Local Venues Interested If Costello Does ‘Juliet’ Again

Local audiences may get another chance to hear Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet play “The Juliet Letters,” their acclaimed collaborative song sequence for string quartet and voice--and this time they might not have to drive to Los Angeles.

Interviewed this week in Santa Monica on public radio station KCRW-FM (89.9), Costello raised the possibility of additional engagements with the quartet once its four-date U.S. tour, which opened Sunday at UCLA, concludes Thursday in New York City.

“We’ve had numerous offers from various places,” Costello said. “The Brodsky Quartet has their schedule and I have my schedule, but I don’t think we’re exactly going to end this tour thinking ‘Well, I wish we hadn’t done that.’ Anything but . . .

“If somebody came in with the right offer, in the right sort of place,” Costello said, “I’m sure we would consider coming to play it again.”

“I would definitely be willing to pursue it,” Victor Gotesman, general manager of the new Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, said Tuesday.

“I have heard bits and pieces of ‘The Juliet Letters’ and have been very impressed with what I’ve heard. I wasn’t aware they might be doing anything beyond this tour. To get somebody like Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet must be a monumental task. But I have interest, so I’ll pursue it.”

Even a spokesman for the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, which has shunned popular artists of Costello’s stripe (and where the Brodskys play without Costello on Saturday) said “we would take a look at it.

“If there is a tour happening, we’d certainly consider it, based on factors like availability and so forth.”