LINDSAY DEUTSCH
LCF Outlook
August 10 , 2004
Lights, Camera, Music!
By Pat Miller
Hollywood Blockbusters was the theme for the California Philharmonic Orchestra’s fourth Festival on the Green performance at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. As has been the case in the previous three concerts, this again was a sold-out event and the weather could not have been better for the crowd.
Maestro Victor Vener seems to have found a winning approach to bringing something for everybody to his programs. There are still pure classical nights, featuring the compositions of history’s greatest composers, be it Beethoven, Brahms or Mozart.
But Dr. Vener also now interjects contemporary programs, such as Saturday’s evening fest that brought us musical themes from everyone’s favorite movies. Saturdays program included music from “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Rocky,” “The Red Violin” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
One of the evening’s truly inspirational segments was the solo violin work of virtuoso Lindsay Deutsch. Deutsch plays with a passion rarely seen on stage during performances of classical music. Deutsch is 19 years old, yet has a stage presence and style far beyond her years and a charisma that enthralled her audience.
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Much of the evening’s program embraced the prolific work of John Williams. Williams began his career as a jazz pianist who was later hired by 20th Century Fox as a studio musician. That led to his meteoric career as a composer producing music for episodes of popular shows such as “Gilligan’s Island,” “Lost in Space,” “Wagon Train” and “Land of the Giants.” He moved into major motion picture scoring and won his first Oscar for the score of “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1971. His work on the scores of “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Superman,” “Indiana Jones,” “Jurassic Park” and most recently, the “Harry Potter” films have guaranteed Williams a place in music history. Festival on the Green concerts, presented by Sunset magazine, are held on alternate Saturdays through Sept. 4. |
| Lindsay Deutsch |