Concert Hall

Ernest Fleischmann, 85, the imperious impresario who ran the Los Angeles Philharmonic for nearly three decades, helping to elevate its stature to that of an orchestra of the first rank, died Sunday in Los Angeles. Mr. Fleischmann became executive director of the Philharmonic in 1969, moving to Los Angeles from London, where he had been general manager of the London Symphony. His title changed in 1988 to executive vice president and managing director. He left in 1998. When he arrived, the conductor Zubin Mehta was presiding over an underpaid and undervalued collection of promising musicians playing in an undistinguished concert hall.

The downstairs crowd at Bridget Foy's eats and drinks with its nose pressed up against South Street, taking in a circus of underdressed teen girls and the thump thump thump of passing cars. Two floors up, South Street's din gives way to an accordionist and clarinetist. In the Monkey Bar, a snug room with a view north clear to Head House Square, Bridget Foy's has flipped - to classical. The two emerging Astral Artists here on this Wednesday night are more commonly denizens of formal concert halls in Philadelphia and New York than joints serving mango habanero cocktail sauce.

The downstairs crowd at Bridget Foy's eats and drinks with its nose pressed up against South Street, taking in a circus of underdressed teen girls and the thump thump thump of passing cars. Two floors up, South Street's din gives way to an accordionist and clarinetist. In the Monkey Bar, a snug room with a view north clear to Head House Square, Bridget Foy's has flipped - to classical. The two emerging Astral Artists here on this Wednesday night are more commonly denizens of formal concert halls in Philadelphia and New York than joints serving mango habanero cocktail sauce.

"Gutsy writing . . . inventive use of color . . . unusual instruments . . . still pretty unique. " Those musical descriptions from Philadelphia composer Jennifer Higdon suggest a critique of Berlioz, Debussy, or some other classical composer with Mount Rushmore status. But no - she was listening to the latest super-digitized incarnation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an early, crucial musical influence and one that explains much about the music she composes for America's great symphony orchestras.

Perched on the economy's shifting shoals, arts groups are bracing for a rough fall season. How does money play out in the concert hall? By playing it safe. Some groups, such as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, have cut the number of concerts. There's a little less risk-taking in programs stocked safely with Brahms (Astral Artists) or Schubert and Beethoven (Philadelphia Chamber Music Society). To be sure, Oct. 17 presents a remarkable new-music convergence: Cellist Matt Haimovitz interacts with various electronic elements in a program of Steven Stucky and Christopher Rouse at the Kimmel Center, while at two nearby churches the Mendelssohn Club reprises David Lang's still-fresh Battle Hymns and composer Michael Hersch unveils a new, evening-length work, Last Autumn . Still, it's convenient that we find ourselves now in Samuel Barber's centenary.

Having nearly lost a significant part of the Philadelphia Orchestra season due to funding shortfalls, the Mann Center for the Performing Arts and its public on Monday evening seemed out to reaffirm their devotion to the ensemble with 5,830 listeners - a head count usually reserved for Yo-Yo Ma or 1812 Overture with fireworks. The attractions were the orchestra, its associate conductor Rossen Milanov, soloists drawn from the Curtis Institute of Music, and near-perfect weather that had a half moon peeking through clouds in the night sky. Automobile traffic was backed up around the entrance roads; Mann Center bicycle racks were well used.

Listening to British composer John Tavener in a conventional, well-lit concert hall rarely seems right. My best encounters with his music have been while lying flat on my back - specifically, at New York's Avery Fisher Hall a few years ago when its seats were replaced with pillows for an all-night performance of his multihour The Veil of the Temple. This 65-year-old British composer is not about writing music so much as conjuring experiences. Such was the point of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's Friday Kimmel Center concert, whose second half was given over entirely to his music, including the world premiere of Tu ne sais pas for orchestra and soprano.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is on the verge of a technological first, possibly a big one. Sunday afternoon's Kimmel Center concert was seen and heard live in six locations, from the University of Pennsylvania to Portugal and Denmark, in an experimental "multicast" via the fiber-optic broadband educational network known as Internet2. Orchestra officials expect to offer open-to-the-public live transmissions during the 2007-08 season - similar to the Metropolitan Opera's live simulcasts (new this season, and wildly popular)

It's been called "unquestionably the finest opera house in the United States. " The oldest concert hall in America. A great venue for orchestral music. And except for the fact that it's not quite a concert hall, an opera house or an orchestra venue, all of those claims might be true. When it opened 150 years ago today, the American Academy of Music was meant to live the life of a multipurpose hall. It has fulfilled its polymorphous mission as actively as any building could, hosting Stravinsky and Edith Piaf, high-toned scientific lectures and high school graduations, political conventions and boisterous debates, mock trials and memorial services.

The Academy Ball, of course, is huge, as voluminous as the ladies' skirts, as grand as the jewels. In this anniversary year - half a century for the ball, a century and a half for the concert hall it generously supports - everything is even more so. The guest list for the ball and the gala concert that precedes it is longer, more than 2,500 revelers including a trio of English imports: Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of...