Part of my fall season includes travel to visit other festivals, to check out what colleagues in my field are doing and to study “best practices.” Last week I visited Los Angeles to meet with a colleague at the Hollywood Bowl to see what new and innovative programs they are planning. The Bowl organized The Decemberists national tour last summer, and as you may remember one of those concerts was with the Grant Park Orchestra in Millennium Park. We’ll see what we can cook up together for the future, but it was good to see that amazing Hollywood Bowl operation from a backstage perspective.
I also met with a colleague from the LA Philharmonic to pick her brain about some contemporary music issues, the goal being to find cool new pieces for the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus to perform as part of our Festival.
While in LA, I visited the recently renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. Wow – 
so that’s what you can do with a lot of money. If you haven’t visited the Getty, I highly recommend the experience. This is so LA: the museum is free, but parking reservations have to be made in advance. Since practically no one out there travels without a car, your trip to the Museum is dependent on whether or not you can reserve a parking spot!
I had one celebrity spotting in LA: Ron Rifkin, who plays Sally Field’s brother on the television program Brothers and Sisters. He was out shopping and about to get into one of those SUV/Limo monstrosities, with the help of a burly looking body guard.
I then traveled to Portland, Oregon, to work with our GPMF Principal Conductor Carlos Kalmar and to hear a concert of the Oregon Symphony. After working all afternoon long on Grant Park business, I was pleased to hear the Oregonians in a concert program of Haydn, Berio and deFalla. That Orchestra has made great strides with Carlos at the helm these past four years and it was an impressive performance.
Now, it’s back to work as we put the finishing touches on our 2008 Grant Park Music Festival season -- eight months from now and counting.
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