04/16/04

LC040416

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The music makers, the dreamers and the artist with a green
thumb. Join us for a special look at southern California's
newest destination as Life and Times goes inside the Walt Disney
Concert Hall.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Walt Disney Concert Hall is now considered America's new
urban masterpiece, but not all the critics agreed at the
beginning. Some of them thought it was too avant-garde, too
weird to fit into the local landscape, but those critics are
mostly silent now. I spoke with Nicolai Orosaf who writes on
architecture for the Los Angeles Times to get his expert opinion
on this amazing structure.

Nicolai Orosaf>> Well, I think it's a very important building
both in the arc of Mr. Gehry's career and also in terms of the
city's cultural maturity. Because it's designed by a man who
spent most of his life without developing his architectural
language in Los Angeles, I think it speaks in a lot of ways to
the peculiar identity of the city in a way that other buildings
here maybe don't.

Val>> How is it peculiar of Los Angeles? How does it express
Los Angeles? Besides being wild, innovative, a little crazy?

Nicolai Orosaf>> I think there was a sense always of this city
as kind of ephemerality, of its fragmentation, of its lack of
center. It's kind of expressed in a way the city kind of opens
up and tries to draw the public into itself. So if you look at
the kind of fragmented forms and the kinds of layers and veils
that are draped around the exterior, it's really about trying to
create a sense of space where there is none. I think that the
way that the curves kind of reach out over the sidewalks, the
way that the forms peel apart, is a way of trying to bring the
public into a very specific kind of experience.

Val>> So I assume you like it? I know critics are very good
with words and so forth and they don't necessary say I like it,
but you think it's --

Nicolai Orosaf>> -- yeah, I think it's an incredibly important
work for the city and I think it's an incredibly important work
in the history of American architecture.

Val>> When you look at it, how do you see it through
architectural eyes as you walk around? What are some of your
favorite places? What does it evoke?

Nicolai Orosaf>> Well, I think that there are a lot of details
I find especially beautiful. If you're walking from the south
along Grand Avenue, one of the curved panels that kind of hovers
above the entry starts to pick up the curve of the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion and, to me, it's the most beautiful that
Dorothy Chandler's ever looked.

Val>> Does it thrill you to look at it from an architect's
point of view?

Nicolai Orosaf>> Yeah. I mean, I work two blocks from here. I
see it all the time. I'm always kind of surprised by the way it
changes depending on the light and the weather. I think there
is something also magical about the fact that it's even
standing, given the sixteen years of delays and other problems
it went through to get to this point. You know, I think you
have to be excited for it, you know, for the city.

Patt Morrison>> One of the delights of the concert hall is the
nooks and crannies, the idea of the surprising and the
unexpected, little places that you run into when you turn a
corner and, wow, what is this for? Well, this is an observation
deck and it is for observation. Just like on a ship, you can
sit up here and watch the people passing, watch the light moving
and, if somebody is missing in your office one afternoon, I
wouldn't be surprised if you find them here playing hooky.

Val>> It's easy enough to think of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
as a well-oiled machine that produces fine music, but the
individual parts of that machine are made of flesh and bone.
They are the individual musicians of the orchestra who have each
taken their own path to end up here at Disney Concert Hall.
Tonight Philip Bruce introduces us to one of them, a violinist
who is now living out his lifelong dream.

Philip Bruce>> For the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there's a
sense of having landed in the promised land. They've finally
moved into a new home worthy of a great orchestra and, for Roy
Tanabe, veteran violinist, it's the ultimate destination in a
long musical journey.

Roy Tanabe>> It's so entirely amazing. It's like kick-started
my career all over again. Repertoires that I have known, or
thought I've known all my life, are sounding entirely new. I'm
hearing things that I've never heard before. In a sense, I have
to learn a new way of playing. I think all of my colleagues are
finding pretty much the same thing.

Philip Bruce>> He was the first Japanese musician to play with
the Los Angeles Symphony, one of the first ever to perform with
a major American orchestra. But for Tanabe, the road to Disney
Hall was anything but certain. It began decades ago when he and
his family were among the scores of Japanese-Americans uprooted
during World War II. Instead of winding up in a relocation
camp, the Tanabes were moved to Michigan where Roy's father was
hired to teach Japanese to U.S. Intelligence officers. Even
then he had a talent for music, and Roy remembers when the
family returned to California and a great music center was
taking shape on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.

