westsidestory

posted to YouTube via Aimee Curameng

Gustavo Dudamel's Hollywood Bowl 'West Side Story' is a story for right now

Mark Swed, Music Critic

Of “West Side Story’s” many Broadway musical innovations, the least noticed may be the role of the conductor. In the first of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s two performances of Leonard Bernstein’s complete score at the Hollywood Bowl Thursday night, Gustavo Dudamel was noticed.

He led an enthrallingly energized performance that nevertheless recognized the profoundly dark and spiritual underside of a 1957 show in which there is a lot going on. Thematically, this update of “Romeo and Juliet” to a then-gang-ridden Upper West Side of Manhattan has never not been timely. The composer penciled over the top of his copy of Shakespeare’s play: “An out and out plea for racial tolerance.”



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Her first job out of college: the lead in 'West Side Story' at the Hollywood Bowl

By Catherine Womack

Solea Pfeiffer’s last stage role was in a student production of “Guys and Dolls” at the University of Michigan. Her next is at the Hollywood Bowl.

Pfeiffer, 21, has been plucked from relative obscurity to sing the role of Maria in Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” on July 14. She won the job after the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s artistic team showed YouTube clips of Pfeiffer — her intense stage presence and a powerful, thoughtfully controlled voice on full display — to Music Director Gustavo Dudamel.

Performing at the Hollywood Bowl is a break that Pfeiffer is embracing with the sort of unbridled enthusiasm that will come in handy as she twirls around the stage singing “I Feel Pretty.”

Speaking by phone from New York recently, Pfeiffer’s sentences were punctuated by exclamation points as she processed her whirlwind summer.
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