Building a Context Into Music Series

For a melding of the creative arts of architecture and music, there is nothing in Los Angeles as sublime as the annual Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.

“It is a movable feast that brings both music and landmarks to life,” comments Mary Ann Bonino, director of the series sponsor, Da Camera Society, based in Mount St. Mary’s College.

Being a musicologist and architecture buff helps Bonino set a particularly fanciful table. Now going into its ninth season, the increasingly popular series offers a range of concerts in an equally broad range of compatible, if sometimes unusual, locations.

‘Mixing and Matching’

These have included classical compositions in the lobbies of neoclassical office buildings downtown; contemporary pieces in Modernist- and Postmodernist-styled showrooms and private homes, and a miscellany of other works in movie palaces, missions, synagogues, churches, a Buddhist temple, Griffith Observatory, a merry-go-round and atop City Hall.

“Mixing and matching the concerts and landmarks is really the fun part,” says Bonino, who also is a professor at Mount St. Mary’s and a musical commentator at classical station KUSC-FM.

“I’ve always felt that music history would be more exciting if the music we hear could somehow be put in an appropriate context, offering a sense of time and place that matches at least in spirit the original composition.”

It began modestly in 1973 as six recitals in the august Doheny Mansion on the campus of Mount St. Mary’s southwest of downtown and became a series in 1980. It has grown into eight varied series and two weekend festivals and mini-festivals. This adds up to more than 50 concerts in 31 sites, 17 of which this year are new to the series.

The season will be inaugurated Sunday by the Nakamichi Brillante series in the recently renovated Biltmore Hotel downtown. There in the ornate, Beaux Arts-styled, Corinthian-columned Crystal Ballroom, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra will play an evening of music by Purcell, Grieg, Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

Other locations in this series, funded by the Nakamichi Foundation, include the Queen Mary in Long Beach harbor, the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. All feature ensembles playing appropriate classical selections, among them Handel’s “Water Music,” which will be performed, of course, on the Queen Mary.

Florid Eastern Style

Among the sites selected for the A Cappella series, featuring spiritual works, is the recently completed Hindu Temple in Malibu, designed in the florid Eastern style of the Chola Dynasty, which flourished in India 1,000 years ago; the Byzantine-inspired Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in West Los Angeles; the Gothic-styled Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, and the Mediterranean-styled Mary Chapel on Mount St. Mary’s Brentwood campus.

Also in this series, a chamber ensemble composed of members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale will perform an Easter Sunday concert of Renaissance polyphonic and polychoral works downtown in the rotunda of City Hall.

“The last concert we had here with choirs opposing one another in the balconies had to be one of the most musically exciting events I ever attended,” Bonino recalls.

A new site featured in the diverse Epicure series is the Turf Club at the Santa Anita Race Track, where the Angeles Quartet will play, among others, Haydn’s “Horseman” and Mozart’s “Hunt” quartets.

Also new to the series is the Moderne-styled Union Station, where there will be a jazz concert by Freddie Hubbard celebrating the landmark’s 50th birthday, and the Spanish Renaissance-styled Simonson Mercedes-Benz Showroom in Santa Monica, where Renaissance ballads and other compositions will be performed by the Musicians of Swanne Alley.

The settings for the Allegro series will be the marble-encrusted lobby of the restored 818 W. 7th St. office building, the dining room of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the grand rotunda of the Wiltern Theatre and the meeting room of the former Masonic Hall in Long Beach, now home of the Pacific Coast Club. The afternoon performance at the club will be the last stop that day for an architectural tour of historic Long Beach.

The focus of the two Premium series will be “intimate salons,” according to Bonino, be they Renaissance- or Rococo-inspired, or Moderne or Craftsman styled. These include some private homes of note designed by Charles and Henry Greene, the firm of Hunt & Eisen, Cedric Gibbons and Wallace Neff, and the Directoire Room of Bullocks Wilshire, among other architectural gems.

A Rambling Mansion

As it has since its inception, the Doheny Soirees series will be in the rambling, Chateau-esque Doheny Mansion in Chester Place, on Mount St. Mary’s North University Park campus. Featured along with the house, designed with a flourish by Theodore Eisen and Sumner Hunt, will be six different string quartets. A special holiday concert Dec. 8 and 9 also will be held at the mansion.

Other one-time special events in special places being sponsored by the society is a “baroque discotheque” Nov. 1 at the former Masonic Temple in Hollywood, where disco dancing in Baroque-styled costumes to the music of Vivaldi, Handel and J. S. Bach will be attempted.

Added to the list of the society’s festival this season is the Spanish Baroque-styled, terra-cotta-sculpture-clad Mission Inn in Riverside, where Feb. 18-20 there will be a weekend of music celebrating the reopening of the historic hostel.

And on the first weekend in June, the society once again will hold a chamber music festival on Catalina Island. There also will be a mini-festival in downtown Santa Ana March 19, marking Orange County’s Centennial celebration with concerts in the old county courthouse and the Episcopal Church of the Messiah.

Information concerning times, specific locations and tickets for individual events and select series can be obtained from the Da Camera Ticket Line, (213) 747-9085, or the Da Camera Society office, (213) 746-0450.