Roy Tanabe>> I saw the top of this hill, this whole hill
sheared off, and this wonderful basilica, this wonderful edifice
having gone up. I remember saying to my mother, "I wonder if
we'd ever get a chance to get inside that place." So when I was
finally a member of the Philharmonic, it was again with a great
sense of arrival.

Philip Bruce>> Today as he approaches forty years with the
Symphony, Tanabe has the perspective of a man who overcame early
obstacles to reach one of the heights of his profession. He's
among a handful of orchestra members who recall the excitement
of another new hall, the Dorothy Chandler.

Roy Tanabe>> Well, it was one year old at the time and I think
it was very, very early on into Zubin Mata's career, maybe his
second or third season. It was terrifically exciting. I'm a
native Los Angeles person and I watched the building go up.

Philip Bruce>> Tanabe says at times his new musical hall
reminds him of one of Walt Disney's classic animated films,
especially when he strolls along the halls covered in bright
floral carpet.

Roy Tanabe>> And that's the spirit, I think, that's been
created here in the hall, in the lobbies. You walk through here
and you do feel like you're organically inside a flower garden
and it just captivates me.

Philip Bruce>> It is a place that's mostly about the music.
Tanabe likes what he hears, but he'll tell you there's more to
Disney Hall than just the sound.

Roy Tanabe>> I think this has gone beyond most everybody's
expectations. Sound-wise, aesthetically, architecturally, I
think that we're all stunned by the actuality of it.

[Film Clip]

Patt Morrison>> For years, the old joke was that the only
culture in Los Angeles was in the yogurt. They included food,
but Patina, the great flagship restaurant, is moving its
headquarters here to the concert hall, to this new restaurant
which, among other things, features this beautiful old pleated
walnut on the walls. Very tactfully, you're supposed to go up
and stroke it while you're waiting for your food.

It was carved in real time at the directions of a computer and
there are small places in the walnut where you can see the phone
lines skipped a little bit and there's a little bit of a gap, a
little bit of a mistake in there. But, of course, Patina's food
is well-known and it's one of the features of the concert hall
to invite people in off the street. They're going to be serving
lunches and dinners here and breakfast and lunch in the café on
the ground level which is also catered by Patina. We can just
call it sort of bargain-basement Patina. What pleases you most
about this venue, this new place?

Joachim Splichal>> I'm very happy for Los Angeles. I'm very
happy for the people in Los Angeles. I'm excited about it and
hopefully a lot of people will come to Los Angeles to see the
Walt Disney Concert Hall and eat at Patina's naturally.

Patt Morrison>> And the café too?

Joachim Splichal>> And the café and the brasserie around the
corner. We want to serve all the different people coming and
having a good time.

Patt Morrison>> Is there some difference in philosophy between
cooking downtown Patina, cooking Patina where you work, the
whole sense of the concert hall? Does it influence what it is
you're going to be serving?

Joachim Splichal>> No, there's no change of philosophy. We're
all bringing incredible food, incredible service and incredible
environment to downtown and we're very excited about it. There
will be a little changes that we have. Maybe more pre-theatre
diners than we have in our Hollywood location, but we look
forward to serving them as well and I think it will be a lot of
fun.

Patt Morrison>> Have you heard from your clientele from
Hollywood that they're looking forward to coming down here? Are
they wondering what it's all going to be about?

Joachim Splichal>> I got about two hundred e-mails, "Great,
fantastic, look forward to it, it's going to be a lot of fun,
new environment, new place." They wish me good luck and we're
ready to go.

Patt Morrison>> Well, there are people, as you know, on the
west side who go to New York more often than they come to
downtown Los Angeles. It's going to be a voyage of discovery
for them.

Joachim Splichal>> I'm mostly likely the person who will change
them because I'd rather they come downtown than they go to New
York (laughter).

Patt Morrison>> I hope so too. Besides, it will be a little
easier to get there and they won't have to go through airport
security to come here.

