Glossy green floors, dramatic mirrors, Dyson hand dryers and LED lighting are all part of the re-do.

With legendary headliners ranging from Glen Campbell to Smokey Robinson to Plácido Domingo on the 2012 bill, it’s not easy for a newcomer to break through at the Hollywood Bowl.

But it’s a safe bet that the new restrooms designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios will have audiences cheering when they make their Bowl debut this summer.

Patrons will move toward the light in the men's room.

With sustainable features like Dyson hand dryers, LED lighting, water-saving fixtures, graphics inspired by the Bowl’s Art Deco architecture, and glossy green floors intended to bring the outdoors in, the restrooms represent a stark departure from the old, dark spaces that used to make intermission such a drab interlude.

[Updated 9/20/12: The Bowl’s bathroom re-do is a finalist in the America's Best Restroom contest sponsored by Cintas. Cast your vote here.]

The Bowl is a Los Angeles County park—albeit one with a worldwide reputation for glamour, fireworks and star-studded concerts—and the $3 million makeover was funded by Proposition A park improvement funds.

The bathrooms also feature reengineered layouts, dramatic mirrors, new privacy partitions between urinals and lighting accents to make sure patrons keep moving toward unoccupied facilities in the back, rather than creating unnecessary bottlenecks at the front of the line.

The new facilities were unveiled Monday evening at a Bowl reception along with some less noticeable but equally important off-season improvements like $600,000 in concrete repairs, including the replacement of a stairway built in 1954. Also underway, and expected to be finished in coming weeks, is the $2 million replacement of the moving sidewalk (also known as a speed ramp) that helps 75% of Bowl patrons get up the hill to their seats.

If you’d like to test drive the new and improved Bowl—and listen to some world-class music while you’re at it—tickets are on sale now. The season gets off to a big start June 22, with opening night festivities hosted by Julie Andrews and featuring Reba McIntyre, Chaka Khan and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted by Thomas Wilkins.

Julie Smith-Clementi of Rios Clementi Hale, outside one of the Bowl bathrooms redesigned by her firm.

Posted 5/7/12

The pianos are coming—and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra hopes Southern California is ready to play.

In an initiative that will involve artists, community groups and businesses from throughout the region, 30 upright pianos will be dispatched to street corners, public parks and assorted outdoor locations throughout Greater Los Angeles this month just to see what transpires around them.

They’ll be free, available 24-7, tuned by professionals, decorated by some of L.A.’s most talented artists and equipped with plastic covers in case of bad weather. All the public will have to do will be to follow the instructions that will be written on each one:

“Play Me, I’m Yours,” the inscription will say.

“I’d read about this in London and New York, and thought it was a spectacular idea,” says LACO Executive Director Rachel Fine, who began laying the groundwork for the initiative even before she officially started her job at the orchestra in late 2010.

The pianos will be placed across the Southland, from North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre to the Watts/Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club, from Atlantic Times Square in Monterey Park to Union Station and the Santa Monica Pier.

The endeavor, which will run from April 12 until May 3, is part of a worldwide public art project launched in 2008 in Birmingham, England, by British artist Luke Jerram. Placing temporary pianos outdoors where people can stumble upon them and, perhaps, make music, the “Play Me, I’m Yours” street piano project has so far set up more than 500 pianos in 22 cities.

"Play Me" in Austin, Texas. Photo/Matthew Johnson Studios

Though “Play Me” has generated random acts of community and music from Sao Paulo to Sydney, it has been little known in this country, Fine noted. So far, the only American cities in which the project has appeared are Austin, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids and New York. This year’s schedule includes Salem, Ore., and Salt Lake City, in addition to L.A.

Fine called the project “a major undertaking,” but said she and the orchestra’s board members felt early on that it would be a perfect way for the orchestra to celebrate Music Director Jeffrey Kahane’s 15^th anniversary with LACO and to reach out across L.A.’s metropolitan sprawl. Kahane, she noted, is a renowned pianist, and one of the orchestra’s priorities has been to remind Angelenos that it’s there as a community resource.

In fact, the organizers were still reaching out on Twitter this week for the last couple of uprights, although by the end of the day Friday, pianos had been secured for all 30 locations, thanks to donations facilitated by the Hollywood Piano Company.

Fine said that wherever “Play Me, I’m Yours” has gone, it has generated thousands of impromptu concerts, YouTube videos, dance parties, sing-alongs and jam sessions. Some artists have made it a point to play every piano.

