Led by esteemed conductor Thomas Wilkins and including some of the best studio musicians in Los Angeles, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is the Hollywood Bowl’s own world-class ensemble. By day, many of the orchestra’s members work scoring films in Hollywood; by night, they perform everything from Shostakovich to Flying Lotus for up to 17,500 people.
A World of Music
From Mozart to Motown, the repertoire of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra is as diverse as Hollywood itself. In a single season, the orchestra may perform everything from Broadway favorites to film music, pop music to jazz, and classical music to world premieres by living composers. In essence, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra does it all.
The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra has performed with a range of artists including:
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The History That Shaped Our Sound
In its original run from the 1920s to the 1950s, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra worked primarily as a traditional ensemble, performing classical music under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, Felix Slatkin, Alfred Newman, and more, and releasing live albums on Capitol Records. Since returning to the stage under the baton of John Mauceri in 1991, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra has demonstrated remarkable fluidity, working with conductors from around the world and performing a truly staggering range of music at consistently high quality.
In 2008 Thomas Wilkins began as Principal Guest Conductor, and starting in 2014, he became Principal Conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, a title he holds to this day. Under his leadership, the orchestra has showcased its wide range of abilities, performing not only with stars of all kinds, but also live-scoring films and performing classical masterworks.
Film Music
One of the specialties of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra has been the live performance of film music, much of which previously had been heard only in recorded form on the original soundtracks. Since the early 1990s, the LA Phil / Hollywood Bowl has been exceptionally committed to restoring and performing lost or neglected film scores, many of which have then been performed in concert by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra – Max Steiner’s theme to Gone With the Wind, the “Dream Ballet” sequence from Oklahoma!, the “Born in a Trunk” sequence from A Star is Born (1954), in addition to dozens of others.
In addition, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra recorded its first motion picture soundtrack, for MGM’s That’s Entertainment III, in 1993.
Since 1997, the Bowl’s annual “Movie Night” concerts, in which the Orchestra plays the scores live in synch with film scenes or montages projected on the Bowl’s gigantic screen, have featured some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Major motion picture studios, including Walt Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, MGM/United Artists, and Gracie Films / The Simpsons have worked with the LA Phil / Hollywood Bowl to produce one-of-a-kind, premiere concerts, with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra performing the scores. In addition, the LA Phil / Hollywood Bowl has partnered with other non-profit organizations, such as the American Film Institute and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to produce concerts celebrating the art of music in film.
Read the Orchestra's bio and see them perform in an upcoming concert