Hollywood Bowl

The second leg of Radiohead's North American tour will include two nights at the Hollywood Bowl in August and an opening-night spot at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, the English band announced Monday. Tickets for the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 24 and 25 and for two other Southern California shows -- Aug. 27 at Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista and Aug. 28 at the Santa Barbara Bowl -- will go on sale Saturday. At the three-day Lollapalooza in Grant Park, where it plays Aug. 1, Radiohead will be joined by a lineup that includes Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, Gnarls Barkley, the Raconteurs, Wilco and Love and Rockets.

Beck in the Bowl: Beck will make his debut as a Hollywood Bowl headliner Sept. 20. Tickets will range from $20 to $75 and go on sale May 10 when the Bowl's box office opens. Spoon and MGMT round out the bill. Information at (323) 850-2000 or www.hollywoodbowl.com. Beck's new album, still untitled, is due later this year, and will be produced by Danger Mouse. -- Still talkin': Talk show host Larry King has extended his contract at CNN through 2011, his agents say. -- Opera prize: Tenor Matthew Polenzani, 39, has been selected to receive the third annual Beverly Sills Artist Award from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

When the elements are aligned, the Hollywood Bowl can transform a pop music concert into something larger than life. Take it from someone who's been hitting the hill for 45 years: On certain nights, it's not just good or bad. It's heaven or hell. Start with heaven, please. How about Elton John in 1973, in the full flower of his flamboyant youth and with cash to lavish on an over-the-top extravaganza? It included five grand pianos filled with doves and with a letter of his name on each, "Deep Throat" star Linda Lovelace as hostess, and a stageful of cultural icons -- Queen Elizabeth, Elvis, Groucho Marx, Mae West (they were impersonators of course, but that was part of the fun)

The Los Angeles Philharmonic revealed details Friday about ticketing for the free musical festival "?Bienvenido Gustavo!," a five-hour Hollywood Bowl event on Oct. 3 that will be Gustavo Dudamel's first appearance as music director of the Phil. Tickets will be available beginning at noon Aug. 1; up to four tickets per person may be obtained at the Hollywood Bowl box office. Requests also may be made by calling the Bowl at (323) 850-2000 or via Ticketmaster. More information is at www.laphil.

A year ago, Lang Lang fit right in as one of the stars of the historically gaudy opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Estimates of television viewers worldwide have ranged from 1 billion to 4 billion, obviously some kind of record. On Friday, in the first of a two-night stint, Lang Lang appeared at the 17,376-seat Hollywood Bowl, which was about half-filled. Still, the stellar Chinese pianist has moved up in the world. Lang's fans were no doubt in boxes and bleachers.

Intimacy is a relative concept at the Hollywood Bowl. Warmly communicative musicians can turn the cavernous venue into something like a living room. And that's just what happened Tuesday when listeners were held rapt by Bramwell Tovey, principal guest conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic at the Bowl, in a rousing, serene and triumphant program of works by Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. The coziness was most apparent during the concert's centerpiece, Barber's rapturous Violin Concerto, when the audience remained hushed after the first movement, allowing the superlative 33-year-old Canadian soloist James Ehnes to take a moment to tune his violin in the cool night air. Ehnes last performed the Barber at the Bowl in 1998, but it's hard to imagine the earlier account matching this one for sheer magic.

The debut of the new $25-million Hollywood Bowl shell last season has opened a new chapter in the history of the landmark, retaining its iconic scalloped shape while incorporating a halo-like canopy into the design to improve acoustics. The new Bowl is the latest in a series of shells that date back to the early 1920s.

With a wide array of accents and a distinctively L.A. feel, a rainbow coalition of musical acts and a fired-up Hollywood Bowl crowd welcomed Gustavo Dudamel on Saturday night to his new position as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The 28-year-old conductor, who arrived in town earlier this week, was naturally the piece de resistance of the five-hour free concert, dubbed "¡Bienvenido Gustavo!" in his honor. He concluded the evening in rousing fashion, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Master Chorale in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. After taking his initial bow at the end of the symphony, Dudamel locked arms with his musicians and soloists to acknowledge the waves of applause.

The great Afro-Caribbean-American power-pop diaspora has many prophets, from Bob Marley and Miriam Makeba to Berry Gordy and brother James Brown. At times it felt as if all of them were spiritually present during Sunday's electrifying Hollywood Bowl triple bill of Raphael Saadiq, Santigold and Femi Kuti & the Positive Force, expertly curated by KCRW's Garth Trinidad.

The 11-year-old girl walked across the imposing stage in patent leather ballet flats; her eyes squinting in the glare of the overhead lights. Arlette Romero took a deep breath. She sat up straight in rest position, her right hand firmly gripping the neck of her violin, and flashed a smile. It was finally showtime. Romero is a member of the nascent YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra. She and her orchestra mates were making their debut at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night, performing an abbreviated version of "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel during the "¡Bienvenido Gustavo!"