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Classical audiences used to groan when someone approached the front of the stage to address them at the beginning of a concert. It usually meant the star attraction had canceled. But that has changed. These days in L.A., such an appearance might mean that Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. President Deborah Borda is about to introduce a new orchestra member, or that Philharmonic Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen is going to wittily prepare listeners for, say, the loudest orchestral work in the repertoire.

Especially for conductors in the Cahuenga Pass, being an engaging speaker has become an integral part of the job. Over 16 years, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s founding director, John Mauceri, created a tradition of speaking to Bowl audiences. And it’s a custom the two new guys in town, Bramwell Tovey and Thomas Wilkins, plan to carry on.

This summer, Tovey, the English-born, Grammy- winning music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, has succeeded Leonard Slatkin as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. And Wilkins, music director of the Omaha Symphony, has become principal guest conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra -- the ensemble’s first designated leader since Mauceri stepped down in 2006.

The Bowl, which seats 18,000 people, presents special challenges to any would-be master of ceremonies. “In Walt Disney Concert Hall, it’s like speaking in your living room,” says Borda. “The Bowl is trickier. It’s like speaking into an enormous vacuum. But Bramwell and Tom got the Bowl.”

Clearly, the music always has to come first. Still, as Borda says, “there’s a component in the Bowl that one can’t underestimate -- the ability to communicate with the audience verbally. It’s an enormous opportunity for the Philharmonic to open doors for people who may be less deeply versed in classical music.”

Tovey, speaking by phone recently from Vancouver, agreed that the Bowl offers a unique opportunity. “But it’s also an enormous amount of fun. It’s just an amazing feeling being able to reach so many people. When you say something funny at the Bowl, you hear the laughter coming back at you like a wave on a beach. You have to make sure your timing’s OK, so that you give people the space to laugh before they have to listen again.”

This is Tovey’s first week in his new role, and it’s a full one, beginning Tuesday night with a program including a work he composed, “Urban Runway,” along with Strauss’ “Don Juan” and Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” On Thursday, he’ll conduct Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3 (the “Organ”) and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” and next Sunday, Bizet’s “Carmen,” with Denyce Graves in the title role.

Wilkins’ two-year appointment began June 20, when he opened the Bowl season with a Hall of Fame induction gala. He will return Friday and Saturday for a concert featuring singer Chris Isaak and romantic music from classic Hollywood films.

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Bramwell Tovey has prepared a few notes

Recalling Bramwell Tovey’s debut with the Philharmonic at Disney Hall in May 2007 (he had already guest conducted at the Bowl) in a program that included Elgar’s “Enigma Variations,” Borda says he gave “one of the greatest verbal program notes I had ever heard.”

A couple of months later, Tovey deftly navigated the Bowl’s cavernous acoustical space while acting as a witty and informative guide to popular movie themes and the songs of Noel Coward. In addition to conducting, he performed a jazzy piano arrangement of “Nobody Does It Better,” Marvin Hamlisch’s theme from “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

“You win so many friends when you do something like that,” he said. “People who are perhaps uncertain about attending a classical concert might think, ‘Hey, I like what this person’s doing here. I’ll come and try something else.’ ”

Tovey doesn’t try to “educate” concertgoers. He finds that they’re more attentive when he’s funny. “They want to make sure they hear the next joke,” he said, although he noted that there are “some pieces you simply cannot be amusing about.”

For example, when he conducts Holst’s “The Planets” on Aug. 14, he’ll be inviting the audience to listen for “the broken and infirm bodies trying to move in ‘Saturn,’ the bringer of old age.”

For Tovey, speaking to the audience is especially important when introducing new music. “You would never dream of presenting a Da Vinci alongside a Damien Hirst without seducing the onlooker with a properly creative narrative,” he said. “So it is with new music.”

Born in London’s East End, Tovey, who will turn 55 on Friday, was raised by “good lower-middle-class stock” in the Salvation Army. He was named after Bramwell Booth, who was the second general of the organization.

“There’s a lot of singing and brass bands, of course,” said the conductor, who can also play the tuba. “But there’s a lot of very high-quality music-making, and part of the Salvation Army tradition is to pick up hymns or songs by ear.” He credits that tradition with giving rise to his keen improvisational ability on piano, which he honed as a young teenager.

