COVER STORY : Puzzling Out Summer at the Bowl : Summer may be fun for the audience, but programming the Hollywood Bowl season is serious business. It only works with the right combination of long-term planning and last-minute juggling. Oh, and plenty of Tchaikovsky

In preparation for an evening at the Hollywood Bowl, a typical audience member (yes, you over there in the Dodgers sweat shirt, in-line skates and black evening dress) may just be more concerned with parking hassles and packing your pre-concert picnic than with how the concert you came to see tonight actually makes it to the Bowl’s expansive band-shell stage.

Street parking or the official Bowl lots, where 3,383 “stacked” parking spaces are provided for a potential 17,960 audience members? Brie or Cheddar? The mind boggles. These are the important issues. These things take time .

That glossy color Hollywood Bowl concert-schedule brochure that magically appeared in your mailbox a month or so ago, listing more than 50 concerts ranging from classical to jazz to pop, complete with fireworks or movie clips or popular soloists or Bugs Bunny cartoons or laser light shows--well, that just doesn’t matter anymore.

It just shows up every year, like a tax return, only prettier. The Bowl officially kicks off its 73rd summer season Tuesday with a gala opening concert of Berlioz, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff; audiences have already gotten a taste of the Bowl in preview concerts that began a week earlier, including this weekend’s traditional Independence Day “America the Beautiful” fireworks extravaganzas.

Most likely, you have already picked out the concerts you want to attend and in some cases have already bought the tickets. You’re over it. Just pour the wine.

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But for the many behind-the-scenes players who determine what you see on the stage each summer, programming the Hollywood Bowl is no picnic.

While you are enjoying the show, this group of music-minded individuals is already busily planning what you will enjoy at the Bowl next year, the year after--and for some artists staring even farther into the future in their crystal bowl. Er, ball.

“It’s more fun than doing a crossword puzzle, doing these programs,” said John Mauceri, director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the person responsible for selecting the music for the Bowl Orchestra’s eclectic menu of orchestral pops concerts. Fun was not the first word out of the mouth of Ernest Fleischmann, executive vice president and managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, when he described programming the Bowl.

“It sounds a simple process; it takes ages ,” Fleischmann said. “Especially with pop artists--to get someone like Patti LuPone to commit takes months and months and months.”

For the winter Philharmonic season, Fleischmann generally has the luxury of booking guest conductors and soloists as much as four or five years in advance. But in the summer, last-minute juggling runs rampant--particularly among pop artists trying to work their own concert dates around a busy recording schedule. Many will not commit to a Bowl date even six months in advance.

On the other hand, even though summertime artists may commit later, the Bowl must enter into discussion with them sometimes earlier than for the winter season to have a fighting chance of being chosen among the many options.

“Yesterday we had a conductor in from San Francisco, and we were talking about 1997 or 1998,” Fleischmann said.

On the classical side, he said, the Bowl must compete with prestigious European music festivals--the Big Kahuna being the Salzburg Festival in Austria--when it seeks to host visiting symphony orchestras. (The Phil leaves town too: This year its European tour includes the Helsinki Festival in Finland, the Proms in London and concert dates elsewhere in England and in Germany.)

“For every acceptance, we get about 10 turndowns,” Fleischmann said. Luckily, he added, Bowl classical concert-goers for the most part are less concerned with the program than with the guest soloist or the conductor. Nor are they much concerned with Bowl programming as a whole--they are attracted to individual concerts, not a season subscription, as in the winter.

“At the Bowl, people buy 90% on program, 10% on artist (for classical concerts),” Fleischmann said.

“But we are very interested in using the Bowl to introduce new talent--largely performers but sometimes conductors. It’s possible to get a really gifted (new) artist to play a Tchaikovsky Concerto or a Rachmaninoff Concerto and (the audiences) don’t care who plays it as long as it’s Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff.”

(Note: Tchaikovsky is the Bowl’s most popular composer. No. 2: Mozart.)

