E4 THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
The official opening of
the Music Center’s new
“plaza for all” on Wednesday
morning had an additional
jolt of good news: a $12-mil-
lion gift to help make the
arts more accessible to Los
Angeles County residents.
The gift, from philan-
thropist and former City
Councilwoman Cindy Mis-
cikowski and her Ring-Mis-
cikowski/The Ring Founda-
tion, will be used as seed
money by the new TMC
Arts Fund, which aims
to broaden the Music Cen-
ter’s reach. It seeks to
provide free and low-cost
public programming, edu-
cational initiatives and
dance to take place at the
plaza and other Music Cen-
ter venues.
A central goal of the
redesigned plaza, led by
L.A.-based Rios Clementi
Hale Studios, was acces-
sibility. The raised, outdoor
space is now better inte-
grated with its urban sur-
roundings and more acces-
sible to passersby, a physical
manifestation of the Music
Center’s commitment to ac-
cess and inclusion, noted
Music Center President
Rachel S. Moore. The TMC
Arts Fund is the program-
matic component of that
mission.
“It’s to really breathe life
into our new vision of deep-
ening the cultural lives of ev-
ery resident of L.A. County,”
Moore said in an interview.
The opening follows a
20-month, $41-million reno-
vation. The ceremony in-
cluded remarks by city offi-
cials and Music Center lead-
ers, as well as a performance
by 120 L.A.-based percus-
sionists.
The TMC Arts Fund
will serve as an umbrella
division under which all
of the Music Center’s “pro-
gramming pieces,” devel-
oped outside of the resident
companies, will live, Moore
said, including Grand Park
events, community engage-
ment activities, education,
public concerts and more.
Josephine Ramirez, who
comes from the California-
based James Irvine Founda-
tion and was formerly a
part of the Music Cen-
ter’s programming team
from 2004-10, will run the
division.
Moore called the $12-mil-
lion gift “a huge vote of confi-
dence in the direction the
Music Center is going in.
Cindy was really compelled
by that. It will allow us to not
only expand on our current
programming, but will also
serve as research and devel-
opment for innovation and
new programs that help us
find new ways of sharing this
incredible, new public re-
source that we have at the
Music Center — this new
space — with all people
across the county.”
The Music Center con-
tributed an additional
$2 million to the TMC Arts
Fund, which brings the pro-
gramming seed money to
$14 million.
As it incubates new pro-
gramming, community en-
gagement will be at the fore-
front.
“It’s not about imposing
art onto the community, but
engaging with the commu-
nity and finding out what
people want — it’s a dia-
logue,” Moore said, adding
that the approach is some-
what unusual in her experi-
ence.
“I think it’s very common
for performing arts centers
to focus on their theaters
and traditional proscenium
[stage]-based work. And
really reaching out into the
community, having a dia-
logue with community
members about what they
want and how they want to
use [resources], is pretty
cutting edge in the world of
performing arts centers. It’s
exciting to be at the fore-
front of that.”
‘Plaza
for all’
now at
Music
Center
A $12-million gift for
the arts in L.A. greets
the opening of the
pedestrian-friendly
redesigned space.
By Deborah Vankin
uneasy with recordings, of
which he’s made few, yet he
heads an orchestra that has
long been a leader in audio
and video recording and now
concert streaming with its
outstanding Digital Concert
Hall. Petrenko, say those
who know him and love him
(that seems to go hand in
hand), has music for break-
fast, lunch, dinner and a
nightcap.
After hearing Petrenko
bring his Berlin Philhar-
monic to the Salzburg Festi-
val, after it performed Bee-
thoven’s Ninth Symphony in
Berlin’s Philharmonie and in
a free outdoor concert in
front of the Brandenburg
Gate for 20,000, I’m not so
sure I buy the mystique busi-
ness. The ego issue is clearly
complicated. But his two
concerts in the Festspiel-
haus in Salzburg, the first a
repeat of the Beethoven
Ninth and second featuring
a performance of Schoen-
berg’s Violin Concerto with
Patricia Kopatchinskaja of
speechless greatness, left no
doubt about just how special
Petrenko is. He is a small
man with a black beard from
Omsk, Siberia, a town
known for its munitions in-
dustries, petrochemical
plants and freezing winters.
At 17 he immigrated with his
family to Germany and went
on to study in Vienna. Heworked his way up through
German opera companies,
first in Meiningen, then at
the Komische Oper Berlin
(where he happened by to
succeeded by Pacific Sym-
phony Music Director Carl
St.Clair) and then in Munich
(where he followed two other
SoCal notables, Zubin
Mehta and Kent Nagano).
