San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Drive-in music festival a hit for Mainly Mozart
Pivoting from concert halls to a parking lot paves the way for socially distanced, four-on-the-floor chamber-music and jazz performances
Salvation in a parking lot sounds like the name of a heartland rock anthem by Meat Loaf or Bruce Springsteen, not the unofficial 2020 theme song for Mainly Mozart. But after the coronavirus pandemic forced Mainly Mozart to postpone its annual June festival and all its April and May concerts, a parking lot is exactly where this plucky San Diego arts nonprofit has been reborn.
Make that the Del Mar Fairgrounds’ dirt parking lot, a site as seemingly improbable for chamber-music performances as the nearby Interstate 5 freeway is for pogo stick races. But what seemed improbable before the pandemic struck — drive-in chamber-music concerts — has proved transformative.
Mainly Mozart’s four-on-thefloor “Keeping Live Music Alive” initiative has set a new standard, regionally and nationally. The results have been a musical coup for concertgoers in coupes, SUVS and vehicles in between. Attendance has grown steadily over the past four months.
Between July 11 and Oct. 3, 14 Mainly Mozart drive-in concerts have been held in that unassuming Del Mar dirt parking lot. On Saturday, the 32-year-old organization will cap its unprecedented year of change with four nights of concerts by the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra. There will also be an Oct. 11 performance by jazz sax legend Charles Mcpherson, his trio and two guests from the allstar 34-piece orchestra. All five concerts are sponsored by Joan & Irwin Jacobs.
“We have spent the past 32 years showing people, in everything we do, that sitting in your living room with a headset on is not the same experience as live music,” said Mainly Mozart cofounder Nancy Laturno.
“That’s why we’ve pivoted to drive-in concerts, instead of livestream performances from an empty theater. It’s magical when you can connect musicians and audiences through live concerts.”
Those sentiments are shared by San Diego Symphony concertmaster Jeff Thayer, who performed at the July 11 and Aug. 22 Del Mar concerts.
“Mainly Mozart’s drive-in series is unique and wonderful, and I applaud Nancy for her audaciousness,” said Thayer, who also attended a Mainly Mozart drive-in concert with his family. “It doesn’t matter where the concert hall is now — (the shuttered) Carnegie Hall or a parking lot at the fairgrounds — to have our musical voices heard again is invaluable and I’m so grateful.”
The five upcoming Mainly Mozart drive-in concerts will eschew the dirt parking lot for the sprawling asphalt lot facing the fairgrounds’ main entrance and adjacent Del Mar Racetrack. Concert capacity will be increased from 150 vehicles to 250.
The new stage will be six times larger than the one used in the dirt lot, Laturno said. As at the previous 14 drive-in concerts, all Mainly Mozart performers will be tested for COVID-19, with sameday results. String players will be seated on stage 6 feet apart, while brass and wind players will be 9 to 12 feet apart, with plexiglass screens between them.
Laturno credits Los Angeles arts patron Jerry Kohl for strongly encouraging her to do drive-in concerts this summer. When the original July 11 kickoff concert had to be moved at the last minute from a private Rancho Santa Fe location, Katie Mcbride-muzquiz, Mainly Mozart’s director of operations and patron engagement, secured the fairgrounds parking lot on short notice.
“Drive-in concerts are not the most logical way to go, in terms of earned income,” said Laturno, who anticipates presenting more even after Mainly Mozart can safely return to concert halls.
“But people believed in them and donors stepped forward in a big way. Doing this is only possible because of donations. Our drive-in concerts are like ‘Field of Dreams’: Build it and they will come! This is the right thing to do, and our donors, here and out of town, have not let us tumble. It’s a testament to how much live music touches people.”
george.varga@sduniontribune.com