What a night! And a front-row seat pour moi, no less.
The Theater at the Ace Hotel is one of those oldish beat up venues with a certain vibe. 1920’s style kitsch that has this endearing Hollywood former glamour. There a quite a few of those theaters (e.g. Wiltern, Saban) in Los Angeles and I like them all.
Front row seat! I could read the musicians’ scores and read I did. Luckily I’ve seen the movie so I could easily ignore the screen.
Here’s what happened:
Couple of words from the director and composer.
Jonny!
On we go. Movie in the background, orchestra and director in front.
Ovations and things.
Overall – awesome. The venue is probably not the best for an orchestra (see where the conductor is) and it had to compete with the audio from the movie. So they had to mike some of the instruments which (at least from where I was standing) didn’t feel as immediate. But what felt just right was the bass and cello sitting right in front of me. Oh, the low end!
Also pretty cool that this was a repeat, because the original show sold out, I guess. So it started at midnight. Ended 2:30-ish am. Which is a lovely way to avoid that Friday traffic on highway 10.