Although he has had lit-
tle exposure in the U.S., Pe-
trenko did conduct the Los
Angeles Philharmonic at the
Hollywood Bowl a dozen
years ago in an all-Russian
program. He didn’t make
much of an impression. (The
Bowl, with its minimal re-
hearsal schedule, seems
about the worst place pos-
sible for this meticulous
anti-anti-maestro.) For that
matter he only conducted
the Berlin Philharmonic a
few times before the 2015 an-
nouncement that he would
succeed Simon Rattle.
On paper it looks as
though Petrenko will not
continue Rattle’s 16-year ef-
fort to bring the Berliners
into the 21st century, an ef-
fort that included making
John Adams a composer in
residence and inviting Peter
Sellars to stage Bach pas-
sions. Petrenko will make
limited appearances this
year, giving prominence to
Beethoven, Mahler and
standard Russian repertory.
There is little new or evenunusual. But we shouldn’t
be too fast to draw conclu-
sions about a Petrenko we
barely know. Before the Bee-
thoven Ninth on Sunday,
Petrenko programmed
Berg’s suite from his sexu-
ally provocative opera,
“Lulu,” which ends with the
grisly sounds of Lulu being
killed by Jack the Ripper in
London. It was just a coinci-
dence, maybe, but a month
earlier Brexit party officials
turned their backs on the
playing of “Ode to Joy” from
Beethoven’s Ninth, because
it is the anthem of the Euro-
pean Union. There was no
coincidence here. Petrenko
understood that an ode to
joy is never without doubt.
On this occasion, “Lulu,”
which featured soprano
Marlis Petersen, had a sad
and sensual, but never sen-
sational, quality. Petrenko
conducted with a beatific
look on his face, a warm
smile, Dalai Lama-like,
showing not so much happi-
ness but serenity, even in the
face of doubt and tragedy.
Yes, of course, Petrenko has
an ego, and surely a tremen-
dous one. You don’t control
the huge 100-plus egos that
make up this phenomenal
orchestra by chance. But
what might makes him
unique among conductors is
the way Petrenko uses his
ego to transcend it.
Rather than demon-strating Beethoven’s ex-
traordinary capacity to
manufacture joy out of noth-
ingness in the Ninth, for in-
stance, Petrenko was more
like the great Sufi singer
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He
waved his arms, like he were
dancing, as Khan did when
he sang. In a fast and daz-
zlingly virtuosic perform-
ance that lasted barely over
an hour, Petrenko seemed
like he was after a spiritual
awakening to the joy that is
the dance of the cosmos.
The symphony zipped by,
without our attention di-
rected to the obvious big mo-
ments, as if Petrenko didn’t
want to tell the listener how
to think. There was, though,
just enough rapture and cli-
max to indicate that some-
thing out there just beyond
your grasp. That second
sense kept building and
building, without you quite
realizing how and why, no
matter the familiarity of the
material. By the end of the
buildup, you found out what
a hypnotic performance this
had been all along, that joy
was a concord to be felt by
all.
The next night was the
same but also a very differ-
ent Petrenko, because the
music was different. For the
Schoenberg concerto, writ-
ten in the 1930s when the
composer taught at UCLA,
Petrenko gave up his ego tohis inspired soloist. This can
seem dauntingly complex
music, but Kopatchinskaja
breathed new and unex-
pected life into every phrase.
This time, it was not the cos-
mos the listener was trans-
ported into but Schoen-
berg’s psyche, in which each
fleeting thought, each neu-
ron fired, proved a theatrical
event. The concord of chaot-
ic mental states, it turns out,
can be an even greater reve-
lation.
Next to this concerto,
Tchaikovsky’s fate-bemoan-
ing Fifth Symphony can
seem transparent and ma-
nipulative. Yet in a hugely
dramatic and probing per-
formance, Petrenko created
surprising depth. He dug
beyond the oppressive ego
of Tchaikovsky, beyond in-
dulgent melodrama, beyond
the showoff insecurities.
Here Petrenko was not
fast but slow, so slow that
Tchaikovskian pathos lost
its pretense. Here Pe-
trenko’s tool was power, and
climaxes were ear-shatter-
ing. Here the Berliners’
playing was of such beauty
and passion and perfection
that Tchaikovsky had no
place for subterfuge. Here
was Petrenko placing his
ego not at Tchaikovsky’s
disposal but ours, showing
us how to hear beyond the
superficial into our deepest
being.KIRILLPetrenko conducts Beethoven’s Ninth and Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto (with soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja) in Austria.Getty ImagesShy new conductor fits the bill
[Kirill Petrenko,from E1]cultural anthropologists
often do, to the stories we
tell as a reflection of our
national identity, how would
you define a “real Ameri-
can”? Besides a detective,
doctor or someone pos-
sessing a superpower.