Joachim Splichal>> Yeah, and downtown is where it's happening.
There are so many things, the MOCA, the Walt Disney Concert
Hall, the Music Center, the Cathedral, the urban development
going on, all the apartments, and we want to say come on down.
We're ready.

Val>> What does a giant stack of French fries have to do with
making music? Well, in a moment, you'll see. They are a key
ingredient to the acoustical recipe here at Disney Concert Hall
and, as Vicki Curry tells us, it all started with the man who
designed the great pipe organ, an instrument that makes a
stunning statement both visually and musically.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry> Your eye is drawn to the cluster of giant sticks
made of Douglas Fir, but they're not for decoration. They're
the voice of Disney Hall's new pipe organ.

Manuel Rosales>> People always ask me, do the pipes here in the
front play or are they just here for show? These are all real
organ pipes and they each are waiting to play their notes.

Vicki Curry>> Manuel Rosales is an organ builder from the
Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He's the designer of
Disney Hall's massive pipe organ.

Manuel Rosales>> When the announcement came that there would be
a new concert hall in honor of Walt Disney, as exciting as that
was, we were also apprehensive and wondered if it would have an
organ. That couldn't be more exciting. To actually be working
in your home because organ builders traditionally pack up their
bags and tools and travel to where the organ is wanted.

Vicki Curry>> 6,125 pipes ranging in size from a quarter of an
inch to thirty-two feet, and the organ weighs fifty thousand
pounds. Rosales designed it in conjunction with Frank Gehry in
a process that took several years.

Manuel Rosales>> We started with the very arrogant attitude
that we would design the organ and we were immediately
confronted with Frank's idea that, no, he would design the
organ. About a year before the process ended, this idea of what
we call the French Fries came into the picture and we refined
this and fine-tuned it and remodeled and honed it so carefully
that the exact placement of every one of those pipes was known
years ago down to the inch of where they would be and how they
were going to be held up and how it all looked in the final
result.

Vicki Curry>> The organ is still a work in progress. Because
the pipes must be protected from dust and debris, they couldn't
be installed until construction on the hall was finished and the
tuning can only take place when the hall is absolutely quiet.

Manuel Rosales>> The biggest pipe weighs over a thousand
pounds. Wrestling a beast like that just to get the pipe to say
what it needs to say and sing the tone just as it needs to sing
it is an incredible task. One pipe can take a day or two.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> The organ is built on four levels reaching up to
the ceiling. Rosales and his colleague, Lawrence Strohm, will
spend countless hours climbing a narrow ladder to install each
pipe.

Manuel Rosales>> So we have a pipe here that's waiting to play
C-sharp from one of the pedals. Then you come around the corner
and there's more. There are bassoons, there are trumpets, there
are oboes, there are clarinets.

Vicki Curry>> Wow. Six thousand-plus pipes.

Manuel Rosales>> You can see them all neatly wrapped, all in
order. Here's an itty-bitty one. It's actually this part. Why
don't you give it a toot?

Vicki Curry>> So this part is the pipe?

Manuel Rosales>> Very good.

Vicki Curry>> An organ is really made up of all these different
pipes that are different sizes, made of different materials, so
that each pipe will sound different.

Manuel Rosales>> That's right, and different lengths and
different amounts of air in different locations, playable from
different keyboards, pedals, and can all be combined at the
organist's will.

Vicki Curry>> The organist can open and close shades to adjust
the volume and the various pedals and stops control the air flow
to the pipes.

[Film Clip]

Manuel Rosales>> So the attached console on this organ, the one
that you see permanently there, is an ideal medium for
practicing and for performances where the organist isn't a
soloist. There is a second console which is stored backstage
which can be brought in and put anywhere on the stage and hooked
up to the organ digitally, so 6,125 pipes are going to be sounds
that the organist can use very much like a pallet of colors.

