A magic moment, even for Bowl pros

Sarah Horn, left, with Kristin Chenoweth after they shared their "a star is born" moment at the Bowl.

The people who work behind the scenes to produce one memorable concert after another at the Hollywood Bowl every summer might be forgiven for getting a little jaded.

This season alone, they’ve witnessed superstars ranging from Willie Nelson and Diana Ross to Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman performing under the stars before tens of thousands of people.

So that makes what happened at the Bowl last Friday all the more remarkable.

A music teacher from Riverside named Sarah Horn, selected from the audience to sing a duet with Kristin Chenoweth, turned in a note-perfect performance of “For Good” from “Wicked” that did more than bring the Bowl audience to its feet. It also knocked the seasoned Bowl staff off theirs.

“All you could hear [backstage] was ‘Wow!’ Other than that, you could have heard a pin drop,” said Paul Geller, production director for the Bowl and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which leases and operates the county-owned facility.

The Bowl team, along with the concert audience of 9,214, was the first to witness Horn’s performance, in which she harmonized fluidly and effortlessly traded solos with Broadway legend Chenoweth. But they weren’t the last. A friend’s video of their performance, posted to YouTube, had racked up more than 2.2 million hits as of Tuesday afternoon. Her own account of the evening was posted on Broadway World.com and the story has been picked up by media outlets ranging from the Huffington Post to the Hollywood Reporter.

“I was there and it was amazing,” said Chris Ayzoukian, the Philharmonic vice president who oversees the orchestra as well as productions at the Bowl and Disney Hall. “We see a lot of shows. Magic happens a lot at the Hollywood Bowl…but when something special happens, you just feel it in the air.”

As the second half of the concert got underway, Ayzoukian was attending to his usual performance night duties from Box 1041, texting staffers backstage with comments about audio and video quality.

Then Chenoweth selected Horn—who was attending the concert with friends and family—from among fans in the audience vying for a chance to sing onstage with her.

“Sarah sang literally the first note and we were like, ‘Hello. This is serious business,’ ” Ayzoukian recalled.

In short order, he stopped texting the backstage crew about technical issues and started sending messages like: “Wow, someone hire her immediately.”

Horn, of course, was living out a popular fantasy: who hasn’t daydreamed of belting out a show-stopping number before a spellbound audience? Then there was the undeniable tension inherent in the moment: would this unknown blow her big chance, forget the lyrics, sing out of tune?

No, no and no.

“I think part of it is the sense of surprise—this amazing singer who’s among us in the audience. She represented everyone in the audience that day,” Ayzoukian said. “That’s why it was so inspiring.”

(Inspiring, and so good that the questions started almost immediately: was Horn a plant? “Absolutely not,” the Philharmonic says.)

After the show, Geller, the production director, raced into the audience to get the voice teacher’s contact information and invite her backstage.

“Both she and her parents were fairly wide-eyed,” Geller said. “They knew that they were walking backstage at a world-famous venue.”

The crowd of VIPs clustered around Chenoweth’s dressing room—“all pretty high-powered people in the industry,” as Geller put it—gave her a welcome to remember.

“As soon as they saw her, they started chanting, ‘Sarah! Sarah!’ ” Geller said. “It was the most unbelievable experience.”

Geller, who has worked at the Bowl since 1970, has had his share of incredible moments over the years and this one, he said, is going on the list. “It was moving,” he said, “for all of us there.”

Meanwhile, Horn’s return engagement at the Bowl already has been booked. She’ll be serving as a guest judge of ABBA-Capella, a “show-tune-styled sing-off” contest among collegiate groups that is part of the Bowl’s ABBA Fest concert on Sunday, Sept. 8.

Chenoweth and Horn, seen above in video shown on Bowl's LED screens, shared a duet from "Wicked."

Posted 8/28/13