Hollywood Bowl due for a change

I completely agree with Robert Hilburn’s assessment of the Hollywood Bowl (part of “A Bowl Full of Changes,” July 31). For years, we went to the Bowl several times each season with a large group of friends. There was no better summer entertainment -- a beautiful gourmet picnic, wine sipping under the stars, wonderful musical offerings. We also attended most of the pop-rock concerts over the years. However, for the last few years, we weren’t interested in anything offered, so we have not attended. It is a dreary sense of deja vu as I read and reread the summer schedule.

I hope the refurbishment will breathe new life into the musical offerings.

Judy Kelly

Upland

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Thanks for your really interesting article on the Bowl. I visited as a board member of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, as much to talk to the management and production people as to get ideas and experiences before introducing an outdoor summer season down here.

I saw the Philharmonic at the Bowl and experienced many of the difficulties you wrote about. Most notably, I was disappointed by the sound. At the time, I thought maybe I was hypercritical, but it seems not. But as you reported, people mainly come for the whole experience (including very much their food, wine or beer), and the music is kind of incidental.

The Hollywood Bowl is a great venue in many ways, despite its limitations, and if they can reduce or remove some of those limitations, it will be a venue for the future, as well as for its illustrious past. I don’t see how they can fix the traffic, though.

David Williams

Frewville, Australia