Some stars help out by making a standing commitment to the Bowl. Beverly Hills resident Mel Torme, 68, a popular regular, has visited the Bowl every season for 17 years and returns for his 18th with two concerts Aug. 26 and 27 titled “Mel, the Movies and More,” a tribute to movie music with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and flutist Hubert Laws.

Torme keeps coming back, he says, because “I can perform in various guises at the Bowl. For instance, one year I will go in with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and do two nights with them. The next year, I’ll do ‘Jazz at the Bowl,’ which is a jazz evening sponsored by the Phil, and then the next year I’ll do the Playboy Jazz Festival, a separate jazz evening.”

Torme calls the Bowl “an extraordinary venue, and let me tell you why. Standing on that stage, looking out over this vast amount of people, it has an ambience, and a kind of intimacy. When you say it’s got intimacy, people look at you and say, ‘What, are you crazy? The Hollywood Bowl ? But the truth of the matter is, honest to God, I feel like I’m in a small room.

“Generally speaking, it is a tremendous thrill to work with symphony orchestras. I mean, I write all of the arrangements, so to stand up there and hear 80 or 90 people play what you put down on paper--it’s the closest thing to being God I can think of.”

OK , Mel. You can come back next year. . . .

The Hollywood Bowl, owned by Los Angeles County, has a 99-year leasing agreement with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. Although the Philharmonic, directed by Esa-Pekka Salonen, continues to perform often at the Bowl, in 1990 the Philharmonic Assn. created a separate Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, directed by Mauceri, which performs its own series of concerts and frees up the Philharmonic for more touring engagements, as well as more rehearsal time during the summer.

“The Philharmonic schedule in the summer had become somewhat unbearable--largely because of the success of the Bowl,” Fleischmann said during a recent interview in his office at the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the orchestra’s winter home. “In the old days, there used to be three concerts maximum and six rehearsals for each one; now there is a concert every niight. The season used to be 10 weeks; now it’s 12 weeks.”

In more recent years, but before the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra came into being, Fleischmann said, “we used to finish at the Bowl, and in one week start the winter season. The orchestra was totally exhausted; it usually took us a month or two to get back up to speed in the winter.”

Fleischmann holds ultimate veto power over the Bowl’s summer schedule but calls programming the Bowl--with its eclectic blend of classical, jazz, rock and pops concerts--a collaborative, and complicated, effort.

“For the winter season, Esa-Pekka (Salonen) is our music director and has the greatest responsibility and veto power,” Fleischmann said. “Winter programs are usually put together by Esa-Pekka and myself in long sessions. Our way of doing things is to outline a set of programs, and then the next time we meet, we change them.

“The Bowl is simpler, yet more difficult, in a way. First of all, we have a greater number of programs to put together. There is a far greater range of music, and there are different approaches to different kinds of music.”

Along with Salonen and Fleischmann, summer classical music decision are made by Bowl Manager Anne Parsons and Mauceri, who is not responsible for overall Bowl programming but oversees the choices for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s own programs.

Outside producers are hired by the Philharmonic to handle rock and jazz concerts, and the Bowl is also leased out for a handful of available dates.

Because of the demands of its summer touring schedule, the Philharmonic’s dates are slotted first--and the rest of the puzzle pieces follow. In general, the Philharmonic occupies the Bowl on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra on weekend nights. A jazz series occupies occasional Wednesday nights, although outside coordinators of those concerts are in negotiation to switch to Sundays in upcoming years.

“I don’t know how to explain it, Sunday is just more of a jazz night,” said Darlene Chan, senior vice president of the Los Angeles office of New York-based Festival Productions, which produces the jazz series for the Bowl.

Sometimes the Philharmonic will try to gear one or more Bowl concerts to fit into a local festival, such as last year’s Los Angeles Festival or this year’s upcoming UK/LA Festival celebrating the arts of Great Britain. For UK/LA, the Bowl will present Britain’s Halle Orchestra, conducted by its music director, Californian Kent Nagano.

