The Pops Format, Reshaped In Hollywood

On the departure of John Mauceri, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s musical director, Mark Swed examines his legacy. “Mauceri reinvented not only the pops format but to some extent himself. He made it his business to explore and elevate the music of Hollywood, both as history and as a living tradition. But he left plenty of room for the orchestra to survey Broadway. Pops performers, good ones and ghastly ones, got to share the stage indiscriminately. Mauceri premiered a significant body of new and rediscovered music, mostly American. The range was from drivel to, of all things, Schoenberg’s astounding ‘Fanfare for the Hollywood Bowl’ (who knew?).”