Brian Stokes Mitchell talks ‘magical’ experience of Hollywood Bowl

Brian Stokes Mitchell is a Tony Award-winning entertainment icon who’s played some of the most amazing venues—and he’s got a soft spot in his heart for the Hollywood Bowl.

Mitchell is one of the artists featured during In Concert with the Hollywood Bowl, a new PBS series that showcases some of the best performances at the world-renowned venue. Fans can watch him perform with Sutton Foster in tonight’s episode, “Musicals and the Movies.”

Ahead of the premiere, he spoke to Culturess about why the Hollywood Bowl isn’t like any other venue and how TV viewers can help until live music and theatre are able to fully reopen.

Learn more in our interview, then watch Brian Stokes Mitchell in In Concert with the Hollywood Bowl tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on PBS and the PBS app. You can also discover more about Brian via his website.

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Culturess: You’ve been on stage at the Hollywood Bowl multiple times. What’s it like to perform at the Bowl?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: It’s pretty special…The first time it’s daunting because it’s so huge.  Especially when you walk in there for the rehearsal, which happens during the day when it’s still light, you’ll look up and you just see seats on seats, on seats, on seats, on seats, on seats, on seats, and they go forever. And you wonder, “Well, how do I play this?”

It’s interesting, because when it gets dark, you don’t have a sense [of the size]. You only really see maybe the first 30 or 40 rows of the audience, and they have to remind you—look up, play up when you’re playing, because most of your audience is actually up there. But you don’t have the sense of that.

It’s also daunting and wonderfully daunting, in the most terrific way, to be sharing a stage with such incredible artists. The conductors that I’ve worked with—John Williams, Gustavo Dudamel, John McSherry, that list goes on and on and on—and these incredible, incredible musicians. The musicians in Los Angeles are like no other, and you feel this great sense of support.

But the best part of it is the audience is so happy to be there. The audiences love being at the Hollywood Bowl.

Culturess: Have you ever been there as an audience member?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: About two years ago, I happened to be in Los Angeles and a friend called me up and said hey, my wife can’t go to the concert. We’re going to go to see Harry Connick tonight. Would you like to go? I said sure; I was free. And as I was on my way to the Bowl, it occurred to me all the times that I performed there, I had never, ever seen a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

It was my first time. And I felt like a little kid sitting in the audience—look, oh, I didn’t know the lights did that. Oh, look at the fireworks and how you can see them from the audience. And the feeling of the people around you. Everybody is so happy to be there, there’s just a great vibe there, and to be able to look at the stars. Normally I have the Bowl over my head, so I don’t even get to do that, and I’m concerned with performing.

But to sit there as an audience member, it’s a magical, magical place. That’s one of the great things about this PBS special, is it captures some of that magic. It’s not quite as good as being there, but it’s the next best thing to it.

Culturess: In Concert with the Hollywood Bowl is featuring your collaboration with Sutton Foster from the Bernstein 100 Celebration with Dudamel. What do you remember about that specific performance?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: One of the things that I remember is that was Sutton’s first time she performed at the Hollywood Bowl, which I was really surprised to find out. She’s incredibly experienced, skilled, talented, multiple Tony Awards, and just performs everywhere, but had never performed at the Bowl.

She was so spectacular. She was her usual wonderful, professional self and is one of the nicest, most talented people that I have ever met. And just to see her take that stage, that huge stage, with such aplomb and grace and skill was really, really exciting for me. It kind of brought back that memory of what was my first time being there like? But that feeling never goes away when you perform there.

It was really exciting for me to kind of see it through her eyes, and I get to see her really close up when we’re singing right next to each other. I get to see that kind of energy and excitement, and that’s catching, that kind of energy with another person.

And then to perform with Dudamel conducting—[he] is just a spectacular conductor. He’s a great listener, and cajoler for the performers and the orchestra as well, and everybody loves him so much.

He’s like John Williams, [who’s] one of my other favorite conductors. When they walk into a room for a rehearsal, you see the orchestra just sit up a little straighter when they do. And you see this kind of bright energy come from them because they know that it’s going to be a special, wonderful experience for them too. And that goes across the footlights. So it was magical as always.

