Arroyo Monthly October 2009 by Southland Publishing

F IE N LE I VL II NV G I N IG N I TN H TE H GE R SE A TN E G L E VN AA L LA ER YE A F I N R A PB AR SI AE D

OCTOBER 2009

USC GIVES PROPS TO POP ROCKING HAMLET AT BOSTON COURT WAYNE THIEBAUD’S CALIFORNIA DREAM

ARROYO VOLUME 5 ~ NUMBER 10

M O N T H LY

39 FALL ARTS 8 ROCKING MUSIC’S IVORY TOWER Pasadena’s Rob Cutietta, dean of USC’s Thornton School of Music, gives props to pop in his innovative approach to academia. –By Ilsa Setziol

12 WAYNE THIEBAUD’S CALIFORNIA DREAM The quintessential California painter’s colorful slices of life — and pies — come to Pasadena this month in a major retrospective. –By Kirk Silsbee

31 THE SOUNDS OF JOYFUL ABANDON What do the thundering cantata Carmina Burana and early childhood music education have in common? A musically literate mom investigates. –By Ilsa Setziol

34 STRANGE MESSENGER The Theatre @ Boston Court looks to Hamlet and Patti Smith for inspiration in birthing its new punk rock musical, God Save Gertrude. –By Lynne Heffley

DEPARTMENTS 7 FESTIVITIES Galas galore — the Huntington, Broad Stage and Los Angeles Opera

39 TRAVEL Who will fill the entertainment void in Las Vegas after the recent loss of its biggest headliner, Danny Gans?

43 THE LIST Pasadena ASID’s Home & Kitchen Tour, Craftsman Weekend, Ingres’ Comtesse d’Haussonville comes to the Norton Simon and more

45 KITCHEN CONFESSIONS Our columnist bites into the Big Apple and tastes a mouthful of heaven. ABOUT THE COVER: Wayne Thiebaud, Two Kneeling Figures, 1966, oil on canvas, Collection of Paul LeBaron Thiebaud, © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 3

EDITOR’S NOTE

PERHAPS IT’S BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RUNNING things now suckled on rock and punk, but those bad boys of the music world are going legit now more than ever. Lo, these many years after its renegade birth, punk is climbing the rungs of higher culture during the fall arts season. In September, Berkeley Repertory Theatre had a world premiere of its staged version of Green Day’s punk rock opera, American Idiot. And this month brings a punkified update of Hamlet to Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court in the world premiere of God Save Gertrude. Lynne Heffley goes behind the scenes to unveil the makings of this audacious new work. Even USC’s prestigious Thornton School of Music, under Pasadena-based dean Rob Cutietta, is opening the door to advanced degrees in pop and rock music. As Cutietta told Ilsa Setziol, bringing those talents into the academic fold was long overdue: “We’re missing so many great musicians who can’t get advanced training simply because of the instruments they play.” Setziol understands well the progress that has been — and needed to be — made in music education. A onetime music major at UCLA who cut her teeth (painfully) as a child practicing scales under the eye of a stern piano teacher, Setziol, now a mother, was delighted to find a fresh approach to early music education at Pasadena Conservatory of Music. In this issue, she shares her journey of discovery, which took a surprising detour. (Hint: Remember the soundtrack for the film Speed?) The fall season also ushers in Pasadena’s first major retrospective for one of California’s favorite sons — painter Wayne Thiebaud. A survey of 70 years of Thiebaud’s colorful interpretations of beachscapes and baked goods opens on Oct. 4 at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Kirk Silsbee looks back at Thiebaud’s journey from humble sign-painter to national treasure. — Irene Lacher

ARROYO MONTHLY Altadena, Arcadia, Eagle Rock, Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, Sierra Madre, Pasadena, San Marino and South Pasadena

EDITOR IN CHIEF Irene Lacher PRODUCTION MANAGER Yvonne Guerrero ART DIRECTOR Joel Vendette JUNIOR DESIGNER Evelyn Duenas WEB DESIGNER Carla Marroquin PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Taylor Shaw COPY EDITOR John Seeley CONTRIBUTORS Karen Apostolina, Leslie Bilderback, Michael Burr, Michael Cervin, André Coleman, Mandalit del Barco, Patt Diroll, Gary Dretzka, Lynne Heffley, Katie Klapper, Jana Monji, Ilsa Setziol, Kirk Silsbee, John Sollenberger, Nancy Spiller PHOTOGRAPHERS Johnny Buzzerio, Teri Lyn Fisher, Gabriel Goldberg, C.M. Hardt, Melissa Valladares ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Dina Stegon ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Fred Bankston, Dana Bonner, Carolyn Johansen, Lauren Kirshner, Leslie Lamm, Alison Standish, Kelly Tucker ADVERTISING DESIGNER Carla Marroquin VP OF FINANCE Michael Nagami HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Andrea Baker

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FESTIVITIES

At Los Angeles Opera’s festive 2009-10 Season Opening Celebration on Sept. 12,

supporters hailed the company’s vigor despite the year’s economic challenges. Opera board President Carol Henry of San Marino said support from LA County pulled the company back from the brink this past year, and board members have embarked on a capital campaign to shore up resources. “We’re still alive, and we’ve gotten an amazing amount of support from the county because they realized the value of opera to the City and County of Los Angeles,” she said. “And as their tenants, they realized we cannot go under.” After a performance of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, guests converged on the second floor of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which had been transformed by gala Chair Mary Hayley from a cavernous space into an intimate supper club, with masses of pink drapery, candle-

light and elaborate floral centerpieces. Opera buffs savored Patina Restaurant Group’s supper of cannelloni, beef tenderloin and pineapple carpaccio.

PHOTOS: Baryshnikov and Laguna courtesy The Broad Stage, Huntington Ball courtesy The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Culture philanthropists Carol and Warner Henry also showed their support for the Broad Stage at the Santa Monica performing arts venue’s second-season opening night gala on Sept. 4. The evening celebrated Mikhail Baryshnikov’s first L.A. performance in five years as he kicked off the U.S. leg of his international tour with a program of duets with prima ballerina Ana Laguna.

