ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

MUSIC

Band Surprises Salonen on His Home Turf

At the closing concert of its European tour Wednesday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic surprised music director Esa-Pekka Salonen (whose sandy-brown locks are considerably shorter of late). Playing before a Helsinki crowd, band members waved flags of his native Finland.

Though reviews from that engagement and this week’s Brussels concerts are not yet in, critics in London, Lucerne and Edinburgh were generally upbeat about the orchestra.

“Expectations were high and they were amply fulfilled,” said a piece in Lucerne’s Tagesanzeiger. “In the last 10 years, the L.A. Philharmonic has evidently developed qualities which ensure the highest degree of competence in the widest possible range of stylistic areas.”

London’s Guardian was also impressed. “The L.A. Philharmonic hardly corresponds to the stereotype of front-rank American orchestras,” said critic Andrew Clements. “The strings are not deep-pile and sonorous but refined and pliant; the brass is neither butch nor aggressive but projects a purposeful directness; the woodwind is perfectly detailed.” But their performance of Shostakovich’s Second Symphony “could not disguise its faults or compensate for its lack of coherence,” the critic added.

TELEVISION

Letterman Joins Late-Night Colleagues

David Letterman, whose shows after last year’s terrorist attacks drew high praise from critics and the public, has decided to do an original broadcast of his “Late Show” on Wednesday.

Letterman’s decision, announced Thursday, means that, while the broadcast networks will give over their prime-time schedules to news and specials on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the late-night hosts--NBC’s Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and CBS’ Letterman and Craig Kilborn--will all be doing shows that day.

ABC Taken In by Promotional Hoax

Producers of ABC’s “Good Morning America” inadvertently served up a plug for a new drama-reality series airing on the network, Variety reports.

As weatherman Tony Perkins was chatting with folks outside the studio, he encountered some fellows who claimed to be members of the Push, Nev., hockey team. As it happened, there is no such town--except in ABC’s new series of the same name, executive-produced by Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey. The athletes in question were really actors hired by ADD--a company employed by ABC to mount a guerrilla public relations campaign for the show.

No one at ABC News had been advised of the prank, and Perkins was unaware of the show.

“This is a show that is very different and we are trying to market it in a different way,” an ABC spokesman said. “ADD didn’t take into account the kinds of questions that could arise by enacting this sort of strategy within the same company.”

POP/ROCK

Protest Planned Today Over Rave Legislation

Doc Martin, Richard “Humpty” Vission and Garth Trinidad are among the electronic music scene notables expected today at a Westwood rally against a proposed U.S. Senate bill that would sharpen federal drugs laws to be used against rave promoters.

The organizers of the 3 p.m. rally at the north lawn of the Federal Building say the bill is a danger to civil liberties and wrongly targets rave promoters as part of the war on drugs. The bill’s supporters argue that it would only create a more effective legal tool to use against rave promoters who knowingly foster drug enterprise at their late-night dance events.

Singer Loses Fingers Responding to Fans

Doctors reattached three fingers to the hand of a 16-year-old pop singer after they were severed by a helicopter while he was waving to fans.

Ricardo Abarca, a member of the teen group Mageneto, was getting off the aircraft at a Guatemala City airport on Saturday. Raising his hand to greet the crowd, he put it into the still-whirling rotor.

“The index finger and the middle finger are completely recovered,” surgeon Gustavo Lopez said Wednesday.

“We only have some problems with blood circulation in the little finger.”

QUICK TAKES

Former Beatle Paul McCartney and Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson will perform together at the Century Plaza Hotel for a Sept. 18 benefit to raise money for clearance of land mines.... Nia Vardalos, the writer and star of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” will take on the lead role in “Connie and Carla Do L.A.,” a female buddy movie along the lines of “Some Like It Hot.” TNT has canceled “Witchblade” after two seasons.... Martin Short will bring Jiminy Glick, his weight-challenged talk show host from Comedy Central’s “Primetime Glick,” to the big screen in the feature film comedy “Lalawood”.... “The Ring,” DreamWorks’ remake of a Japanese horror film, will open the Hollywood Film Festival on Oct. 2 at the Pacific Grove Theaters. Naomi Watts (“Mulholland Drive”) stars.... The WB will offer a Spanish-language simulcast of its new Latino comedy series “Greetings From Tucson,” premiering Sept. 20.