Reaching out to everyone

In THE last 15 or 20 years, Tovey said, the relationship between performers and concertgoers has changed. “Now I sense a real energy between audiences and orchestras, and even at solo recitals. When I first spoke to a Bowl audience, there was a lot of laughter, and the next night the orchestra asked that speakers be placed onstage so they could join in.”

The point seems to be that if audiences are being invited to get closer to the orchestra, then the orchestra wants to get closer to the audience. “At the Bowl, they can see everything in those monitors,” he said. “What I want to do is go into the dollar seats at the top and really get a sense of what goes on.”

Tovey still sees an element of “sophisticated detachment” at some of the great European festivals, such as Salzburg and Bayreuth. He ascribes that to what he calls “the European way of listening.”

“When I occasionally played ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ or jammed with visiting musicians in Europe, it was almost seen as immoral. But in North America, it’s become a much more intimate affair. Both are good for their context. At the Hollywood Bowl, it’s important to be intimate.”

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Thomas Wilkins wants to

be a guide

THOMAS WILkins, 51, shares Tovey’s gift for being able to shrink the Bowl down to size. He deeply impressed Borda and the Philharmonic staff when he spoke to the Bowl audience at last August’s “Tchaikovsky Spectacular.”

“He has an ability to look at popular culture and be completely comfortable in the vernacular,” Borda says. “That’s a real requirement for the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.”

“I look people in their faces when I’m talking to them,” Wilkins said by phone from Omaha. “I know to look up sometimes, especially at the Bowl. If it looks like I’m only talking to the first two or three rows, then you lose a connection. It’s especially important to demonstrate that you’re human and vulnerable.”

Like Tovey, Wilkins hopes to create a performance atmosphere without barriers of protocol, tradition or what he calls “a preconceived belief in requisite knowledge.”

“That’s my goal in life: to get people to fall in love with music and not be intimidated in the process,” he said. “It informs everything I do onstage.”

The value of preparing an audience for a particular work recently came home to Wilkins while he was rehearsing Webern’s atypical, Straussian “Im Sommerwin.”

It occurred to him that the piece was written just months before the composer studied with Schoenberg. “So I was thinking, ‘The next time the audience sees another Webern work on the program, they’re going to run to it. And it’s going to be nothing like the piece they heard.’ ”

Let’s get the kids involved

Also like Tovey, Wilkins (who coincidentally can play the tuba as well) had a less than privileged upbringing, as the child of a single mother in a housing project, that keeps him centered. A trained cellist, he didn’t have a private lesson until he got to college.

Yet he said that after being taken to hear the Norfolk (now Virginia) Symphony when he was 8, he decided on the spot that he wanted to be a conductor.

“All of my critical life choices -- like who I hung out with, what I did with my spare time and whether I could dream of going to college -- all of those ques- tions were answered for me by default, because I had fallen in love with music,” he said.

As self-described “poster child for the value of music education in the schools,” Wilkins said he’s always looking for opportunities to inspire children.

“I’m kind of a zealot when it comes to the importance of painting a doorway onto a brick wall for a kid and using music as the tool” to break through, he said. “I don’t care if kids grow up to be professional musicians. It’s just opening those doors to self-awareness, possibility, hope and a life.”

Although he sees himself as “essentially a classical conductor,” Wilkins said he prefers variety. “Last season, I had as much fun at the Bowl with Pink Martini as I did doing an all-Tchaikovsky concert two weeks earlier.

“They’re two different languages, both profound in their own way,” he said. “Think of what happened with Miles Davis and the ‘Birth of the Cool.’

“Because he had fallen in love with Ravel and Faure, all this extra color found its way into his music. Don’t you think that if Mozart heard some of our good jazz or pop music, he would have dug it?”

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Hollywood Bowl,

2301 Highland Ave., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday;

7:30 p.m. next Sunday

Price: $1 to $95

Also

What: The Hollywood Bowl

Orchestra with Chris Isaak

When: 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Price: $10 to $114

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.hollywoodbowl.com