Redoing the Hollywood Bowl

Brava to Brenda Levin for her ideas for restoring the Hollywood Bowl (“Thinking Outside the Bowl,” by Diane Haithman, July 1)!

A summer evening at the Bowl, in spite of the often extraordinary quality of what goes on onstage, pales in comparison to the dozens of evenings I recall at Wolf Trap (Washington, D.C.) and Ravinia (Chicago). At these venues, with missions similar to those of the Hollywood Bowl, as at Tanglewood, which Levin so nicely eulogizes, the audience’s experience has as much to do with lying on the grass and stargazing as it does with attending a concert.

My enthusiasm for (and my attendance at) the Bowl has waned in recent years. While picnicking in Levin’s gorgeous Highland-Camrose park has gotten me as close as I can get to that “Tanglewood ideal,” the concrete seating, the airplanes buzzing overhead, the stacked parking ... these all mitigate against an experience I look forward to repeating.

How about piping the sound out to speakers in Highland-Camrose park?

DAVID HORNE

Los Angeles

Having just revisited the Bowl after more than a decade, I was struck by the charm and intimacy of the venue. The shell itself is important but not acoustically relevant. I say, spare the shell, move it to a nearby site in the hills and open a “Bandshell” restaurant that could feature live bands, dancing and dining. Then build a new stage from the ground up.

As for the parking problem, that will really take some creative thinking.

BONNIE S. KAPLAN

Studio City

Are we in trouble or what? Frank Gehry wants cables over the audience, others want schools, others want big-screen movies free .

We had better look outside this pool of experts if we are going to get a decent renovation of the Bowl. How anyone can pay these folks for the ideas is beyond me.

GENNARO PUPA

Redondo Beach

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Firstly and most important, a needed improvement to the Bowl acoustics is to place microphones on the crickets. Thereafter, you may consider heavy artillery to wipe out lost Cessnas overflying the Bowl in search of Van Nuys Airport.

For sports fans, include the Bowl in the path of the L.A. Marathon. If you note how four-cylinder engines pook out in the nearby Cahuenga Pass as they toil up the Hollywood Freeway, you will agree there will be entertainment value in watching the chug of spindly thighs negotiate the stratosphere above Hollywood Boulevard.

Extend the proscenium to the audio booth, with scenic levels on the wings to allow, for example, Tosca to jump off a parapet.

Place a Metro stop at the threshold, doing away with the Odin parking lot, or extend a people mover up the relentless hill from the Metro station at Hollywood and Highland.

Finally, locate the strings and, of course, the harp by the eucalyptus trees behind section W.

AIDA PAVLETICH

Los Angeles