Music’s in the Air

Now entering his ninth year as conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, John Mauceri has become a welcome seasonal counterpoint to the popping champagne corks, 737s slicing the sky and droning of several thousand crickets in summer heat. From Germany, where he recently resurrected Kurt Weill’s quasi-lost opera, “The Eternal Road,” Mauceri provides us a thumbnail sketch of the Bowl’s 1999 season, which kicks off this weekend.

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Q: Ever hear from your perch the thud of an errant wine bottle accelerating down the aisle?

A: It’s not like in concert halls, where you hear the air conditioners, which are sometimes unbelievably loud, or audience members who cough or are opening individually wrapped mints. In the Bowl’s shell, the loudest noise comes from the crickets. That we definitely do hear, but, I must say, I don’t feel the slightest bit that this environment’s not conducive to making music.

Q: Reflections as you enter the season?

A: We’re always looking for cutting-edge things to do. That’s the hardest thing. In the beginning you’re inventing everything. Now we’re like a long-running sitcom in its ninth season--the pressures are enormous to combine the familiar with the unexpected. With “I Love Lucy,” it was easy to send the cast off to Europe to stir things up. We can’t do that.

Q: But you can hire on pantomimist Marcel Marceau as your mute soloist for this season’s Bastille Day concert in July . . .

A: We did a French weekend two seasons ago. I found the job to create this year’s program Marcel Marceau was performing in New York when we were there, celebrating 50 years, and I thought, “I wonder whether Marcel has ever performed with an orchestra?” We went to see him, and while he did use music in a number of his routines, we found out that he had never had live orchestral accompaniment. We chose three works that he could do with an orchestra; he’s actually very excited about it.

Q: This year, the Bowl’s movie night will feature homages to “Jaws” and “Psycho.” Calibrating the orchestra to the enormous film clips played overhead can’t be easy.

A: It’s like bungee-jumping without knowing how long the cord is. The orchestra that actually recorded the soundtrack could stop and start again in the studio until they got it right, but we have to do it in real time. You have to be in this exact place when the door