THE BROAD STAGE GALA: 1. (From left) Mikhail Baryshnikov; Chui Tsang, president of SMCC; and Edythe and Eli Broad 2. Eli and Edythe Broad 3. (From left) Warner and Carol Henry with Marci and Broad Stage COO Mitch Heskel 4

4. Carol and Warner Henry

5. Marybeth and Rob Cutietta 6. Cathy and Paul Tosetti LOS ANGELES OPERA CELEBRATION: Background: Baryshnikov and Laguna

(From left) Dr. Tom McNulty, Alyce and Spud Williamson and Dr. Ruth Williamson McNulty

The mother-daughter team of Alyce de Roulet Williamson and Ruth Williamson McNulty shepherded the 2009 Huntington Ball in San Marino on Sept. 12. Some 400 supporters of the Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens gathered on the north lawn for an evening of dinner and dancing. Revelers feasted on The Kitchen for Exploring Foods’ crab salad timbale and beef tenderloin in Cabernet sauce at tables festooned with Jacob Maarse’s garlands of Italian pittosporum and roses. Guests, who included former Times Mirror Chairman Robert and Lois Erburu and Trader Joe’s CEO/President Dan and Sandy Bane, left with engraved silver cups filled with miniature rose nosegays. ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 7

FALL ARTS

ROCKING MUSIC’S IVORY TOWER PASADENA’S ROB CUTIETTA, DEAN OF USC’S THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC, GIVES PROPS TO POP IN THE UNIVERSITY’S FALL LAUNCH OF GROUNDBREAKING DEGREE PROGRAMS. BY ILSA SETZIOL | PHOTOS BY MARK BERNDT

THIS FALL, USC’S PRESTIGIOUS THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC IS USHERING POP AND ROCK INTO THE DECOROUS WORLD OF ACADEMIA. The top-ranked school, famous for symphonic, vocal and choral music, is launching an undergraduate degree program in popular music performance, the first of its kind for a major university. Now celebrating its 125th anniversary, Thornton is also adding an undergraduate degree in choral music and a bachelor of arts in vocal jazz. Ambitious? Precedent-setting? Certainly. The same can be said of the architect of the school’s expansion and its fresh take on music education — Pasadena’s Rob Cutietta, Thornton’s dean for the past seven years. (Listeners of KUSC-FM [91.5] are likely to have heard him answer questions about music on the station’s Arts Alive program.) Get to know Cutietta a bit, and this modernizing of the Thornton School seems inevitable. Of course, you don’t get to be a dean at USC without serious academic credentials, such as Cutietta’s doctorate in music education and psychology which he earned from Pennsylvania State University in 1982. Still, the dean has the approachability of a regular guy who has spent a lot time in pubs. Which he has. (He also holds a Mickey Mouse diploma, but we’ll get to that later.) —CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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FALL ARTS

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FALL ARTS

—CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

Cutietta, 56, grew up in a Cleveland suburb in the late ’50s and early ’60s, slaving away on an accordion. “I absolutely hated every moment of it,” he recalls. “My dad loved music. He was not trained. He would sit at the piano and play, not well at all, but he loved it so much, he wanted to make sure that my brother and I both had lessons. Being Italian, I had to start on the accordion.” Young Cutietta dreamed about switching to piano. Then one day, he snuck a red transistor radio into his elementary school. When he flipped it on at lunchtime, the Beatles tune I Want to Hold Your Hand rocked his world. “It was so different from anything else I’d ever heard. Suddenly, I wanted to play guitar.” Cutietta dug into the electric bass and, by high school, he was good enough to play professionally. He gigged five nights a week in local bars (a tradition he continued throughout most of his academic career, playing everything from rock and jazz to country music). By the time he enrolled as an undergrad at Cleveland State University, he was already a studio musician recording jingles. “I went to college because it was something to do, more than anything else,” he says. “It fit in because I worked at night.” He couldn’t study electric bass at school, so he mastered classical guitar. He also studied choral music and later spent several years conducting middle and high school choruses, as well as church choirs. It was while singing in the university chorus that he met his future wife, Marybeth. She was 23; he, 19. “Although he was playing in bars, he was too young to go to bars,” she recalls. “I was dating other fellows — law students — who took me to bars. With Rob, I would horseback ride.” In graduate school, Cutietta researched how the brain processes and stores music. He held professorships at Montana and Kent State universities. And by the ’90s, he was head of the School of Music and Dance at the University of Arizona, where he authored Raising Musical Kids: A Guide for Parents (Oxford University Press; 2001). Cutietta loved Tucson, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to head a prestigious music school. And when he saw USC’s posting of the dean’s job at Thornton in 2002, he thought it was a perfect match. The music school boasted top-notch classical training, including choral programs; it also offered a respected music industry major and an unusual film-and-television scoring program. “If I was going to create a school of music,” he says, “this is how I’d make it. When I look at other schools, they’re focused on just one thing. I’ve never been focused on one part of music. There’s so much vitality there.” Still, electric guitar players couldn’t get an undergraduate degree playing their instruments. To Cutietta that seemed wrong: “We’re missing so many great musicians who can’t get advanced training simply because of the instruments they play.” So he encouraged USC faculty members to write an entirely new curriculum for popular music performance, and he brought in high-profile artists like rocker Steve Miller, Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea, Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier and other professionals to offer input. He also persuaded the classical music faculty to embrace the new program, which could have hurt the school’s reputation if it hadn’t been properly developed. Cutietta insists the new major is as rigorous as those for classical musicians: “If you’re in the popular music program, you’re expected to be improvisatory, to be able to create music. So they’ll be taking courses in songwriting; that is not an easy skill to learn.” Grant Gershon, music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, applauds Cutietta’s flair for innovation. “The new programs he’s put into place are really groundbreaking in the field of higher education,” he says of the pop performance major, as well as the undergraduate degrees in choral music and vocal jazz. “Sometimes even the most successful music schools tend to be insular institutions. That could be said of Thornton in the past.” 10 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

To help move the school forward, Cutietta has strengthened its ongoing ties to music professionals. He launched an advisory board that includes Gershon and songwriter Randy Newman and recruited heavy hitters such as violinist Midori Goto, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and saxophonist Bob Mintzer to join Thornton’s faculty. “Rob is very unassuming,” Gershon says. “Therefore he’s able to mix with people in different settings, from cultivating donors to working with nonacademic kinds of artists. People feel comfortable with him.” When not on the job, Cutietta can be found in his attic, manning the controls of his old-gauge model trains, or cruising new ones at The Original Whistle Stop on Colorado Boulevard. He’s an unabashed fan of Disneyland