And, she noted, the pianos themselves might be seen as “blank canvases”, which is why more than a dozen well-known Southern California artists, including muralist Kent Twitchell and painter Frank Romero, have been commissioned to decorate them, as will community groups such as the Braille Institute, the HeArt Project and Homeboy Industries.

“I’ve seen some of the painted pianos already,” says Fine, “and they’re exquisite.”

Backers include corporate citizens such as the Wells Fargo Foundation and community partners such the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs, Fine says.

The event will kick off precisely at noon on Thursday, April 12, with a free, countywide, performance of Bach’s “Prelude No. 1 in C Major” from the “Well-Tempered Clavier,” played simultaneously on all the pianos by Kahane and 29 other accomplished pianists and music students from around L.A.

After that, each musician will play one more Bach prelude and a selection of pieces of their own choosing. And then, for the next three weeks, it will be first-come, first-served for anyone else who wants to tickle the ivories.

“This is by far the most ambitious presentation of the installation to date,” the artist, Jerram, said in a statement. “I hope the public enjoys the project and takes advantage of the opportunity to perform, express themselves and go out and play.”

For the piano nearest you, go to streetpianosLA.com or click here. And for even more video highlights of “Play Me, I’m Yours” in other cities, click here.

An L.A. piano in waiting, designed by LACO staff member Caroline Shuhart and painted by LACO children and staffers. Photo/Lacey Huszcza

This season's Bowl superstars include songstress Diana Krall. Photo by Robert Maxwell.

Even by the standards of the star-studded Hollywood Bowl, this season’s lineup features an unusual concentration of needs-no-introduction talent.

From Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow and Smokey Robinson to Yo-Yo Ma, Gustavo Dudamel, Itzhak Perlman and Plácido Domingo, the schedule unveiled Tuesday offers a rich blend of popular entertainment and artistic innovation.

Garrison Keillor, Juanes, Rubén Blades, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Anita Baker and Ben Harper will be among the featured performers. Also on tap: a fully staged production of The Producers, crowd-pleasing Grease and Sound of Music singalongs, and Pixar in Concert, blending film clips and musical scores from Toy Story and beyond.

Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, meanwhile, will be experienced in a new way—with video imagery celebrating Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze accompanying the Ode to Joy finale. (The performance is a Los Angeles Philharmonic-Getty Museum collaboration.)

Among the artists listed as making their Hollywood Bowl debut this season is this promising newcomer: Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who will take the stage on Sept. 11 to narrate Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait. (He has previously narrated the work, but not at the Bowl.)

Subscription series tickets are on sale now. Single concert ticket sales start May 5. Check out the full lineup here.

Posted 1/24/12

Team L.A. Opera, led by Placido Domingo, left, and Marc Stern is all smiles after early loan repayment.

When L.A. Opera was singing the blues, L.A. County chimed in with an urgently-needed high note, guaranteeing a bridge loan to help see the company through some deep financial woes.

On Tuesday, the opera company—led by its world-renowned maestro, Plácido Domingo—said thank you in a big way.

As in $7 million big.

Domingo announced to the Board of Supervisors that the opera company had repaid half of the $14 million bridge loan a full year early. The early payment, negotiated with lender Banc of America by the county’s Chief Executive Office, will save the opera $350,000 in interest.

“I am really very deeply touched by you having confidence in our company, trusting us,” Domingo, the opera’s general director, told the board. The loan, he said, came at a “most critical time in our young history, helping to stabilize the company during the first part of the economic downturn.”

Even on a day when reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Shervin Lalezary was being honored for his role in apprehending the New Year’s arson suspect, Domingo’s presence sent a thrill through the Board of Supervisors’ hearing room. Domingo posed for photographs with everyone from secretaries to chief deputies to Sheriff Lee Baca.

For one fleeting, only-in-L.A. moment, the longtime musical superstar (who will appear in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra next month) greeted and shook hands with the suddenly famous reserve deputy hero (who appeared on “Ellen” this week) as both men awaited their turns before the board. (Both received proclamations from the supervisors but only Domingo received a serenade in honor of his upcoming birthday.)

Accompanying Domingo in his supervisors’ boardroom debut were L.A. Opera board chairman Marc Stern and CEO Stephen Rountree.

Supervisor and board chairman Zev Yaroslavsky praised the three leaders for successfully managing the company under “very difficult circumstances” and for paying back part of the bridge loan ahead of schedule.

“If we had not had confidence in you, we probably would have been fools to guarantee that loan,” Yaroslavsky said. “Keeping the opera going is a very important thing for us because you are one of our important tenants at the Music Center and we can’t afford to lose you…We’re glad we were able to help and we’re glad that you made us look good.”

