Not the Disney Hall one might expect

It’s safe to say that Jason Mraz’s acoustic shows this week at the Walt Disney Concert Hall will offer more of a coffeehouse flavor than mosh-pit flailing. Still, the booking and what it represents remind its promoter, Bill Silva, of the time he booked Pearl Jam into a similarly refined hall, the San Diego Civic Theatre.

“The band management thought I was insane.... But Eddie [Vedder, the band’s singer] came out first thing and said, ‘What a gorgeous place. Let’s all respect it.’ And after that there was not one torn seat, nothing broken, no gum under the chairs. “

Gum challenges are not new at Disney Hall (the site welcomed 19,000 fifth-graders for a dance series in March), but playing host to pop music programming with outside promoters is a novel frontier.

In addition to Mraz on Wednesday and Thursday, there are the Indigo Girls on July 14; Jewel, July 23; and David Byrne, Aug. 28. Keb’ Mo’ and k.d. lang are inked in for later visits. The venue’s highest-profile concert this month is the June 24 fundraiser for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid, a show that is big name (top billing: Barbra Streisand) and big money (top ticket: $25,000).

The hall is still four months shy of its first anniversary, and its energies have naturally been devoted to its most famous tenant, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

How pop-minded could the venue become? As for outside promoters coming in (as opposed to, say, in-house programming of world music or jazz acts that might veer closer to pop fields), Silva said he is skeptical that the calendar or the hall’s main mission would allow any more than a dozen shows a year, but for the right tour the hall “is a marvel that offers an interaction with the audience that is completely different.”

The Mraz show itself is no garden-variety pop concert; the onetime New York busker is tapping those pavement days for this “Tour of the Curbside Prophets” show, which is part concert performance, part play. He is joined by singer-guitarist Raul Midon, Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Makana and DJ Bob Neck Snapp.

The hall will present a challenge to pop acts that take lightly the job of plugging in their own amplified music ideas. “Jason is touring with a state-of-the art sound system, but no way did we want to bring it to that place,” Silva said. “On the acoustics, they’ve had experts wrestling with those alligators for months, and we’re going to tell them what to do? That’s what I would call crazy.”

-- Geoff Boucher