“THE NEW PROGRAMS HE’S PUT INTO PLACE ARE REALLY GROUNDBREAKING IN THE FIELD OF HIGHER EDUCATION,” THE LA MASTER CHORALE’S GRANT GERSHON SAYS OF CUTIETTA. and the Disney Institute, the Walt Disney Co.’s leadership training arm, which he attended. He continues to honor his institute pledge to sport images of the Mouse. “You will never find me without something Mickey,” he says. “I have a whole collection of watches and lapel pins. I’ve been doing this since I ‘graduated’ in 1998, so by this point, I’m superstitious that if I ever dared break the pledge something really, really bad might happen.” For all his accomplishments as dean, Cutietta has one regret: He doesn’t gig as much as he used to. He occasionally plays electric and acoustic bass guitars in a jazz trio that includes USC President Steve Sample on drums and former Thornton faculty member Shelly Berg on piano. The trio is called BCS (for the players’ last initials). “But it has a double meaning,” says Cutietta, “referring also to the Bowl Championship Series that USC football usually wins.” The dean prefers playing music to listening to it. Still, to garner support for Thornton, he and Marybeth schmooze potential donors and artists at concerts — be they at Disney Hall or L.A.’s jazz club Catalina — several nights a week. When pressed, he cites acoustic folk as a favorite genre. But Cutietta says the music that inspires him has more to do with who is playing it: “There are certain underlying things in music — musicality, artistry, expression; those are much more important to me than style.” AM ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 11

FALL ARTS

WAYNE THIEBAUD’S CALIFORNIA DREAM THE QUINTESSENTIAL CALIFORNIA ARTIST’S COLORFUL SLICES OF LIFE — AND PIES — COME TO THE PASADENA MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ART IN A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OPENING THIS MONTH.

Three Prone Figures, 1961, oil on canvas, Collection of Paul LeBaron Thiebaud © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

BY KIRK SILSBEE

12 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 13

FALL ARTS

Three Prone Figures, 1961, oil on canvas, Collection of Paul LeBaron Thiebaud © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

BY KIRK SILSBEE

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ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 13

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FALL ARTS

PASADENA’S ROMANCE WITH WAYNE THIEBAUD, AN IMPORTANT CALIFORNIA PAINTER WHO HELPED BIRTH THE POP ART MOVEMENT HERE, CRESCENDOS THIS MONTH AT THE PASADENA MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ART. ON OCT. 4, THE MUSEUM UNVEILS WAYNE THIEBAUD: 70 YEARS OF PAINTING, A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF A SELF-EFFACING MASTER CONSIDERED ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT LIVING PAINTERS. THE SOLO EXHIBITION OVERLAPS WITH SWEETS & TREATS, THE NORTON SIMON MUSEUM OF ART’S SHOW OF THIEBAUD

PHOTO: Matt Bult

WORKS IN ITS COLLECTION, WHICH RUNS THROUGH NOV. 2. Thiebaud began making his mark in Pasadena as early as 1962, when he joined an all-star cast of artists — including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine and Edward Ruscha — who participated in New Painting of Common Objects, a groundbreaking show at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon). The exhibition, one of the country’s first heralding the arrival of Pop Art, was curated by PAM’s then-chief, Walter Hopps, later dubbed “a gonzo museum director” by the Washington Post. With an exhibition that conferred perhaps the ultimate SoCal art circle imprimatur on its participants, Hopps helped alert the world beyond to the creative ferment in the region’s art scene. Six years later, PAM gave him his first one-man show here. By midlife, Thiebaud, now 89, was in excellent company. Not bad for a selftaught unknown who had been a sign painter, cartoonist, Walt Disney Studios apprentice, illustrator and longtime teacher at UC Davis (where he now enjoys emeritus status). His brightly colored paintings of baked goods eventually became his widely recognized signature, though his work also embraced vibrant Northern California landscapes and cityscapes as well as beach scenes, reflecting the state’s sunny optimism back at itself. Thiebaud revels in the luxuriant use of pigment, using heavy impastos and bright colors as he renders the everyday with as much affection for his medium as he has for his subject. Only the year before his Pasadena debut, Thiebaud had visited New York — rolled canvasses under his arm — and presented his work to one gallery owner after another. He’d painted eight or 10 cakes and rows of pie slices. The painterly frosting actually looked like frosting, thick and creamy, right down to the bas-relief rosettes. Bold slivers of color peeked out from the baked goods’ edges. In fact, these were studies of color and light, not pastry. Still, the result was unanimous rejection. By chance, the discouraged painter rested in the Upper East Side doorway of the new Allan Stone Gallery, which became famous for representing such New York School luminaries as Willem de Koonig and Barnett Newman. Stone asked Thiebaud to show him the work and was almost shocked by it, though also strangely fascinated. “My first reaction to his painting was, this guy must be nuts, because they were just these rows of pies and cakes, silly looking,” Stone later told CBS Sunday Morning. “And after a while, there was a kind of insistence and integrity about them that was undeniable.” Stone agreed to show Thiebaud’s work and, at his first show at the gallery, sold a piece to the Museum of Modern Art. The legendary art dealer’s keen eye was given thundering posthumous affir-

Top: Portrait of the artist, 1997 Bottom (from left): Palm Street, 2006-2007, oil on canvas and East Potrero, 1998, oil on canvas

mation in 2007, when Christie’s auctioned off his collection, bringing in $4.52 million for Seven Suckers, Thiebaud’s 1970 painting of two rows of lollipops. But in the 1980s, the New York art establishment had yet to fully appreciate its counterparts in the West. When Thomas Hoving, Connoisseur’s editor and a former Metropolitan Museum of Art director, called Thiebaud “America’s best overlooked painter” in the magazine in 1985, he was damning the artist with faint praise. Still, the modest San Francisco resident probably didn’t mind. As he told Hoving: “I’ve been called a Pop artist, a ‘commonist,’ a ‘kitchnik’ and a member of the ‘sign-painting’ school. I guess that one should be thankful when they call you anything.” 70 Years of Painting comes to Pasadena from the Palm Springs Museum of Art, where it was curated by museum Director Steven Nash. Nash greatly expanded a 2007 show of the same name that had been organized for the Laguna Beach Art Museum by guest curator Gene Cooper, former director of Cal State Long Beach’s University Art Museum. With more than 120 paintings, the current retro—CONTINUED ON PAGE 17 ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 15

