Chorale boosters get Disney’s grand tour

Raising the bar for donor perks, supporters of the Los Angeles Master Chorale not only got primo seats for the group’s historic season opener at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, they got a pre-performance peek at music director Grant Gershon’s dressing room and the private garden he shares with Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Not to mention a second backstage visit at the close of the concert, or the gala black-tie dinner that followed in British Petroleum Hall.

Donors swept down a labyrinthine backstage hallway and through a green room to gather in Gershon’s cushy quarters for cocktails and appetizers. “I have to confess, this is the first time I’ve been on this terrace, which is gorgeous,” the boyish-looking Gershon said as, under the stars, he sipped water on the rocks. “I could clearly have a party here for me and about 70 of my closest friends.”

The premiere program for the chorale’s 40th season would celebrate the dual themes of “creation and eternity, beginnings without endings, a program that is quite symbolic of what this opening night concert means to the chorale,” Gershon said. “This is the beginning of our chance to reach our audience in a new, more direct and energized way, because we are truly in the same room. Here, the audience is startlingly close to the performers. And that makes everyone feel like they are performers.”

Before the Nov. 16 concert that featured two world premieres -- “Brief Eternity” and “Messages,” by co-composers Bobby McFerrin and Roger Treece -- the SRO crowd was startled by the shrill sound of a beeping cell phone. Then came a recorded announcement: “This is the sound no one wants to hear at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.” A ripple of giggles, applause.

After the performance, guest Jon Bailey pronounced the concert “exquisite.” “The hall made us feel like we were all in the same room,” said Bailey, who conducted the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles for 14 years before his departure in 2001, “and for musicians, that makes all the difference in the world.”