film to a live orchestra: a hundred phenomenal local musicians playing in real-time to the Technicolor images, bringing Justin’s compositions to vivid life.

“I couldn’t be more excited to share that experience with audiences this summer, let alone in a setting as epic and as quintessentially ‘L.A.’ as the Hollywood Bowl.”

To date, “La La Land” has grossed $396.4 million worldwide. Lionsgate, the studio that made the film, is encouraging attendees at the May 26 and May 27 Hollywood Bowl concerts to dress in vintage Hollywood-styled outfits inspired by the film.
Twitter @georgevarga
george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Music
George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”

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