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Music Center marks 50th anniversary with rededication ceremony

Trumpeters play during The Music Center's 50th Anniversary rededication ceremony in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
(Christina House / For The Times)
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Live performances are ephemeral, no matter how brilliant. The Music Center’s 50th Anniversary Civic Rededication Ceremony on Wednesday showed that philanthropic civic-mindedness can have more palpable staying power.

The proceedings in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the oldest of the Music Center’s four performance halls, focused more on the county-owned arts hub’s past and future as a community asset and symbol than on recalling specific great performances over the past half-century.

The much-praised star of the day, which included brief speeches by all five members of the Board of Supervisors and County Chief Executive William T Fujioka, was the building’s namesake, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, who died in 1997.

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The department store heiress, who married into the family that owned the Los Angeles Times, willed the Music Center into being, first prodding the Board of Supervisors to provide the land, then leading a funding drive that raised the equivalent of $142.2 million in today’s money -- a level of private giving that was unprecedented at the time in Los Angeles.

The campaign’s success landed Chandler on the cover of Time magazine when the Music Center opened in December 1964, and was widely seen as a a turning point that signaled L.A.’s civic coming of age.

Vanessa Williams, currently starring in “A Trip to Bountiful” at the Ahmanson Theatre, and Dale Kristien, who had a four-year run of nearly 1,800 performances in “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Ahmanson from 1989 to 1993, were the only stage stars featured in the 50-minute ceremony.

Kristien sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” Williams sang the praises of Dorothy Chandler.

She was “a dreamer and a doer … the heart and engine behind this special place,” the actress said, reading from a teleprompter while newspaper photos of Chandler leading the fundraising charge back in the early 1960s appeared on a screen behind the podium.

For Williams it was a chance to finally say something positive for a Music Center audience – a few hundred people seated on the plaza just north of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In “Bountiful” she’s an unsympathetic obstacle to heroine Cicely Tyson’s wishes; in her previous Music Center appearance, also at the Ahmanson, Williams played the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

The Music Center’s president, Stephen Rountree, and its board chair, Lisa Specht, talked of its accomplishments and goals but didn’t use the occasion to roll out any new initiatives – such as a 50th anniversary fundraising campaign.

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The other 50th anniversary events are an Oct. 11 open house with free tours of the Music Center’s four buildings, and a Dec. 6 gala concert and dinner that will put the spotlight on performances involving its four resident companies -- the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Center Theatre Group and Los Angeles Master Chorale, as well as L.A. Dance Project.

The Music Center’s website does sport a recently posted “Buck Bag” Web page where donors can make gifts – a homage to a populist fundraising device that Dorothy Chandler came up with to rake in the last $1 million in the 1960s campaign. Paper bags labeled “Buck Bags” were circulated around L.A., inviting people to toss in whatever amount they pleased.

The only new thing unveiled at the rededication ceremony was a mock-up of a large black granite plaque with gold lettering that will be installed on the Music Center’s plaza to commemorate Wednesday’s occasion. It names the day’s presiding dignitaries -- the five Board of Supervisors members, Fujioka, Rountree and Specht.

A brief volley of red flares went off and a youthful marching band played a fanfare as a cover was lifted to reveal the plaque mock-up.

Gov. Jerry Brown sent a congratulatory video in which he recalled coming to the Music Center’s Dec. 6, 1964 opening night with his father, Pat Brown, who was California’s governor at the time. Besides hearing violinist Jascha Heifetz and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Brown said, “I recall that was probably the first time I saw Ronald Reagan.”

The rededication ceremony was intended to echo a Sept. 27, 1964 dedication ceremony on the Music Center plaza. That had been the first time the public was allowed on what had been an unfinished construction site. About 3,500 people turned out, according to the Los Angeles Times’ account, for an event chaired by Bob Hope. That day also was a love-fest for Chandler, for whom the Pavilion, as it was then known, had not yet been named.

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The first Gov. Brown was there for the dedication. He praised Chandler and made a suggestion: “if I had the power, which I have not, I would name it to symbolize the efforts of this woman.”

The message from today’s Los Angeles County officials was to keep a good thing going because of its benefits for education and the economy, as well as culture.

Mark Ridley-Thomas and Mike Antonovich hailed the Music Center’s educational programs for L.A. public school students – one of the main programming objectives for the nonprofit Music Center operating company. It also oversees a dance series and programming in nearby Grand Park, while serving as landlord to the four resident nonprofit companies that put on most of the performances.

Supervisor Gloria Molina and Fujioka emphasized the performing arts center’s role in bringing culture to a broad, diverse audience.

“Its great purpose is to open the avenues of opportunity,” Molina said, quoting Dorothy Chandler. “We need to make sure the next 50 years we are creating opportunities for a more diverse audience.”

Fujioka recalled being awestruck by the Music Center as a kid growing up on L.A.’s working-class East Side. “I’d look at the building up on the hill and say, ‘Wow, what a place,’” he said, urging continuing efforts to ensure that Music Center will be “a venue of everyone in this county. We’ve gone in that direction.”

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Zev Yaroslavsky, who like Molina will leave office next month because they’ve run up against term limits (Fujioka also is retiring), listed some of the new cultural venues that have arisen in L.A. over the past 15 years, including several – Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and the Valley Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge – that were made possible by state or local governments’ willingness to provide land and money.

“As we re-celebrate the Music Center’s opening, let’s do what was done 50 years ago, and commit ourselves … to continuing the momentum,” Yaroslavsky said. “Los Angeles is on a roll when it comes to the cultural arts, and we need to keep that going.”

The county provides $22.7 million a year toward the Music Center’s operations, covering nuts and bolts functions such as management, maintenance and security. The cost of putting on performances is covered by ticket sales and private donations.

Requests have been floated – but not yet funded – for capital improvements that would likely cost tens of millions of dollars.

Los Angeles Opera, the main tenant at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, has long desired a major expansion of the backstage and loading areas. Also envisioned is a major renovation that would reshape the outdoor plaza between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Mark Taper Forum.

Follow @boehmm of the LA Times for arts news and features

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