San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Symphony summer: new venue, Gladys Knight and more.
New outdoor venue, now called Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, will make its pandemic-delayed debut with a lineup that includes Brian Wilson, Gladys Knight, Jason Mraz and much more
In February 2020, barely a month before the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shuttered all live events, the San Diego Symphony announced the summer lineup for the 2020 summer debut season of its new outdoor concert venue at Embarcadero Marina Park South, The Shell. This August, 13 months after its originally scheduled July 2020 opening, the newly renamed Rady Shell at Jacobs Park will belatedly open with a lineup that boasts stars from the worlds of classical music, rock, R&B, jazz, mariachi, Broadway and beyond.
Confirmed acts include at least three Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees: Motown vocal icon Gladys Knight, Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson and Police co-founder Stewart Copeland, who will drum at the Aug. 27 world premiere “Police Deranged for Orchestra” concert.
Series tickets are now on sale at theshell.org.
Other confirmed artists range from vocal wizard Bobby Mcferrin, genre-leaping guitar star Pat Metheny and the Indigo Girls to multiple Grammy Award-winning Oceanside troubadour Jason Mraz and Brazilian pop mainstay Sergio Mendes. In addition, top San Diego trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos will lead a tribute concert saluting the music of jazz giants John Coltrane and Lee Morgan.
The symphony — led by its music director, Rafael Payare — will perform at more than two dozen of the season’s 45 concerts announced thus far, starting with its 2021 season “Opening Night and Annual Gala” on Aug. 6.
“There is so much we can do, and I can’t wait to start,” Payare said. “We are really in a privileged position. That’s not just because of the beautiful weather in San Diego, but also because the audio quality of Rady Shell at Jacobs Park gives us the opportunity to
make music that will sound as if we are in an indoor concert hall.”
Designed and built as a year-round venue, Rady Shell at Jacobs Park will enable the symphony to dramatically expand its calendar of programming after years of performing on temporary outdoor stages each summer. This year, the new bayside venue will host at least part of the orchestra’s fall season while its downtown indoor home, Copley Symphony Hall at Jacobs Music Center, remains shuttered because of the pandemic.
Using the far larger Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is a doubly sound move at a time when it is unclear what the indoor concert landscape will look like this fall — or how comfortable audiences will be to return to an indoor venue while some health protocols and social distancing may still be in effect.
Health a priority
“This is the other leap of faith we are taking — normally, we announce our summer season in February or March, and our fall/winter season in May,” said symphony CEO Martha Gilmer. “A lot of that is changing. We will announce the second part of our season coming up, and you’ll see some commonalities between our (outdoor and indoor) seasons.”
Health considerations for concertgoers, musicians, staff members and volunteers is of paramount importance to Gilmer and the 111-year-old orchestra. It is striving to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by closely following the most current information from local, state and national health officials.
Accordingly, all Rady Shell at Jacobs Park concert attendees will need to provide proof of vaccinations, completed at least two weeks earlier, or of negative COVID-19 tests from within 72 hours before the concert. They will also need to wear masks at the venue, which has a 10,000 capacity but is planning to keep attendance at most of this season’s concerts at under 3,500.
These steps will enable audiences at the venue to attend without physically distanced seating. Ticketbuyers will receive information from the symphony about protocols in advance of performances, based on local, state and national health updates.
“We really deliberated over when the right moment to begin (our 2021 outdoor season) would be,” Gilmer said.
“At one point, I thought it would be early September. But once the vaccine rollout began, we saw the number of people here receiving vaccines. We look at the science on a regular basis, and we surveyed our audience and felt that Aug. 6 would be a reasonable date to open our season.
“For about eight days, we toyed with whether to move the opening up to July. Then it became clear that we were comfortable with the August date. You have to pay attention to what is happening in your city as well as your state.”
If all goes according to plan, people beyond San Diego will pay attention to the new programming the symphony is introducing.
Former Police drummer Stewart Copeland’s Aug. 27 “Police Deranged” concert and Jason Mraz’s Sept. 26 concert are both new orchestral collaborations. Each will make its national debut here.
“We’re the first — and we want to be known for this kind of innovation,” Gilmer said.
At least 11 of Mraz’s bestknown songs are now being arranged for his full orchestral performance here. Copeland’s concert will feature the Police co-founder drumming with the orchestra, an electric guitarist and three or four singers, according to Lea Slusher, the symphony’s vice president of artistic administration and audience development.
“Stewart’s tour doesn’t start until two months later. But because he’s based in Los Angeles we’re able to have the premiere here, which is great,” said Slusher, whose job includes booking the artists who perform at Rady Shell at Jacobs Park.
“Jason’s arrangements are being done by Sean O’loughlin, who will also conduct the concert here,” Slusher continued. “Sean did the arrangements for the Indigo Girls, who are also part of our upcoming season, so we put him together with Jason.”
Slusher estimates that at least a dozen of the concerts originally announced for the symphony’s postponed 2020 summer season have been rescheduled for this year.
“Some artists told us they were going to wait until 2022 before they tour again, and we have dates on hold,” she noted.
“Everybody is working together and doing their best, so we all have to be flexible. We’re all working to get everything back up.”