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FALL ARTS

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spective is more than double the size of its Laguna Beach predecessor, augmented with works from private collections and those of the artist and his son, Paul (who became Thiebaud’s San Francisco– and New York–based art dealer after Stone’s death in 2006). Cooper, whose original essay is reprinted in the catalog for the new show, sat for the painter more than once (the discreetly titled Player is in the exhibition) and photographed the progress of one of his portraits. Cooper likes to show the spectrum of slides, revealing Thiebaud’s modus operandi, to his classes. The artist starts painting with lemon yellow and then continues on through the remaining warm colors, all the way to the darkest purples. Nash considers Thiebaud’s ascendance in the early 1960s a mixed blessing because he is often lumped together with Pop Art painters, although it’s not a perfect fit. “Thiebaud emerged simultaneously with the Pop Art movement and was swept along in its publicity,” he says, speaking by phone from Palm Springs. “He does share certain values — interest in informal properties of common objects, stylization of these objects, strong and sometimes brash color, etc. “But the differences are actually stronger than the similarities. Thiebaud always says, ‘I was never a cardcarrying Pop artist!’ and he doesn’t like to be called one. The biggest difference is that Pop takes an ironic or satirical or critical view of consumerist culture, while Thiebaud has no such judgmental attitude. Further, he notes that the Pop artists exploited mass-media techniques like photo transfer, offset lithography, silkscreening, etc. and actually downplayed pure painting, which is Thiebaud’s greatest love.” A happy childhood in Long Beach provided ample subject matter for Thiebaud. He’s renowned for his graphic recall, and the cakes, candies and displays of goodies are based on memory. The Long Beach Pike, where he sold newspapers and hot dogs in his youth, must have offered a visual banquet. His observations of beachgoers on the sand below seem reflected in the recent aerial beach scene series. Even with Thiebaud’s earliest food paintings, he engaged in a kind of visual sleight-of-hand. While objects — be they candy apples, cupcakes or pies — are placed in the center of the canvas, the viewer sees them from above. But the surfaces those objects sit on have high horizon lines, so those planes tilt dramatically downward. Cezanne’s tabletops may have had more than one plane; in three dimensions, Thiebaud’s would tip all their contents onto the floor. He’s a wizard at using multiple perspective points, and spatial dislocation seems to be Thiebaud’s own long-running private joke. Since the end of the 1970s, he has been painting San Francisco cityscapes. Dramatic roller-coaster views of that town’s plunging and jutting urban hillsides can be breathtaking, but the visual elements don’t always add up. Streets that run from foreground to background seldom have a diminishing taper. Verticals like telephone poles or tall buildings are the same width at the bottom as they are at the top. It can all induce a touch of vertigo in the viewer.

Top: Two Paint Cans, 1987, oil on paper mounted on board Bottom: Watermelon Slices, 1961, oil on canvas

Few colorists since Gauguin can match the electric vibrations Thiebaud creates by juxtaposing cold and hot colors. The sleek, subtle outer contour of a woman’s leg in Swimsuit Figures (1966) is orange, until it turns into cobalt blue at the foot. The artist himself has never been given to long-winded explanations of his work, and he declined interviews in anticipation of the Pasadena retrospective. But in an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning last year, Thiebaud made his intentions clear: “I’d like for [viewers] to laugh a little. If we don’t have a sense of humor, we lack a perspective.” AM Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting runs from Oct. 4 through Jan. 31, 2010, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union St., Pasadena. The museum is open from noon to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Admission (free for members) costs $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and students. Admission is free for everyone on the first Friday of the month. Call (626) 568-3674 or visit pmcaonline.org. ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 17

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Cabanas are totally romantic and relaxing. They have most of the amenities of family rooms and kitchens, such as fireplaces, bars, televisions, sound systems, curtains, ceiling fans, refrigerators, heaters, and lots of comfortable furniture. Typically overlooking a pool or view, they are exterior living rooms, perfect for California. Whether a small individual project or part of a larger private estate, we have always designed cabanas, but have lately received more requests. I love them. For more information, please call James Coane & Associates at (626) 584-6922 or visit jamescoane.com.

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Cynthia Bennett and Associates has been a celebrated design and build firm in the San Gabriel Valley for almost 30 years. They specialize in innovative kitchen and bath design, general construction, historical renovation, project management and interior design. With all areas of residential design and construction being taken care of by Cynthia Bennett and Associates, Inc., each detail will be thought of and coordinated. They take on projects as small as bathroom remodels, as well as large additions, whole house remodels and new construction. Call for a consultation at (626) 799-9701.

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Trends in landscaping design we anticipate seeing are the result of water restrictions or higher-priced water. People would be surprised at the array of plants that we love that are lush – yet can survive on minimal water. Everything doesn’t have to be cactus or succulents. The key is planting plants of the same water needs on the same valve. Technology now available allows you to reduce your water needs by up to 50 %. Call Garden View Landscape at (626) 303-4043.

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The World is changing. Whether you call it a trend, or a responsibility, it's time to Go Green. Among other things, sustainability means solar-powered lighting, LEDs, edible gardens and water reclamation for irrigation. Plus you can save money in the process. We recently joined with ECOsmarteR, a company that makes ion purification systems, allowing us to build chemical-free pools. Resource-hungry landscapes are a thing of the past. Contact (626) 296-2617 or mothermagnolia.com.

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REAL ESTATE LIN VLACICH-SOTHEBY’S A current trend and successful formula for selling a home quickly is making sure that you have it professionally staged, along with clean, sharp, uncluttered photos of the home. Make sure your agent has a dedicated website to showcase your home’s pictures. Today’s homebuyer wants to buy a home that makes sense, so close attention will be paid to structural authenticity, especially if the home is historic. Lin has over 25 years of experience in the San Gabriel Valley real estate market. (626) 688-6464 ■

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Dr. Levi Harrison, M.D. A center of excellence. Orthopedic surgeon and hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder specialist, Dr. Harrison is a skilled and compassionate physician dedicated to the well-being of each and every patient. You will find that his staff is also dedicated to excellence in patient care. Dr. Harrison’s training includes: Fellowship (Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery) from the prestigious Indiana Hand Center of Indianapolis and Medical Degree from University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. Call (818) 240-8001. Dr. Marilyn Mehlmauer Having smooth, youthful skin is the first step to feeling great about your appearance. Dr. Marilyn Mehlmauer offers a wide variety of solutions for any problem areas on your face. Whether you have lines, wrinkles or acne, we have a remedy to restore the elasticity and refine the appearance of your skin. Visit us and explore our facial rejuvenation treatment options. Call and schedule your consultation today, (626) 585-9474. Dr. Vahik Meserkhani Welcome to the practice of Dr. Vahik Paul Meserkhani where we specialize in Prosthodontics, which includes implant surgery, full mouth rehabilitation, major smile makeover, and general dentistry by his associates. We all smile in the same language and receive great enjoyment from each and every patient who leaves our office smiling happier and healthier than when they came. We are located in the center of Downtown Glendale at 520 E. Broadway Ave. suite 120. Call (818) 242-4046 or toll free 888-95-TEETH. Visit us on the web at glendaledentistry.com. Pasadena Weight Loss Clinic A Shocking Discovery: Losing weight quickly by going against conventional “wisdom”! A Pasadena doctor helps his overweight patients eat more and exercise less to lose weight! This program simply activates built-in mechanisms your body already has that cause the fast weight loss. Simple as that. Your first step is a FREE in-depth consultation with Dr. Matar to determine eligibility for the program. “Dr. Matar's knowledge is the ‘missing link’ that I was looking for,” says Linda Gray, award-winning actress. “I know what it takes for my body to perform at its optimal potential. Implementing Dr. Matar's recommendations into my life has helped me achieve that goal,” says Dwight Hicks, two-time Super Bowl champion, San Francisco 49ers. Contact Dr. Matar at (626) 844-4686 or at ditchyourdiet.com. ■