This year, the Philharmonic Assn. was asked to hold open the week of July 11-17 for a week of special performances in honor of the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament. Those concerts are being produced by partners Bill Silva and Andy Hewitt, who also produce the Bowl’s rock and pop music concerts for the Philharmonic, including this season’s Bonnie Raitt concert. The Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra will perform during some World Cup concerts as musicians for hire.

World Cup will present a glamorous roster of stars including Itzhak Perlman with Linda Ronstadt, Garth Brooks, the Gipsy Kings, Jose Luis Rodriguez, Paul Rodriguez, Reece Holland and Van Cliburn. The Bowl’s annual “JVC Jazz at the Bowl” concert, usually held in August, has been moved into the World Cup series.

Some ticket prices will be comparable to usual Bowl prices, ranging from $1 to a top price of $88 for a Saturday box seat, but others may cost up to $150.

“I think when people think of Los Angeles, and summertime, and entertainment, the Hollywood Bowl comes to mind,” said World Cup arts spokeswoman Polly Williams Kroeger. “We wanted to develop something during finals week, when an awful lot of international visitors will be here.”

Although the Philharmonic Assn. receives fees for leasing the Bowl, Fleischmann said, there could be a downside to World Cup series as well: “It’ll be very interesting to see if the high-priced, high-powered World Cup week will take away attendance from the rest of the Bowl. Those are expensive seats; I’m a bit worried that people will pay a lot of money for one ticket and then say, ‘That’s it.’ ”

Fleischmann is also fretting about “Encore: The Three Tenors,” a mega-concert featuring the ubiquitous Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti to be given at Dodger Stadium the day before this year’s World Cup final. Tickets range from $15 to $1,000. This event is unrelated to the Bowl, but “that is going to take millions of entertainment dollars out of people’s pockets,” Fleischmann said.

Money is a big issue at the Bowl. Successfully programming the venue, Fleischmann acknowledged, is more at issue than artistic satisfaction for the parties involved.

“Of course, we have to strike an artful balance with what music should be played, but financial success at the Bowl is absolutely crucial to the Philharmonic,” Fleischmann said.

“(The Bowl) is so valuable, because (the Philharmonic) has a very small endowment compared to other major orchestras; we are 19th in terms of the size of our endowment. And so we need to make up for that by having a successful season at the Bowl to help reduce our deficit.

“The Bowl grosses about three times as much as our regular season; about 40% of our budget comes from the Bowl. Of course the expenses are humongous, the staff is enormous. It’s very expensive to operate.”

This financial reality, Fleischmann acknowledges, sometimes causes minor fireworks between himself and Mauceri when it comes to selecting music for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s pops concerts.

“John Mauceri is the driving force in programming, and he has brilliant ideas about popular music, in particular the neglected music of Broadway and the movies,” Fleischmann said. “We have to be a little careful sometimes. Sometimes I find myself questioning some of his programs being a little esoteric for the weekends. He comes up with some wonderful stuff, but we must sell tickets.”

Since the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra plays more concert dates than anyone else at the Bowl, Mauceri has perhaps more influence over the Bowl season than anyone. In a recent conversation, he downplayed disagreements between himself and Fleischmann.

“Ernest and I really don’t disagree--there is no question that the Philharmonic depends on the Bowl to keep the Phil going during the winter,” Mauceri said. “And I certainly don’t like to play to small audiences; I think our goals are the same, Ernest and I.

“But he really doesn’t give me a hard time on this, because we are being successful. If people were getting up and walking out, we probably would have a different relationship.”

Theme programs are the key to selling tickets, Mauceri said, but they also give him a chance to introduce new music to audiences. He stressed that each Bowl Orchestra concert has a theme and a structure to it, rather than simply being a collection of popular tunes.

“I always bristle a little at the P-word; I think popular is a better word than pops for me, “ Mauceri said. “We tend not to repeat ourselves often. In the four years I’ve been doing the ‘America the Beautiful’ (Fourth of July weekend) concerts, we haven’t repeated ourselves once.”

