Unexpected Light on a Starry Night

Grant Gershon has a reputation for turning on a dime. Assistant conductors need quick responses and versatility, of course, since they must be ready to step up to the podium at a moment’s notice. And ideally, the filling-in should be high profile and spectacular--that’s long been one of the best ways young conductors can make a name for themselves. It worked for Leonard Bernstein; it worked for Kent Nagano; and it worked for Esa-Pekka Salonen.

But while Gershon, in his three years as the Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor, has had the occasional opportunity at the limelight, much of his remarkable flexibility has been behind the scenes or as an accompanist. Singers love him; he is a favorite pianist for Kiri Te Kanawa.

Such flexibility certainly did not hurt at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night. It was the Philharmonic’s send-off concert for Gershon, whose contract expires this season (although a new assistant conductor has not yet been selected). Even so, the limelight was not really his, since he backed two high-profile soloists, each with very different sorts of demands. And surely the large crowd had come for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and jazz pianist Marcus Roberts.

Still the all-American night belonged to Gershon. He is an eager, if not exactly a natural, conductor. His stick technique--at least from a distance--doesn’t inspire absolute confidence. But he has ideas and an ear, and he can make familiar music sound fresh.

One specialty of Gershon is John Adams. His recording of the rock music theater piece “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky” is soon to be released. And those of us who witnessed Gershon conducting a preview performance of it two years ago in New York will not soon forget it. He filled in for an indisposed cast member, singing the part with irresistible flair from the pit while conducting.

“The Chairman Dances,” Adams’ popular takeoff from his opera “Nixon in China,” was again an occasion for Gershon on Thursday to point out all sorts of interesting and usually overlooked aspects of the music. Instead of softening the edges and making it seem like an easygoing fox trot, he highlighted hundreds of glittering details in the orchestra, making the dance sound like hazy nostalgia heard through the glitter of the present. It was beautiful and quite spectacular.

Gershon’s other two orchestral selections did not provide as much opportunity for interpretation--the challenge in Ives’ “Country Band March” is to keep a riot of different musics together but still sounding boisterous, which he did. Copland’s “Quiet City” was much more forthright than usual, aided by emotionally direct solo trumpet playing by Donald Green and affecting English horn solos from Carolyn Hove.

Von Stade, on the other hand, was inexplicable. She sang single selections from Leonard Bernstein’s “Arias and Barcarolles,” Copland’s Emily Dickinson songs and his “Old American Songs” and three folk songs with moody new orchestrations for the occasion by Jake Heggie. Almost nothing took. The mood changes were too abrupt (the Bowl is like a big acoustic supertanker, and no matter how flexible the conductor, you can’t turn all that fast), and Von Stade herself is not quite as agile as she once was. The microphone was not flattering.

Roberts, along with Thaddeus Expose on bass and Leon Anderson on drums (Anderson replaced a promised appearance by Jason Marsalis, the youngest of the siblings, who traded this gig for another in New York) were on hand for “Rhapsody in Blue.” No one plays it like Roberts. His recording for Sony returns Gershwin’s crossover score to its genuine big-band jazz roots.

Roberts’ playing is the real thing, full of fabulous improvisation, not the namby-pamby classical attempts of some jazz pianists. But he also had, for that recording, the resources of a jazz orchestra.

The Bowl performance was a compromise, and one that made the Philharmonic superfluous. The orchestra played a sort of skeleton of the Gershwin score that only served to interrupt Roberts’ remarkable flights of fancy, which could lead from Gershwin to Joplin or the blues in a virtuosic flash. Game as the Philharmonic sounded, however, it tended always to bring Roberts back to earth, which is too bad, because he is a great musician who has new things to show us. It was fun, however, to watch the orchestra watch him. The awe was practically palpable.