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FALL ARTS

THE SOUNDS OFJOYFUL ABANDON

WHAT DO THE THUNDERING CANTATA CARMINA BURANA AND EARLY CHILDHOOD MUSIC EDUCATION HAVE IN COMMON? A MUSICALLY LITERATE MOM INVESTIGATES AT PASADENA CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC. BY ILSA SETZIOL

WHEN MY SON WAS ABOUT SIX MONTHS OLD, I ENROLLED HIM AT THE PASADENA CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC AND ANNOUNCED THE MOVE TO MY FATHER, A COLLEGE MUSIC PROFESSOR AT DE ANZA COLLEGE IN

PHOTOS: Children learn to feel the beat at Pasadena Conservatory, Ilsa Setziol

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. HE LAUGHED AT THE IDEA OF AN INFANT STUDYING MUSIC. BUT I WASN’T TRYING TO CRANK OUT A PRODIGY; I JUST THOUGHT EXPLORING MUSIC, EVEN AT A YOUNG AGE, WOULD ENRICH HIS LIFE. —CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 31

As things turned out, it enriched life for the whole family. In the conservatory’s infant classes, parents sing — often echoing the teacher’s simple phrases — chant nursery rhymes, bounce their babies rhythmically on their laps or dance them around in sync with a musical phrase. The babies might shake little maracas and bells or pound on drums. As the children grow, they begin to take the lead. When I asked our teacher about the curriculum, she said it was rooted in the philosophy of Carl Orff. Reaching into the recesses of my grey matter, I recalled Orff as the composer of Carmina Burana, a scenic cantata based on earthy medieval poems and songs. The minor German composer’s thundering O, Fortuna is familiar to audiences of many popular films, from Speed and Excalibur to Jackass: The Movie, and also from commercials and sampling by pop musicians like Ozzy Osbourne and rapper Sean Combs. And now I find its composer was also the progenitor of kiddie tunes such as “Way up high in the apple tree/Two little apples smiled at me”? Intriguing. I’d spent a couple years as a music major and never known that, and yet Orff is a giant in music education. Indeed, take your young child to a music class today, and chances are she’ll experience something akin to what he envisioned when he developed his approach, known as Schulwerk, nearly a century ago. In a recent toddler class at the Pasadena Conservatory, eight fidgety youngsters and their parents surround a large drum. Two-year-old Keon’s big brown eyes gaze intently at the instrument as he sits on his dad’s lap, playing along to the nursery rhyme “Higglety pigglety pop” with steady drum beats and claps at the ends of phrases. When the verse changes, the students rub the drum, exploring a new timbre. Later, teacher Sally Guerrero tells me, “Speech is a core learning step to singing. Chanting — using our voices in musical and rhythmic ways rather than having the added complexity of a musical melody — teaches them to use their voices in a way that’s pre-singing but still musical.” Plus, nursery rhymes are packed with fun and silly sounds. “There’s something about human nature that is attracted to the ancient ways of using voices that are poetic and playful,” Guerrero says. Schulwerk arose from Orff ’s search for “elemental music” — music that was simple, spontaneous and visceral. After World War I, he was among several European artists looking to break out of complex 19th-century forms. 32 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

“There was a culture of experimentation,” says Doug Goodkind, an OrffSchulwerk teacher at The San Francisco School and author of several books on music education. “It was the time of the Bauhaus, Joyce’s Ulysses and [modern dance pioneer] Isadora Duncan. Orff was trying to get away from the virtuosic Romantic tradition and arrive at something more simple.” Orff was inspired by German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman to experiment with a new way of teaching music: one focused on creativity and musical exploration, where music was united with dance and drama. In 1924, Orff put his ideas to work at a dance school for young women, the Gunterschule in Munich. A teacher at the school, Gunild Keetman, was his principal collaborator. Twenty years later, Orff and Keetman tailored Schulwerk to the needs of younger school-age kids. In the years since, various contributors and disciples have continued to shape the Orff approach, which has become intertwined with that of Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, who emphasized singing. An Orff-based class explodes with movement and percussion, especially “body percussion,” where parents tap on tiny tots’ body parts and older kids pat themselves to internalize rhythms. Children also dance in patterns that illustrate musical phrases or move about freely — swirling scarves, for example. On this day in Guerrero’s class, parents and kids tap and clap a pattern of slow and then fast beats to a recorded mariachi song: Nose. Nose. Nose. Clap, clap, clap. At the end of some songs, Guerrero sings pitches that define the songs’ musical key: Do Mi So Do (think Julie Andrews singing Do-ReMi in The Sound of Music). Twoyear-old Sage Billock echoes the Carl Orff teacher and touches her waist, shoulders and bobbed blond head as the notes ascend. This exercise, Guerrero explains, “gives the children the kinesthetic experience of going from high to low, or low to high notes.” Sage’s mom, Christy Billock, says the girl frequently plays with melody and rhythm at home. “It gets integrated into our daily life, all the little things we do. We say, ‘Put. The. Toys away.’” “The Orff approach is based on things that come naturally to young children,” says Lynn Kleiner, a Redondo Beach creator of Orff-based curricula, CDs and DVDs used around the world. If that sounds obvious, consider the difference between the Orff style and traditional private lessons, like the ones I plodded through as a child. At age 5 or 6, I would squirm on a large piano bench belonging to a stern and ambitious pianist. He insisted I perfect scales before playing a single

