Bowl Orchestra Puts Pop in Fourth of July Concert

Fourth of July concerts have become the holy days of the summer pops season, celebrated at the Hollywood Bowl with amiliar pomp and cheering circumstance. On Monday, John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra delivered a fairly conventional but solidly entertaining observance, the first of three performances ending tonight.

Start with the givens: Mauceri is a personable host and a stylish conductor, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is a flexible and responsive powerhouse band. They entered swinging lustily with Bruce Healey’s arrangements of Louis Prima’s “Sing! Sing! Sing!” and a Louis Armstrong medley, and maintained professional panache collectively and in solos throughout the evening.

They are also skillful and experienced accompanists, although that was not immediately apparent when one of their own, concertmaster Bruce Dukov, stepped forward as soloist. Busy orchestrations of Heifetz’s arrangements of Gershwin’s “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” left Dukov with little room for the spare elegance of Heifetz’s interpretations.

Mauceri also had a bit of trouble staying with baritone Jubilant Sykes at first, wanting something slower and steadier for Copland’s setting of “Simple Gifts” than did the inimitably charismatic Sykes. They came together just fine, however, in the even more rhapsodic “City Called Heaven,” and combined in some suavely accompanied, deliciously sung ballads.

Broadway and new sitcom star Kristin Chenoweth made her Bowl debut with some oddball material, strongly characterized but inconsistently sung. Her generally bright and brassy soprano worked to good effect in “Let Yourself Go,” the title track for her new CD, and went stridently over the top in “The Girl in 14G” and “Glitter and Be Gay,” and took on affectionate warmth for “He’s Just an Ordinary Guy.”

Heather Headley, Broadway’s Aida and the original Nala in “The Lion King,” also made her Bowl debut, warming up to a powerful, expressive presence in “Circle of Life” and “Easy as Life.” She joined Sykes in a robustly affirmative “Wheels of a Dream” from the show “Ragtime,” which closed the first half.

The second half ended, of course, with the almost liturgical certainty of Sousa and fireworks, still punchy after all these years. In encore Mauceri offered the patriotic benediction of “America” and “God Bless America,” the latter with Sykes and Chenoweth.