“There were many skeptics who said we shouldn’t have made this loan,” added Supervisor Gloria Molina. “We’re so grateful that not only was it repaid, it was repaid early.”

The accelerated payment was made possible by donors making good on their pledges to the opera company. Rountree said the opera is on course to repay the remainder of the loan when it comes due in January, 2013.

The loan guaranteed by supervisors was a “very, very important bridge to our continued success,” Stern said after the meeting. “In retrospect,” he added, “it was a good bet.”

Don’t I know you? Shervin Lalezary, left, meets up with Placido Domingo in the boardroom.

Posted 1/10/12

The Hollywood Bowl’s bathrooms will be freshening up in the off-season. Photo/L.A. Philharmonic

The 2012 summer lineup has yet to be unveiled, but Hollywood Bowl patrons can already start looking forward to one sure-fire crowd-pleaser:

New and improved restrooms.

A $3 million makeover, unanimously approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, calls for reengineering restroom layouts, replacing plumbing fixtures and in general rethinking how to make the intermission bathroom break a better, brighter part of the concert-going experience.

Bathroom traffic has long tended to freeze up outside the first stalls, so bold new graphics inspired by the Bowl’s Art Deco architectural style are being developed to let patrons know that they should keep moving in order to get to more facilities inside.

The Bowl's current state of affairs.

The design as currently proposed would include state-of-the-art sustainable features, such as waterless urinals and lightning quick Dyson hand dryers. The green theme wouldn’t end there. Green floors are being proposed as a way of bringing a suggestion of the outdoors into stylish white-black-and-stainless-steel interiors. Indirect lighting would help illuminate what are now dark and dated spaces.

There are other practical improvements envisioned as well, such as new partitions to provide greater privacy around the urinals.

“We’re trying to really increase the experience, the magic of the Hollywood Bowl” by making the restrooms “more accessible, more usable and lighter,” said Mark Rios of Rios Clementi Hale Studios, whose firm is undertaking the renovation project during the Bowl’s off-season. (The firm also designed the new Civic Center park, now under construction as part of the Grand Avenue Project.)

Julie Smith-Clementi, who is heading up the Bowl bathroom project for Rios Clementi Hale, said the idea is to keep things durable while losing the current “park restroom” ambiance. “Because it is the Bowl, it’s dressed up a little bit,” she said of the new look being developed.

In all, a dozen restrooms—six men’s, six women’s—will be renovated at the county-owned facility. The money for the refurbishing will come from Proposition A park improvement funds.

It’s high time for a makeover, according to Russ Guiney, director of the county Department of Parks and Recreation, which operates the Bowl in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“These facilities show signs of deterioration due to their age and the extremely frequent usage during the performance season,” Guiney said in a letter to supervisors. The loo re-do “will enhance the function and appearance of the facilities for patrons and help to reduce maintenance costs.”

The supervisors’ action Tuesday enables the Philharmonic Association to obtain funding for the project while the final design planning progresses.

Posted 12/20/11

If you were lucky enough to grow up here, you’ve probably got some cherished memories of the Hollywood Bowl. If not, chances are you probably imagined what it would be like to experience just one concert—Sinatra! The Beatles! Hendrix! Heifetz!—under the stars at the storied amphitheater.

That kind of spellbinding magic, reaching across the years and the miles, has just been recognized again in the latest Pollstar awards. For the 7^th straight year, concert industry professionals named the Bowl the nation’s “Best Major Outdoor Concert Venue.” The county-owned venue beat finalists that included the Gorge Amphitheatre in Quincy, Washington, and the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. (Another L.A. institution, the Greek Theater, also was honored this year with the “Red Rocks Award for Small Outdoor Venue.”)

We’ve marked the occasion by taking a spin through some of the Bowl’s historic photos. Whether you’re a homegrown Angeleno or a transplant, we think you’ll find something here to surprise, amuse or just take you back in time. Also, check out the huge collection of archival photos and video snippets on the Bowl’s website that feature Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and an array of other classical and pop music performance greats. And to create some Bowl memories of your own, here’s this season’s concert lineup.

Posted 2/9/11

This summer, avoid the stress of traffic and parking by taking a shuttle to the Hollywood Bowl, the largest natural outdoor amphitheatre in the United States.

The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to continue the $2.2 million Park-and-Ride and Shuttle Program that began in 1973. The costs are shared by Los Angeles County, Metro and the riders. The County portion comes from voter-approved funding aimed at developing and improving local public transportation. 