PHOTOS: Courtesy of Pasadena Conservatory

—CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

PHOTO: The American Orff-Schulwerk Association

FALL ARTS

song. So I did what any sensible young lady would do: I quit. A couple of years later, I picked up a pint-size violin made for children. An encouraging teacher ensured I stayed with it — at least for about five years. I enjoyed playing in a youth symphony but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for practicing alone. From the beginning, I was taught to play from written music, not by ear. I was never encouraged to improvise or compose. In my teens, I took up voice lessons. I was a good singer but lacked confidence. “Conventional training is not setting a child up for success,” says Kleiner, who founded the Music Rhapsody school in Redondo Beach. “To show a child a quarter note when the child hasn’t walked to the beat, marched to the beat, is like showing a young child the written language before they can speak. They cannot keep a steady beat.” Kleiner and Goodkind were among the first Americans to tailor the Orff approach to children under five. “The children I see really loving music,” Kleiner continues, “are the ones who start musical education through movement and singing. They understand musical concepts through things that come naturally. Then later you start them in their private lessons, and they pass the kids who’ve been solely in private lessons.” In accord with this line of thinking, Pasadena Conservatory does not recommend children begin string instruments until age 5. The school’s instructors don’t teach piano to kids under 7, in part because the keyboard is just too big for little fingers to play safely and proficiently. Kids who start earlier, says Guerrero, often get discouraged and quit. They can also develop hand and arm injuries similar to carpal-tunnel syndrome. Guerrero designed the conservatory’s Young Musicians curriculum based on the theories of Orff and Kodaly. (Both are considered general approaches to music, not specific methods; accredited teachers use them as guides for their own lesson plans.) The conservatory offers this curriculum to all pre-K through fifth-grade classes at Jefferson Elementary School in Pasadena. Pasadena’s Walden School and St. Mark’s School in Altadena also provide Orff-based music classes. (Three decades ago, many public schools in California launched similar programs, only to cut them in the wake of Proposition 13.) The Pasadena Conservatory’s classes for the youngest children are fairly similar to the trademarked music classes offered nationally by the Music Together and Kindermusik companies. Teachers from these music programs often study in the Orff accreditation system. But unlike Music Together,

Orff/Kodaly programs (including some Kindermusik classes) are age-specific, so older children can work at more advanced skills — such as more difficult rhythmic and melodic patterns, and playing in small ensembles. Perhaps the most distinctive element of Orff ’s approach, according to Goodkind, who wrote Play, Sing and Dance: An Introduction to Orff Schulwerk (Schott; June 2004), was the composer’s creation of “a child-size orchestra.” Inspired by an African xylophone, Orff invented a range of xyloand metallophones (with aluminum bars instead of wood) and glockenspiels (with steel bars) pitched from bass to soprano in range. The 13-note instruments have removable bars, so students can play and improvise together using simpler five-note pentatonic scales. (Western classical music’s seven-pitched diatonic scales are harder to harmonize.) In another of Guerrero’s classes, first graders sit before these instruments. They sing the traditional children’s verse “Hot Cross Buns,” plunking out a bordun — a steadyrhythmed, two-note accompaniment — on the instruments. Next, some players continue the bordun (or “drone’’) while others play the melody. “Kids ultimately learn to improvise and compose their own melodies,” says Goodkind. “If you’re only taught to play an instrument, you’re missing a whole component. Composition is the highest level of cognition of music. Orff said, ‘Let the children be their own composer.’” Goodkind says his classes at The San Francisco School aren’t designed to produce virtuosos or boost academic performance — although that may happen. They’re about fostering social connections and nurturing creativity and emotional experience, “Music is ultimately the language of the heart. [People listen] for how it speaks to the heart, the nuances of emotion. I just got photos back from our spring concert, and what I see is the look of absolute joy, joyful abandon.” Pasadena Conservatory’s Guerrero echoes his sentiment. “I want children to come away with a sense of comfort with music,” she says, “so if they go on to take piano or violin lessons, they don’t feel overwhelmed. Or they take comfort in music-making in their daily lives, whether it’s singing ‘Happy Birthday’ or dancing at a wedding.” That’s evident when I watch her students squeal with delight as they ride on their parents’ legs, bouncing to the beat of a song about a pony. After class, I hear my 2-year-old making up his own lyrics for one of the songs. Later, he burbles a cadenza of sound patterns: ducka-lucka ducka-lucka duck. To some it might sound like mere babble. But it’s music to my ears. AM ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 33

PHOTOS: Courtesy of Pasadena Conservatory

—CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

PHOTO: The American Orff-Schulwerk Association

FALL ARTS

34 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

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FALL ARTS

HAMLET MAY BE AN ENIGMA — IS HE TRULY MAD OR CANNILY, VENGEFULLY SANE? — YET SHAKESPEARE PROVIDES AMPLE ROOM FOR CONJECTURE IN THE ELOQUENCE OF HIS BROODING PRINCE OF DENMARK. THE SAME CAN’T BE SAID OF QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET’S MOTHER, WHO LIVES AND DIES IN A SENSE UNKNOWABLE, HER MOTIVES BASE OR CLUELESS, SELFISH, WEAK OR MONSTROUS. TAKE YOUR PICK.

If Gertrude were given the chance that Shakespeare denies her, how would she explain herself? Playwright Deborah Stein offers her that chance, as well as a radical update, in God Save Gertrude, a world premiere Theatre @ Boston Court production, opening Oct. 10 at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena. In Stein’s audacious vision, Gertrude’s self-examination is filtered through the anarchic, uncompromising lens of underground punk rock. “What you see are the events of Hamlet refracted through Gertrude’s point of view,” says Stein, who workshopped the play last year for the Workhaus Collective theater company in her home base of Minneapolis. When Hamlet labels his mother lustful, impious and a co-conspirator in the murder of his father, the King of Denmark, “maybe it isn’t a bum rap,” Stein says. “She could very well have been guilty. But she never gets a chance to defend herself.” The new play, set in some vague Eastern European country where nationalism is on the rise, is rooted not only in Shakespeare’s towering tragedy, but loosely based on Václav Havel’s metamorphosis from playwright-activist to president of Czechoslovakia and, later, of the new Czech Republic. Gossip has it that Gertrude may have hurried the demise of her husband, a charismatic dissident leader and former punk rock god, to marry his Donald Rumsfeld–like successor. At best, the First Lady, a onetime punk rocker herself in the Patti Smith vein, has sacrificed her ideals and independence, losing herself to conservatism and mainstream Celine Dion-esque celebrity. Her musician son, Mama’s Boy, loathes her. As the play begins, Gertrude has taken refuge from rebel forces in the deserted theater where she once triumphed in concert. She escapes into fantasy with a bravura confessional performance, attempting to reclaim the gritty authenticity of her youth. “She’s back in this space and suddenly remembers what it was like, and she creates an imaginary audience so that she’ll have a witness to whom she really was,” says Michael Michetti, Boston Court’s co-artistic director, who is helming the production. “It is very much about her getting back in touch with the things that were important to her creatively and politically.” Michetti staged his own politically oriented production of Hamlet last year at Glendale’s A Noise Within. Aware of Stein’s growing body of produced work, he was intrigued by her approach to the classic when God Save Gertrude was submitted to Boston Court by Stein’s literary agent. The show’s songs, composed by Stein with lyrics by Stein and actor-musician David Hanbury, serve as a touchstone of Gertrude’s past, Michetti says. Punk rock, he adds, lends itself surprisingly well to a theatrical narrative. “I am very excited about the way it is used in the play and the kind of energy and theatricality that it has.” If the history of rock ’n’ roll from the 1970s through the ’90s serves Stein’s play “as a metaphor, in a way, for more extreme political sea changes,” poet and “Godmother of Punk” Patti Smith is the play’s — and Gertrude’s — patron saint. When Stein wrote her first version of God Save Gertrude (a nod to the Sex Pistols album God Save the Queen) in 2003 with Hanbury as her musical collaborator, she drew —CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 35

