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Jumpin’ Gene Flash : Gene Evans has worked behind the scenes at the Bowl for 24 years, lighting up the sky with fireworks.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Don’t expect the Hollywood Bowl’s flashiest guest artist to be sitting onstage tonight.

Gene Evans, the Bowl’s “special effects consultant,” works backstage. One of the Bowl’s most frequent yet least-known artists, Evans has been working on fireworks shows there in one capacity or another for 24 years. His assignment this time: to come up with plenty of original light shows for Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the grand finale tonight, Saturday and Sunday evenings.

Performances at large outdoor venues like the Bowl synchronize music with everything from fireworks to laser beams, and the notion didn’t start with all those “Son et Lumiere” (sound and light) shows that dot contemporary European attractions. Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks,” set for Bowl concerts Sept. 10 and 11, was written in 1749.

Fireworks programs are among the Bowl’s most popular, and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conductor John Mauceri has been adding new pieces to the pyrotechnics repertory. Mauceri says music inspired by pictorial images seems to lend itself best to fireworks, and who could resist a piece of music titled “Pictures at an Exhibition”?

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Not Evans. Mauceri and Evans listened to a recording of the 1874 Mussorgsky classic together, then went through the piece, bar by bar. They considered its many segments, which essentially describe an art gallery visit composed of “promenades” and stops before several paintings by the composer’s friend Victor Hartman.

“Gene is wonderfully musical,” says Mauceri. “He really tries to be respectful of the music and at the same time, because he is unencumbered with the reality of what we have to do to make the music, he’s a free spirit. His images are from his inspiration--he’s an artist who deals with ephemeral lights.”

Even free spirits need help, of course. Evans read up on “Pictures at an Exhibition,” whose music drew on paintings with such names as “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” and “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells.” And he played the 27-minute piece over and over in his apartment and in his car, “maybe hundreds of times.”

Recordings generate mind pictures for Evans, who takes detailed notes of what he hears and feels. His notes, a combination of words and images on lined paper, record when there’s a bell, gong, piano slide or other sound and exactly how many seconds each might last. Then he figures out what effect might work best where--perhaps a big twinkle look, maybe shimmering romans.

Sometimes he relies on past experience, drawing on what he knows about the color, height and distance of a given effect and how long it lasts. When it’s new material, which will be the case on many of tonight’s effects, he runs tests at a fireworks plant in Rialto where he lights and times new devices.

Expect some very unusual effects tonight. For the “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells” segment, for instance, Evans has come up with 102 cues that span just 1 minute and 14 seconds. He will use 160 fireworks devices to have those chicks hop along the stage, climb up a trellis at each side, then climb back down and react to horn music.

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Practical issues are important. “You can’t lose sight that because of the confined area, you can only sustain so much product,” says Evans, who worked on the last three Rolling Stones tours. “Compare it to the typical Fourth of July (show) at the Rose Bowl or Dodger Stadium where you have acres and acres of land to deal with. When you’re working at the Bowl, everything is overlapping and a lot of things I’d like to do can’t be done.”

Then again, he’s been able to do a great deal of pyrotechnic wizardry over the years. Altadena-raised Evans, who once built and raced cars, figures he’s been working at the Bowl as long as it’s had fireworks. Evans is coy about his age, saying only that he’s old enough to get a senior discount on plane tickets.

Evans oversees extensive on-site set-ups involving as many as 18 people behind and on top of the Bowl bandshell. Working out of their supply truck, climbing up and down ladders, or crawling around on the roof, these are people who truly pay attention to the huge “No Smoking” signs pasted up every few feet.

Once the rehearsal of the fireworks-accompanied piece gets under way, Evans goes out front to listen to the orchestra. Leaning against the stone divider that separates two chunks of box seats, Evans follows along on his cue sheets as Los Angeles Philharmonic artist liaison Kathy Perkins does the same on a copy of the score. Off to his side are a stopwatch and a tape recorder.

When the orchestra moves on to other music from the concert, Evans retreats to the relative quiet of Perkins’ office backstage. Evans, Perkins and lighting designer Jay Winters review the tape, coordinating the music, lighting and fireworks for their chunk of the show.

During actual performances, Evans and Perkins work out of the Bowl’s lighting booth and both wear headphones. On one level of the booth, Perkins first reads the music, then cues Evans with a downbeat of her arm. Evans, in turn, uses his hand-held clicker to manually launch fireworks in time to the music.

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They work with a computer, but Evans does not do automatic firing. “Because it is a live performance, a conductor is setting the tempo,” he explains. “If he plays at one speed at rehearsal and another at the actual performance, the computer doesn’t know that.”

A few years ago, Evans says, a European conductor arrived in Los Angeles with jet lag. He played at one pace during rehearsal, but at the actual performance, after some sleep, he slowed down. “He was better than 30 seconds off at the end of the four-minute piece,” Evans says. “If I had locked that into the computer, based on my recording of the rehearsal, I would have been lost.”

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