A Mixed Bag of Americana Music at the Bowl

Usually “The Star-Spangled Banner” stands alone at the top of a Hollywood Bowl concert, musically unrelated to anything that goes on afterward.

But not at the annual American Winds program led by Larry Curtis on Saturday night, when the embattled anthem served as exactly the right lead-in for the “National Emblem” march--which uses the same tune--as well as a program of diverse Americana titled “Strike Up the Band!”

Yet it was a patchy evening of music, with passages when the pace slackened dangerously, not helped by the muffled, murky sound through much of the first half.

A lyrical Frank Ticheli tone poem based on “Shenandoah” was succeeded by pure corn on the cob from the Disneyland Main Street Merchants Assn. Municipal Brass Band.

A pro forma potpourri of “West Side Story” tunes gave way to a fairly inventive Ellington medley that occasionally had the buzz of the original band.

Former Dodger skipper Tommy Lasorda, who turned 75 on Sunday, stepped up to the plate to narrate Steven Reinecke’s over-the-top setting of “Casey at the Bat,” but play was halted in mid-performance when some pages in the script were apparently mixed up.

Nevertheless, it was good to hear irreverent things, like Charles Ives’ collision of several village bands, “Country Band March”--though the performance seemed a bit timid--Ira Hearshen’s cleverly scored Divertimento for Band, and a Hearshen quodlibet that made a funny metaphor about sharks in show biz by combining “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with the theme from “Jaws.”

And the evening was topped off by one of the noisiest outbursts of fireworks yet, done to the George and Ira Gershwin tune that gave the program its name.