34 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

S T R MESSE ANGE NGER

PHOTO: Cheryl Rizzo

Jill Van Velzer

FALL ARTS

what: where: etc.: God Save Gertrude

The Theatre @ Boston Court

(From left) Steve Coombs, James Horan, Jill Van Velzer and Troian Bellisario

The Boston Court Performing Arts Center is located at 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. The play runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Previews are Oct. 1 through Oct. 9. The play opens Oct. 10 and ends Nov. 8. Preview tickets cost $17; regular tickets cost $32 for general admission, $27 for students and seniors. Call (626) 683-6883 or visit bostoncourt.org.

—CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35

on her emotional response as a teenager to the feminist “riot grrl” punk movement of the 1990s. “Deborah wanted to explore who this woman is as a musician and an artist and what she has lost,” says Hanbury, who played Mama’s Boy in the Workhaus production. “We associate punk rock, and music like Patti Smith’s especially, with authenticity and grit.” “I was enthralled by her as someone who didn’t compromise and was tough as nails, incredibly fierce and also smart and poetic,” Stein says of Smith. “As I moved into adulthood and still liked rock and roll but didn’t need the rebellious intoxication of it the way I did when I was younger, she stuck in my mind as an inspiration for this play.” To further fuel the character arc of a woman who journeys from garage-band obscurity to pop icon status and political notoriety, Hanbury says he called upon other influences as well: Courtney Love and Hole, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Blondie, the hardcore punk of the Dead Kennedys and alt-rock groups the Pixies and the Breeders, among others. “We wanted to capture different eras in her life and reflect them in the songs, and I did want to exploit to some extent the audience’s historical experiences with pop and punk and rock. So again, there’s a song that’s more or less mainstream — like Blondie or the Cars — almost like New Wave pop punk. And then it progresses to a kind of keyboard synthesizer Whitney Houston ballad. So the influences are all over the place, and it was really fun to be able to work with that.” Mama’s Boy is given his own musical progression as he broods about his mother’s betrayal and churns out overproduced pop punk, attempting to become what his father was: “a real musician, a genius who inspired thousands of people to rise up against an oppressive government,” Stein says. 36 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

Hanbury, an actor and virtuoso rock guitarist, is collaborating on song arrangements with Boston Court musical director Robert Oriol, a busy theater composer and sound designer who himself played with punk bands. Intrigued by Oriol’s approach and the Boston Court’s sophisticated sound system, Hanbury, now based in Minneapolis, is looking forward to what he sees as a “surround-sound theater experience. I’m coming in on opening night and I want to be surprised.” A local all-girl punk band performed onstage in the Workhaus production of Stein’s play. Here, Gertrude and Mama’s Boy (Jill Van Velzer and Steve Coombs) will perform the music live backed by recorded tracks. It won’t be a stretch for either actor. Van Velzer is a widely praised, Ovation Award–winning veteran of the regional and local musical stage. Wellregarded L.A. actor Steve Coombs, last seen at Boston Court in the title role of Oscar Wilde’s A Portrait of Dorian Gray, is also a guitarist. In Stein’s four-character riff on Hamlet, there is an Ophelia of sorts, too, a groupie called Daddy’s Girl (Troian Bellisario). She meets a rather different fate than Shakespeare devised for her. “It’s not about Ophelia’s triumph,” Stein says, “but she probably ends up the best of anybody in the play.” Rounding out the cast is James Horan, veteran stage, screen and voiceover actor, as Gertrude’s hawkish husband, The Man. Stein’s plays have been seen at such large regional theaters across the country as Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Seattle Repertory. Her recent work includes Welcome to Yuba City, a group collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia, and Natasha and the Coat, an exploration of the cultural clash between hipster artists and members of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community, developed this summer at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San Francisco. AM

PHOTO: Cast by Cheryl Rizzo

Below: Deborah Stein

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TRAVEL

LAS VEGAS AFTER DANNY GANS WITH THE RECENT LOSS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST HEADLINER, WHO WILL FILL THE VOID? BY GARY DRETZKA

ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 39

TRAVEL

AT THE TIME OF HIS UNEXPECTED DEATH ON MAY 1, SINGING IMPRESSIONIST DANNY GANS WAS THE BIGGEST SOLO STAR ON THE LAS VEGAS STRIP. NO ONE ELSE EVEN

Ever since Jimmy Durante, Rose Marie, Xavier Cugat, George Jessel and George

Next door at the Luxor, the latest Cirque production, Criss Angel Believe,

Raft helped open the Flamingo for Bugsy Siegel in 1946, casino operators have

remains something of a work-in-progress. Rarely, if ever, has one of the Montreal-

counted on headliners to lure customers not only to the main showroom, but also to

based company’s shows met with such scathing reviews and audience negativity.

their restaurants, shops, slots and gaming tables. Moreover, ever since the epochal

Fans of the pop-idol illusionist said they were confused by the show’s fantasy ele-

launch of Wynn’s Mirage 20 years ago, theaters costing tens of millions of dollars

ments, while Cirque loyalists were underwhelmed by Angel’s magic.

have superseded glitzy showrooms, and marquee attractions were no longer treated

CAME CLOSE WHEN IT CAME TO TICKET SALES FOR SOLO

Still, the marketing clout that stems from having two formidable entertainment

as loss leaders. They were expected to be profit centers.

brands — three, if you count hotel parent company MGM Mirage — collaborate on a

Wayne Newton was once able to fill a showroom on a nightly basis, but times

ACTS. OBITUARY WRITERS RIGHTLY CREDITED THE FORMER PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER WITH BEING A SINGULARLY LAS VEGAS–STYLE PHENOMENON, BUT THEY

$100 million show is formidable. It has kept the production on a more even keel at the

have changed for veteran performers. Now it’s the younger ones who attract big audi-

box office than might have been expected a few months ago. And the marriage of

ences. Celine Dion proved that the mountain would come to Mohammed when she

Cirque’s artistic sensibilities to the Beatles’ timeless songs in Love at a sister property

committed to performing exclusively at Caesars Palace for nearly five years. The show,

— the same Mirage venue where Siegfried & Roy’s trained animals once magically

a collaboration with former Cirque mastermind Franco Dragone, was a huge draw,

disappeared — could have a very long life.

inspiring Elton John, Bette Midler and Cher to sign similar long-term deals there.