In the Third District, Park-and-Ride shuttles depart from Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Sherman Oaks, and Chatsworth, along with 10 other locations countywide.  For details and directions visit the guide at the Hollywood Bowl’s website. 

The service will save you time and money. Parking in these lots is free, and the round-trip fare is only $5 with proof of a Bowl ticket. Otherwise, the price is $8. Bowl shuttles from several closer locations cost only $4.  (Parking at the Bowl itself is limited and costs between $16 and $35.)

Come see the acclaimed Gustavo Dudamel conduct the LA Philharmonic, along with the many other celebrated and diverse acts that play the Bowl each summer. The schedule will be released January 26. The Park-and-Ride program will be operating throughout the season, from June through October.

Posted 1/20/11

Cultural bargain hunters, take heart: the cheap seats are still incredibly cheap at the Hollywood Bowl. But everything else is likely to go up a bit next season under proposed ticket price increases scheduled to go before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

At the high end, the increases include a proposed $3 hike for Pool Circle and Garden Box tickets for special event performances (those would go from $282 to $285 a seat.) At the other end of the spectrum, Friday and Saturday Pop performance tickets in Sections V and X would increase from $10 to $11.

The $1 tickets for Sections V and X–the top 380 benches of the Bowl–would still cost only a buck on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. (The $8 seats in Section W also would remain unchanged on those days.)

“Where else in this city can you get anything for a dollar?” said Ed Tom, superintendent of operations at the Bowl. “We’re talking about live entertainment in the city of Los Angeles for $8-$10. What does it cost to see a movie these days?”

Tom said the fees are adjusted annually. This year’s increases are needed to keep up with “increased production, labor, marketing and artists’ costs,” according to the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the facility in conjunction with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Posted 10/21/10

Since coming to town as the new principal of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, George Simpson hears one question constantly.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Is your school like ‘Fame’?” says Simpson, who joined LACHSA in 2008. “It’s exactly like ‘Fame,’ only 10 times more intense…We have kids spontaneously bursting into song in the hallways.”

Now picture that intensity spread across a quarter-century.

As Los Angeles County’s “arts high” turns 25 this year, you get the feeling that this is one silver anniversary that’s going platinum.

Since September, 1985, when it opened on the Cal State L.A. campus, LACHSA has been launching the careers of young artists in music, theater, dance and the visual arts while garnering support from some of the biggest names around.

Placido Domingo’s grandson was a LACHSA student. Other alums include singer Josh Groban, Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, actress Jenna Elfman, Corbin Bleu of “High School Musical” fame and Anthony Anderson (“Law & Order.”) One of Frank Gehry’s sons went there and another currently is on the faculty. (Just to keep it all in the family, graduations are sometimes held at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.) The headliner for the first graduation in 1987? Barry Manilow.

And when you start talking about past galas to benefit the school, you’re getting into the celebrity stratosphere—with honorees including Henry Mancini and French fashion great Hubert de Givenchy, and performers ranging from Julie Andrews to Luciano Pavarotti.

The 25th anniversary celebration being put on by the Arts High Foundation on April 17 is no exception, with appearances slated by artists including Natalie Cole, opera legend Marilyn Horne, Bob Newhart and Manilow, along with video tributes from luminaries such as Domingo, Quincy Jones, Janet Jackson and Cher. Tickets for the fundraiser—whose honorees include Manilow and Ginny Mancini—range from $2,500 for VIP seating to $50 for LACHSA students and staff.

But the mission is, as the saying goes, priceless. The high school’s foundation says it needs to “stand strong in the gulf of a broken arts education system—a rupture that has allowed arts education in other communities to be virtually eliminated, and one that has even threatened LACHSA by key areas of its programs being reduced by up to 20%.”

Despite perennial funding challenges, the school now has on the drawing board a new building—to provide academic classrooms, a new “black box” theater and an outside amphitheater—that would be the first space on the Cal State campus dedicated exclusively to LACHSA.

At the same time, the 600-student school, which also offers programs in film and television, is experiencing a surge in applications. This year, a record 760 applicants auditioned for 175 slots. In all, 3,300 hundred students have come through during the past 25 years.

Early champions include the late Caroline Ahmanson and Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who helped LACHSA navigate initial difficulties over where to locate the campus. LACHSA’s foundation has long played a key role in providing a tuition-free, conservatory-style arts education to some of the most talented public school students around.

Click through the gallery below and see if you can discover the next Matthew Rushing (Class of ‘91, now an Alvin Ailey dancer/choreographer) or Kehinde Wiley (Class of ‘95, whose paintings have been displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.)

And then post your own LACHSA pictures on our website.