Culturess: You’ve performed all across Broadway, which has some of the best-known stages in the country, if not the world. How does the Hollywood Bowl compare to Broadway?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: The Bowl, if you’re talking size, is much bigger. One of the things that people that haven’t been to Broadway are surprised about the first time they go—and I know this hit me as well, the first Broadway show that I saw—was how small the theaters are. The theaters are anywhere from maybe I think the smallest is around eight or 900 seats, and the largest is still maybe 2,000 seats.

The Hollywood Bowl is 17,500 seats; it’s a huge, huge venue. And also, of course, it’s outside. And it’s outside in what is almost always beautiful weather as well; you hear the birds sing, and you get to see the stars at night. It really is a magical place—like no other place that I’ve ever performed.

Culturess: People know you primarily for your stage work, but you’ve also done an incredible amount of film and TV, as well as voice acting and releasing several albums. Is there anything in your career that you wish people would talk about more?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: The thing that I wish people would talk about the most are the albums that I’ve been doing. I came out with my third solo album called Plays With Music about a year and a half ago. I produce all of these solo albums that I’ve done, and I orchestrate and arrange a lot of the material on them as well, and they’re really, really fun.

Plays With Music, I’m really happy with because I get to play with music. Most of them are songs from plays, but I kept them in their original spirit, but did unusual things with them. That’s kind of how I like to live. I like to play with things. Even when I’m on stage, that’s kind of the spirit that I use.

Culturess: In Concert with the Hollywood Bowl is really a celebration of live music, which has obviously been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. You’ve been very active in charity work; how can people watching this PBS show get involved to help the performers and crew who’ve been affected by the loss of live entertainment?

Brian Stokes Mitchell: There’s a few things that I would say. One is there are organizations like The Actors Fund that is helping people that are in the arts that are suffering mightily right now. We one of the first sectors to close down; we will be one of the last to come back. It’s nice to see some television shows who’ve been able to open, but even those have been problematic because of COVID and all the protocols and everything. It’s been difficult to do that, although people are trying.

Live theater venues, no; we still haven’t been able to really do that. A few people have been able to, but not in a way that is financially viable. I’ve done two concerts where they were doing social distancing and one was in a 600 seat theater where they had 45 people there, which was great. The audience was so happy to be there, and I was so happy to be there, but you can’t make money doing that.

This too shall pass. We’ll come back with the vaccine and everything that’s happening. But in the interim, you can help out organizations like The Actors Fund. It’s a great one, because it helps out anybody in the performing arts—dancers, singers, actors, camera people, technicians, agents, designers, anybody who is in times of need or crisis or transition. Right now there are a lot of people that are hurting because a lot of people in show business, even the backup jobs are gone in the restaurants and as a bartender. Those have been hit hard as well. And once the arts come back, cities come back.

The other thing is Americans for the Arts, the other organization I’m a board member of, and on the artists’ committee. They’re helping people realize how important the arts are, not only at large, but also in their communities, and how much of an industry the arts is. The arts is bigger than transportation as a sector in what it brings in, in money in the United States. And it’s larger than a number of the sectors as well.

I would just like people to take a moment and just stop [to] look around the room that they’re in, even at that moment. Look around the room and see how much art is there, and appreciate in a new way how art has helped us get through this pandemic. And by art, I don’t mean art that’s on the walls of a museum or necessarily even your pictures.

Art is what you’re watching on television when you’re binge-watching your favorite TV show. You’re watching the work of artists—not only actors, but also the camera people, the writers, the directors, the people who are scoring it. There are all of these artists involved in that.

When you put on your music and your earphones, you’re listening to the work of artists that are musicians, that are orchestrators, that are the singers, that are the mixing engineers and mastering engineers. When you’re playing a video game, you don’t play code; you’re using the code, but you’re playing the art. You’re playing these incredible characters.

What I’m hoping [will be] one of the takeaways from this terrible time that we’ve been in is that people will start really appreciating how incredibly important it is and how much of our sanity has relied on the work of artists and all of the people—not only the ones that we see like the actors, but also all of the people behind the scenes. Not only on television, but also in those places like the concert world, ballet, opera, and live theater that have been impacted and are still not working as well.

In Concert with the Hollywood Bowl premieres tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on your local PBS station; you can also stream it on the PBS app. For more about Brian Stokes Mitchell, visit his website.