The Pacific Symphony’s concert Sunday night at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre was probably a historic occasion. I’m thinking that it was the first time since the Big Bang that Ravel’s “Boléro” and Daniel Flores’ “Tequila” were performed on the same program. Someone in academia will have to confirm it.

Carl St.Clair (and some others) conducted this agenda dubbed “Bolero and Hot Latin Lights,” which essentially turned out to be a Spanish-flavored classical concert and a Latin-spiced pops concert slapped together. I’m not sure that sparks flew, exactly, but no one was hurt.

The chief delight in the first half of the concert was hearing Milena Kitic sing three arias from “Carmen.” Our resident mezzo-soprano (she lives in Newport Beach) was in exceptionally fine voice and she gave fluent and disciplined readings of the Habanera, the Seguidilla and the “Gypsy Song.”

She also looked smashing in a red sequined dress and charmed with her spoken explanations of the songs. She doesn’t really ham up her Carmen, though; there is a contained strength to her, even in her shimmying movements, that is all the more potent for being so.

St.Clair prefaced her performance with a quick dash through the allegro section of the Prelude. He opened with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol” – the last concert here ended with the same composer’s “Scheherazade”; we’ve had our fill, thanks – and Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” from “El Amor Brujo.” Both readings showed plenty of evidence of insufficient rehearsal. The amplification was blaring and poorly balanced.

The second half began with an exciting run-through of the Farandole from Bizet’s “L’Arlesienne” (nothing Spanish or Latin about it). There were a few extra performers to be noticed, especially a battery of (initially silent) Latin percussion up front and, sprinkled throughout the orchestra, gentlemen in light pink dinner jackets.

They turned out to be members of JT & Friends, a “show” band more than 40 strong that comes together to perform in fundraisers for the arts and medicine. Apparently mostly professional, the group is ostensibly headed by drummer John Tu, an amateur. Now its musical arranger and conductor Larry Ball took over the podium.

He led his own arrangements of Leonard Bernstein’s “America” (brassy, percussive) and Mann and Weill’s “On Broadway,” guest singer Beau Williams romping stylishly.

Latin singer Bobby Rivas (healthy pipes, nice sense of fun) arrived for a set of Latin dances, a samba, tango, cha cha, salsa and mambo, which were also executed (except the salsa) hyper-energetically by a quartet of brightly garbed dancers. The Pacific Symphony, especially the strings, was largely wasted in the din, but didn’t get in the way and probably added something to the wall of sound that emerged from the speakers.

From all descriptions, John Tu is a nice fellow, but I didn’t get the memo that explained why it was a good idea to let him conduct “Boléro.” He clearly had no idea what he was doing and the orchestra made it through the piece pretty much on its own. The tempo set was too slow (the performance lasted a tad more than 17 minutes) and the latter stages of the work, when large collections of instruments played the melodies, got a little heavy.

The aforementioned “Tequila,” the audience recruited for the lyric, all the performers, including Kitic and St.Clair, returning to stage to dance, brought down the curtain.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/latin-676865-concert-bolero.html