Mauceri acknowledged that he sometimes has to play little games to keep himself amused when tradition demands that he stick to the tried and true.

“Ernest really wanted the last concert of the season to end with ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ by Handel,” Mauceri said. “I have never been a great fan of ending a concert with ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks,’ but it was important to the continuity of the Bowl for that concert to end with it.

“So I agreed to do it, but on the condition that I could create the program that would end with the ‘Fireworks’ music. I took this as a personal challenge--I had to end up with something I didn’t necessarily want to end up with.

“So I thought the most interesting thing to do was to go ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’--beginning and ending in London. I could go around the world in 150 different ways.” Beginning with Victor Young’s music from the 1956 film “Around the World in 80 Days,” Mauceri decided to travel from England (Korngold’s “March of the Merry Men” from “Robin Hood”) to Spain (Bizet’s “Carmen Fantasy”), on to Northern Africa (Maurice Jarre’s “Lawrence of Arabia”) and then leave that continent by playing John Barry’s music from “Out of Africa.”

“Then, if I have time, I’ll stop in the Holy Land (Miklos Rozsa’s “Ben-Hur”) and India (Rozsa’s “The Jungle Book”). Then Thailand (Richard Rodgers’ “The King and I”), go north into Japan (“Sayonara,” as arranged by Franz Waxman) and then cross the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles (Mauceri’s own arrangement of Waxman’s “Sunset Boulevard”). I’m not sure if we’ll stop in New York. Then, we’ll use the ‘Flying Music’ from (John Williams’ score for) ‘E.T.’ to descend into London. Every single one of those pieces was written for a Hollywood picture. And we end with ‘Fireworks.’ ”

Mauceri said he doesn’t mind incorporating a few fireworks into the repertoire. “The Bowl is a place that was created for spectacle; it’s a big space,” he said. “Right from the first Easter Sunday sunrise service, it’s about spectacle. Right now, I’d like to bring back some of that great era of the Bowl, where there was spectacle, not just a concert.

“I think there are times when it should simply be a concert, but certain music--for example, cinema music and Broadway--was meant to be accompanied by lights and spectacle. I never shy away from that.”

This year, for example, Mauceri said, laser lights are being considered for “The Best of Wagner--The Valkyries, Act III” on Sept. 13. Why play it straight and serious, he asks rhetorically, when “Wagner had every intention of having lighting, thunder, fire?”

Along those lines, going bigger is a must for jazz artists going to the Bowl, said Chan of Festival Productions. “(The Bowl) is huge for jazz,” she said. “It’s like selling out Carnegie Hall four times. . . . All our jazz festivals have to draw a lot more people than you would for a small hall.”

Some jazz artists love the extra attention; others don’t.

“Some of them have turned us down because it’s too big a venue; they just can’t handle it,” she said. “A lot of them feel they need more intimacy with an audience, and they can’t get it.”

Bowl Manager Parsons said that Bowl officials occasionally try to talk visiting orchestras out of certain music that requires extreme concentration. “We talked about Mahler’s Ninth with one guest orchestra for this season but decided to pick another piece because of the issue of being able to concentrate with the possible distraction of an airplane going overhead, or environmental noise.”

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While the Bowl’s programming puzzle is painstakingly put together, ultimately, performers and audiences alike must be willing to expect the unexpected if they venture into the Bowl.

Last August, there was even a premiere performance of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Coyote. The work (correctly titled Piano Concerto No. 2) was a unique fusion of classical piano and improvisational howling, composed when a coyote spontaneously joined in with pianist Helene Grimaud. “And you know how when one coyote starts howling, others start to join in . . . ,” Parsons said ruefully.

Grimaud will return to the Bowl this year, performing with the San Francisco Symphony. There will be no Rachmaninoff on the program.

* BOWL EATS

Our guide to the perfect Bowl picnic, ranging from good buys to splurges. Page 59