Even with the often-
frightening tsunami of
content provided by a prolif-
eration of new platforms,
black people, Asian people,
Latino people, LGBTQ
people and women all re-
main remarkably underrep-
resented when it comes to
the stories we tell on our
various screens.
I say remarkable because
we remark on it all the time.
We are waist-deep in aware-
ness — #OscarsSoWhite,
diversity initiatives, inclu-
sion riders, colorblind cast-
ing and a slew of studies to
empirically prove what we
already know. The most
recent, from the USC
Annenberg Inclusion Initia-
tive, pointed out that among
1,200 popular films released
between 2007 and 2018, only
3% had Latinx leads or
co-leads. Even the initiative
itself faced criticism in
January for leaving Latinos
out of its “Inclusion in the
Director’s Chair” study,
which broke down statistics
for black, Asian and female
directors.
For the record, the group
formerly known as Hispanic
or Latino, makes up 18.3% of
this country’s population.
So, you know, not even close.
But hey, “Dora the Ex-
plorer” got a live-action
movie, and after Netflix
canceled “One Day at A
Time,” Pop TV picked it up,
so what more can the poor
entertainment industry do?
Put its money where itsmouth is, that’s what. And
be willing to lose some of
that money.
If “liberal Hollywood”
really wants to help end the
racial and cultural divisions
encapsulated in the phrase
“real Americans,” making a
movie or series or two with
non-white leads isn’t going
to cut it.
We need lots of them, and
we can’t freak out about it
when some flounder or fail.
Most movies and television
shows flounder and fail. But
no one says, “Well, I guess
there’s no audience for
white leads any more.” No,
they just make a whole
bunch more, hoping a few
will stick.
So we have to stop think-
ing of “Black Panther” or
“The Terror: Infamy” as
grand experiments, the
success or failure of whichwill determine how audienc-
es will respond to nonwhite
casts or stories.
And I don’t want to hear
that those stories “just
aren’t out there.” The trend
toward novel-adaptation
alone opens all sorts of
doors. And in this city, as I
am writing this, all sorts of
people are writing all sorts
of scripts.
The problem is networks
and studios and streaming
services are only willing to
buy scripts they believe will
make money. Which is fair.
Except they base their
choices on the sorts of proj-
ects that have made money
before, which is not. As
there are far more films and
series revolving around
white people (see all those
studies), there are many
more hits that do the same.
And so the cycle contin-ues. Even though, histori-
cally, great films and suc-
cessful series rarely come
from trend-watching; they
come from people who are
trying something different.
Like, say, “Crazy Rich
Asians” or the oeuvre of
Shonda Rhimes.
When Netflix dropped
“One Day at a Time,” many
considered it proof of Holly-
wood’s “diversity-speak”
hypocrisy. Here was a show
that did precisely what all
the various initiatives hope
to achieve — hilariously
reflect a real yet nonwhite
American family (which
included the brilliant Rita
Moreno!). But the devotion
of its small audience, a
hallmark of many Netflix
shows, was not enough, and
off it went.
Here’s hoping it brings
success, and an Emmy ortwo, to Pop TV. Here’s hop-
ing “Vida” doesn’t fold
under pressure of being the
other Latinx-led show on
television, and that “Claws”
will continue to get the
attention it deserves, and
“The Terror: Infamy” will
thrive, and “Harriet” will be
a blockbuster hit.
But even if they don’t, or
it isn’t, these are the stories
we have to keep making, in
greater abundance and not
just because more than half
of Americans are tired of not
seeing themselves repre-
sented on screen.
All those studies, with
their depressingly low per-
centages, don’t just reveal
Hollywood’s inability to
include or represent one
group or another; they
remind us of all the stories
we don’t get to see or hear or
tell. They remind us that
even as screens get bigger
and smaller and more nu-
merous, as streaming plat-
forms make more film and
TV available than ever be-
fore, we are still only getting
a small part of the bigger
picture.
Hollywood likes to play it
safe, even though safe has
led not only to a monochro-
matic landscape but all the
various financial issues
currently plaguing the
entertainment industry.
You want a bigger audience?
Broaden the stories you
tell.
Which makes now the
perfect time to break the
cycle; if you keep doing what
you’ve always done, you’ll
keep getting what you’ve
always got. And if you keep
making stories about one
group of people, you can’t
mock the president for
tailoring his message the
same way.TV, film miss many ‘real Americans’
[Americans,from E1]“ONE DAYat a Time,” with Justina Machado, left, and Rita Moreno as part of a
Latinx family, is a rare Hollywood offering that doesn’t revolve around white men.Michael YarishNetflix