Rhythmic sounds of ‘the Copa’ at the Bowl

It was an evening of contrasts at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday. The program, “A Night at the Copa,” presented a pair of acts -- Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto and the group Pink Martini -- that might reasonably have performed together in a classic nightclub environment, despite their obvious differences in style and repertoire.

But the differences had little to do with the fact that Gilberto, the daughter of bossa nova legend Joao Gilberto, is firmly rooted in Brazilian music, and Pink Martini is a chameleon ensemble, shifting creative colors across a wide range of genres.

More to the point, it was Gilberto’s decision to offer a program of largely unfamiliar material, without identifying it in any meaningful fashion, while remaining surprisingly distant from her audience, that made her set far less appealing than it should have been.

Despite the accompaniment of a rhythmically energetic ensemble, as well as the lush, cushioning sounds of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra strings (conducted by Alexander Mickelthwaite), Gilberto never managed to find either the emotional pace or the musical imagination that characterize her work at its best.

The Portland, Ore.-based Pink Martini fared much better. Pianist Thomas Lauderdale, the group’s founder, calls their performances “urban musical travelogues,” and that’s a pretty apt description of the set, which opened with an idiosyncratic take on Ravel’s “Bolero” and closed with a line of feathered and sequined samba dancers cavorting across the ramp, encircling the garden boxes to the music of Ary Barroso’s “Brazil.” In between, the band added a koto solo, a trumpet “concerto,” songs in Italian and French, and Ernesto Lecuona’s “Malaguena.”

Most of these pieces were performed with the backing of the Philharmonic, interacting in smoothly efficient musical fashion with the 12-piece Pink Martini ensemble.

Topping off its impressive appearance, the group’s engaging vocalist China Forbes, her multilingual singing roving the thorny territory between theatricality and irony, transformed every vocal number into a fascinating dramatic excursion.