Orange and blue and green, horns, trumpets, violins, diapasons,
flutes, and all of that has to be blended because when the
organist sits at the organ, they are reading the sounds that we
have worked on and they are having to utilize them as we, the
organ's voicers, have left them. So we have to be responsible
for creating something that an artist will say a year from now
or twenty years from now, "Isn't this wonderful." We don't want
them to say, "Oh, no." (laughter)

Patt Morrison>> What do you know? Another bar (laughter).
This too is part of the restaurant Patina opening onto Grand
Avenue. It's all part of the principle that this concert hall
should not be some temple of high culture that opens at six at
night and closes at eleven when the stage curtain comes down and
everyone leaves. It's open during daylight hours and evening
hours.

People can come and go through this beautiful place and even
next door at the gift shop. We can't have a concert hall
without a gift shop. It's open with high-end tchotchke
reflecting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and this unimaginably
beautiful building which will be renowned the world over and it
will be something on the city skyline that people will take home
in memory and probably in little souvenirs boxes too.

[Film Clip]

Val>> A hundred years from now when historians recount the
story of Disney Hall, they will have a gallery of photographs to
draw upon. The photos were taken by the former District
Attorney of Los Angeles County, Gil Garcetti. He published two
books of photographs on the architecture and the ironworkers who
built this incredible building. We go now to the story behind
those photos as told by the photographer himself.

[Film Clip]

Gil Garcetti>> When I was taking the photographs of the Walt
Disney Concert Hall, I was really doing it as a salute to the
tradespeople, in this case, the ironworkers because you already
here all the accolades for Frank Gehry, and they're deserved,
but how many do you hear for the ironworkers and the people who
actually did the work, who risked their lives to do it?

This is an incredible job. Very few risked a little more than
they would have. The beauty first of the raw iron, the geometry
of the iron. To me, that was art. Then later you actually see
the abstract art in the finished work project of Frank Gehry's
design, the ironworkers' design. To me, this was an unexpected
huge plus. I expected it to be a beautiful building, but I
didn't expect to see so many thousands of individual pieces of
beautiful abstract art.

When you talk to these men, when you sense the pride that they
have and you also know that very few people in this world would
be willing to do the kind of work that they do, and one reason
is because it's such a dangerous job. It's the third most
dangerous job in the United States. Virtually, to a person,
when they retire, they will retire like ex-professional football
players. They will all have had suffered serious injuries, but
it's a love, it's a passion that they have.

[Film Clip]

They had the feeling that this was something incredibly special.
This is not going to just mark Frank Gehry. It's going to mark
every ironworker for the rest of his or her life. "I worked on
that building. I did this. Look at it. When it cries out for
you to come and look at me, understand that those curves, the
sensuality, the uplifting feeling that you get from it is
because I put that building in place that everyone said would be
impossible to put in place. I did that. I did the welding. I
put it in place so that you can appreciate it."

[Film Clip]

This is going to be our Sydney Opera House for the West Coast,
maybe even for the country because everyone around the world is
talking about this building and coming to see it. But as
important for me as an Angeleno is this building's ability to
lift peoples' spirits. You'll look at it and feel better. You
can't help it. It just happens. Even people who thought they
were going to hate the building smile and they feel good about
it and they haven't even heard a concert inside. They haven't
looked inside, but they just look outside. That's important in
life.

In some respects, it's frozen music. In other respects, it's a
symphony of steel. I mean, when you look at this and you see
the curves, you see the sensuality. You can almost hear the
music when you see this. There are some aspects of the building
that I would encourage people not to just go inside. Walk
around the building. Take different views of it because you
will see it where it's almost like there's a score there. At
times when you see the skin, the individual pieces of stainless
steel, you can almost imagine that music is written on those
pieces of steel.

[Film Clip]

Always an interesting question is asked. How does it change my
own life? Because there is no doubt that it has. I'm now
considered a serious photographer. People are buying my
photography. I guess the main thing, though, in how it's
changed my life is that I certainly see a lot more smiling faces
as a photographer than I did when I was District Attorney. It's
a good feeling.

Patt Morrison>> Now Disney is a name that's often associated
with children's entertainment, but what we've seen of the
concert hall looks more like it's built for grownups. But there
is this place, the Keck Amphitheatre, which can hold up to three
hundred children. It's going to be used for children's events
and entertainment, but it's not going to be like the mall where
you can dump them while you're going into the concert hall.
These are specific for children.