A seventh Cirque production, this one honoring the memory and music of Elvis

Also hoping to follow in Dion’s footsteps is Carlos Santana, who agreed in May

STRAINED TO EXPLAIN THE PRECISE QUALITY GANS POSSESSED THAT OTHERS LACKED.

Presley, is scheduled to open in December at Aria, at CityCenter, another MGM Mirage

to a two-year “residency” deal at the Hard Rock Hotel’s refurbished Joint nightclub,

property. Meanwhile, one of the city’s most formidable entertainments, the Tropicana’s

where he’ll play 36 shows a year. Donny and Marie Osmond have extended their stay

Folies Bergere, has packed up its feathers and sequined bras after 49 years, leaving

at the Flamingo through October, 2010. And until 3 p.m. on June 25, some observers

Donn Arden’s Jubilee! at Bally’s Las Vegas the only true topless extravaganza in town.

1. Criss Angel Believe at the Luxor 2. The Lion King at Mandalay Bay 3. Love at the Mirage Background: Beyoncé helped fill the void at the Encore after Gans’ death.

Connecting the World One Phone at a Time

were predicting that Michael Jackson would end up headlining at the Las Vegas

tions. The sudden loss of a performer who could command $100 a head and routine-

Hilton, in the same room Elvis Presley once ruled. The owners of the off-Strip proper-

ly fill the Wynn Encore’s 1,500-seat house immediately recalled the economic damage

ty were owed a substantial sum of money by the King of Pop, so it made sense.

caused when a 7-year-old white Bengal tiger named Montecore sank his teeth into

As for Broadway-spawned musicals, they’ve met with mixed success in Las

Roy Horn, closing the book on Siegfried & Roy’s long Vegas run. That shocking inci-

Vegas. Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys, The Phantom of the Opera, Menopause, the

dent occurred at the Mirage in 2003, only a short stroll from the stage where Gans

Musical and Defending the Caveman have logged long runs, but Hairspray, The

was performing. At the time, the only ticket price that rivaled Siegfried & Roy’s $111 a

Producers, Avenue Q, Spamalot and the Queen jukebox-musical, We Will Rock You,

head was the $135 tab for Cirque du Soleil’s O, and that production had an infinitely

were costly disappointments.

higher nut to meet each night. Today, there are six Cirque productions on the Strip, with one more on the run-

Disney’s The Lion King is showing promise after opening in May to rave reviews and packed houses. The show has already proven to be as popular with local resi-

way. In the nearly six years since Montecore’s near-fatal improvisation, no illusionist or

dents as it is with visitors, while attracting a far more racially diverse audience than

animal act has come close to duplicating the German duo’s success. There are a half-

those at other big-budget Strip shows. Only about 15 minutes shorter than the origi-

dozen impressionists working Las Vegas showrooms, but none is threatening the

nal, The Lion King moved into the Mandalay Bay Theatre, Mamma Mia’s former

legacy of Gans, who broke box-office records at the Stratosphere, Rio, Mirage and,

home. The production is backed by a 20-member pit orchestra — with hand percus-

for a mere two months, the Encore.

sionists on either side of the theater — and the 50-plus cast is comprised of singers

Gans produced $18 million in annual box-office revenues for his employers, according to The New York Times. Two years ago, while still at the Mirage, the 11-time Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year took out a newspaper ad to announce

and dancers from the Broadway cast and touring companies. Nine company members are from South Africa, and ticket prices range from $53 to $113. As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, image-conscious Disney wouldn’t have con-

he’d grossed $200 million by 1996. That was the year he gave up a lucrative

sidered getting into bed with a Sin City property. But hotel officials say Mamma Mia’s

career as a road warrior and guest performer at conventions, trade shows and

success was utterly persuasive. The hotel has stepped up marketing efforts as well.

corporate gatherings.

“Because the show celebrates African culture and the cast is made up of African and

So who will figuratively fill Gans’ trademark dark suit, red socks and black-andwhite spectator shoes? 40 ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ ARROYO

American blacks, our marketing efforts have been more inclusive and organic,” said Scott Voeller, Mandalay Bay’s vice president for marketing.

CALL THE PHONE GUY

• Phone Systems On a much less lavish scale, Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino’s “striptease spec-

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tacular,” Peepshow, has replaced Mel B and Kelly Monaco with Playboy “girl-nextdoor” Holly Madison. In a city where the sight of bare breasts is only slightly less

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unusual than, say, Running Rebel T-shirts celebrating the home team, a $12 million

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burlesque show may be the ultimate gamble. Meanwhile, in the race to sate tourists’ tastes for impressions of George Burns and the Rat Pack, America’s Got Talent winner Terry Fator and his “cast of thousands” have successfully taken over the stage commanded by Gans before his move to the Encore. And impressionist Gordie Brown, who skewed younger than Gans in the entertainers he chose to impersonate, has moved into the Golden Nugget downtown. This month, Jerry Springer begins a 10-week run hosting America’s Got Talent at Planet Hollywood. And at Steve Wynn’s palace, the guessing game continues as to who might succeed Gans on a regular basis in the Encore Theater. Several A-list entertainers, including Beyoncé, had already been booked to fill the theater on the

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They, at least, would help Wynn attract customers under 60, which seemed a PHOTO: Beyoncé courtesy Wynn

Gans’ death at 52 was ruled accidental, caused by an overdose of pain medica-

PHOTOS: Vegas skyline courtesy of Las Vegas News Bureau/LCVA; “The Lion King” by Joan Marcus, © Disney; “Love” by Richard Termine

distant dream after he invited 75-year-old talk-show host Larry King to headline in June, alongside his much younger wife. The publicity generated made it sound as if one of the Strip’s most glamorous destinations had suddenly become a retirement

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home. That might have been fine 20 years ago — before Wynn opened the Mirage

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and forever changed the Las Vegas entertainment scene. Today, however, it’s just plain bizarre. AM ARROYO ~ OCTOBER 2009 ~ 41