Review: The newly homeless National Symphony finds shelter at the Hollywood Bowl
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Set us as preferred A wonderful Oval Office perk is what Thomas Jefferson dubbed “The President’s Own.” At the president’s beck and call is the United States Marine Band, created by an act of Congress in 1798.But for an acquisitive current occupant of the White House, the oldest continuously active musical organization hasn’t seemed enough.In his appropriating the John F.
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, also created and officially named by Congress, the president obtained the National Symphony Orchestra.Unlike its “President’s Own” sibling, which is supported by the Defense Department annual allotment of some $400 million for military bands, the NSO is administered, funded (between a third and half of its $35-million budget) and lately threatened by what are now the whims of the Kennedy Center.
The NSO appeared at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, however, with a collective sigh of relief.A week earlier the Kennedy Center Board, without congressional input or legal approval, approved an imminent, two-year closure of the venue for repairs and remodeling, with little word about the homeless or economic future of its artist affiliate.
By early August, no new NSO season, which would begin in September, had been announced.But Tuesday morning, the NSO, in fact, did lay out a full and musically substantial season, the 10th for its music director, Gianandrea Noseda.Not taking a chance on the courts preventing a Kennedy Center closure, the NSO will become next season a peripatetic ensemble performing in various venues in and around D.C., as well undertake a national tour in the spring.
Uncertainty remains, but for now all is as well as can be expected.The NSO, however, offered little of what to expect.I can only find one program next season as unimaginative as Tuesday’s at the Bowl.
The orchestra look...