There are going to be daytime and perhaps evening events as
well. There may be some adult events, but this looks like a
really good spot for kids. It also continues the theme of the
garden in the city because, behind the trees around here, you
can see, of course, the city skyline and all those skyscrapers
and everybody peeking down here to look at this.

Val>> Walk up a couple flights of stairs from the busy traffic
on First Street and you'll encounter another hidden gem. It's a
rooftop garden and it's actually a State Park, the smallest
State Park in all of California, no doubt, but it's a beauty. I
spoke with garden designer, Melinda Taylor, about what she had
in mind for this once-in-a-lifetime assignment.

[Film Clip]

Val>> What did you have in mind when you stood here? What were
you looking for?

Melinda Taylor>> Well, envisioning these swaths that you can
see from within the hall that would be tied together and brought
out to the ends by grasses. You can see the way the grasses
come through here.

Val>> Oh, it's beautiful. River-like, really.

Melinda Taylor>> There's a nice breeze up here in the
afternoons.

Val>> Oh, here's one of my favorites. What do you call these?

Melinda Taylor>> Kniphofia. Yeah, these are Red Hot Pokers.
This is a Kniphofia Christmas Cheer. It comes up in October or
so and blooms through Christmas.

[Film Clip]

Val>> So we have colors that would appear in succession. Pink
here --

Melinda Taylor>> -- pink, red. This bright red, orange, yellow
foliage in late fall.

Val>> Melinda, tell us about this spot because you had more
than just one tree in mind. You had this beautiful mirror
essentially.

Melinda Taylor>> Exactly. I had the idea that we would be
looking at these trees in bloom and we would be seeing these
trees and we would be seeing them reflected in all of these
different panels here.

Val>> That is stunning. And it's not just the green we're
going to see, but what's going to happen in spring?

Melinda Taylor>> No, we're going to see this entire area turned
pink. We have these trees -- they're interspersed throughout
the garden and you can see them from a long way away. You can
see the reflection here on this building from a long way away.

Val>> So the building will sort of be, we hope, sort of
sparkling with different colors?

Melinda Taylor>> Oh, it does. It does, yeah. It's really
something.

Val>> Now what's striking, of course, are all these full-size
trees up here. You had to bring them virtually fully-grown,
plant them and sustain them. How are you doing that? It's
phenomenal.

Melinda Taylor>> Well, it has been a lot of work. What
happened is that a large number of these trees were trees that
either were coming out of jobs like developments that were
taking place in the marina, was one of them. These ones came
out of the development in the marina.

Val>> Are you saying that the tree would have been destroyed?

Melinda Taylor>> Yeah, yeah.

Val>> As you transplanted them here, did any of them die?

Melinda Taylor>> Well, none of them died, but there is one that
deserves everyone's special attention and care. This is my
baby. This is the one that had a little hard time making the
adjustment.

Val>> What kind of tree is that?

Melinda Taylor>> This is a Dombeya cacuminum. It's a
Strawberry Snowball tree. This is the same tree right here.

Val>> Oh, my Lord, not a leaf on it. You have hope yet?

Melinda Taylor>> I have hope, I have hope.

Val>> It was just the shock of the move?

Melinda Taylor>> Yeah, yeah.

Val>> But that's the only one? Out of how many trees?

Melinda Taylor>> Forty-five.

Val>> That's a pretty good rate.

Melinda Taylor>> Yeah.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now what do you hope people will feel and think? Because
this is right in the middle of Los Angeles's, you know, urban
core. You've got stockbrokers and bankers and everybody is
stressed out.

Melinda Taylor>> I hope that they will recognize this as a gift
to them. One of the things that we found here that has been
really sweet for me is, when we working on this, when we were
first putting the trees in which was a long time ago, everybody
who was working on this job came out here with their little
fold-up chairs and sat out here under these little trees, you
know, with the dust all around because, oh, my gosh, it's so
nice.

Val>> It is beautiful. In the midst of all this steel, trees
(laughter).

[Film Clip]

Val>> Our thanks to everyone at the Walt Disney Concert Hall
for their help and hospitality. I'm Val Zavala. For all of us
at Life and Times, thanks for watching.

[Film Clip]

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.