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HOLLYWOOD - The beloved Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and an enduring icon that has welcomed legendary performers from Stravinsky to the Beatles, is in the midst a $24 million makeover.
The band shell erected in 1929 is gone, as are Frank Gehry's super-mod hanging spheres that provided acoustics for the Los Angeles County-owned venue. A structure reminiscent of the former landmark is being built, but it will be large enough to hold a 100- member orchestra, while providing improved sound.
The nine-month project, the fifth renovation of the 82-year-old venue, is on track to finish in time for the inauguration of the summer season on June 19, when the Playboy Jazz Festival opens. The season's lineup also includes singer k.d. lang performing with the Phil, the ever-popular "Sound of Music" sing-a-long and summer fireworks with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
"It's going to seem bigger and I know it will seem better," said Patricia Mitchell, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
"The Bowl has always been in the process of renewal and improvement. This is another step in that history.
"People are going to feel, when they come to their first concert, they're in the place they left last summer. When they see it, it's going to look like an old friend."
The ambitious project has been years in the making, pushed by passage in 1996 of voter-approved Proposition A that allocated the bulk of the funds for the work.
With construction under way since fall, the project promises to more than double the size of the performance stage so a 100-member orchestra can fit beneath the shell. The larger stage also will better accommodate visiting dance, theater or music productions.
"The violinist will be able to bow with their full arm and not hit the guest drummer in the eye," Mitchell said.
Sound - long a problem for performers who couldn't hear one another on stage - will get a boost from the new "golden halo" - an elliptical canopy that will hold several movable panels that should better reflect noise, officials say.
The halo replaces Gehry's spheres, installed in 1980, which were...