Celebrating 100 Years of Music Under The Stars At the Redlands Bowl | Celebrating 100 Years of Music

(Female Voice) Support for Celebrating 100 Years of Music Under the Stars at the Redlands Bowl is provided by Dave and Robin Maupin.

[♪ Orchestral Music ♪] We are so excited to celebrate 100 years at the Redlands Bowl.

The Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival is the oldest continuously running music festival in the United States where no admission is charged.

We bring world-class artists from all over the world.

Every Tuesday and Friday night, thousands of people who come down to experience music and performance.

And the community comes together and it's just magic.

There's a spirit to it that is just so beautiful.

There is no other city in the United States that can say they have a music festival every year nonstop for 100 years at which no admission is charged.

It just doesn't happen anywhere else.

The story of the Redlands Bowl is an incredible and remarkable feat for any community, let alone a community that was the size of Redlands in the middle of the 1920s.

One of the things that's really important in history is context, and I think from our vantage point 100 years later, we tend to forget that the first World War had only ended five years before Grace Mullen was really thinking about all of these things that would become the bowl the next year.

All of the tragedy and despair that came with a time of crisis really led to a belief that music could do something to empower people to relate to each other and build universal brotherhood, which was something that was absolutely necessary at that time in the post-war years.

And at that time in our history, the society was very stratified and only those who had wealth could attend performances and pay the very high cost of concert admission.

Symphonic music, opera, performances like that were expensive productions, and to go to a major symphony hall or a theater was really something that seemed to be reserved for a culturally elite audience.

The Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival started with one woman's vision.

Grace Mullen was my grandmother, and she really welcomed me into her home from the time that I was a very small child.

My grandmother was almost like a second parent to me during many of my formative years.

When the Hollywood Bowl started its programs back in 1922, she took her family down there to see a few of the concerts.

So when she's really formulating all this stuff in 1923, early 1924, she's also then witnessed the power of the Hollywood Bowl, which had just started and decided that maybe this was something that could happen for Redlands.

And she wanted something like that, something spectacular with the finest of performing arts.

But she had a very egalitarian spirit and she wanted it to be a place where people would come together regardless of their ability to pay for admission.

(Grace Mullen) My urge was to contribute something toward world peace and universal brotherhood through music, prompted me to begin even without an organization in 1924.

Having witnessed segregation firsthand and what that did to people, and having come out of that first World War experience with trauma that comes with that, really put this drive into her to try to do something to promote a concept of universal brotherhood through music and performance.

The way that initially began was through this thing she called 'The Community Sing.'

When my grandmother first tried to put on a program, and in those days there were apparently only three or four lights around the bowl area, and she had thought prevailed on the city council and the mayor to install a little lighting so there could be enough lights to carry on a community sing as the initial program.

So in that very first summer, she decided that there would be this community sing.

It would be in the beginning of July 1924, and people in the city, not all of them, were supportive of an idea like this.

The day before the scheduled community sing, she came over to check things out and saw there was no lighting.

In fact, the city engineer didn't believe anyone would even show up, so why bother putting the lights out so that people would be able to see their songbooks in the middle of the darkness of the summer?

And she got the city engineer and demanded he put them up and he said, "I'm not going to waste city money because nobody's going to come."

And she said, "Well, yes, they're going to come."

And she said, "I'm going to get ...," and she did, "my husband and my two kids, my mother and Uncle George, and we'll sit here right through the night until you get those lights installed."

And this is hard to believe, but that's what she said.

She had a sit-in protest and they thought well, we can't have Mrs. Mullen sitting out there all day, I guess we'll string the lights, and then thousands of people showed up.

That was really the beginning of what we know of as the Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival.

[♪ vibrant piano ♪] Later that summer, they then added artist's concerts.

And one of the things that she was very successful at was to persuade big name performers who were coming to the Hollywood Bowl for big books to come on out here while they were in Southern California for either nothing or for a very small fraction of what they were getting at the Hollywood Bowl.

And I think in general of the charm of the Bowl and just the whole ambiance was persuasive.

So, she just basically built up an inventory of performers and management people in the music industry from scratch.

[piano cont.]

But it was bringing culture through music and performance to an audience without the price of admission.

And by eliminating that barrier to access for this kind of music, she really believed that this had the power to bring every segment of the community together.

She really was concerned that the people that worked in the orange groves, the people that worked in the basic trades, worked as servants in the kind of the fine old homes that were here at the turn of the last century all deserved to have a place to go to enjoy music the way she'd been able to for a couple of years at the Hollywood Bowl.

And not everyone who was of means necessarily wanted to be participating in events with a butler, or a maid, or a gardener, something like that.

But what Mrs. Mullen was able to do was bring all of these people together in one place, and the idea was that maybe through music then we could break down some of this stratification and let everyone else see the humanity of the other.

And her philosophy was that well, it's necessary to raise money to do that, it was not going to be raised on the backs of anybody who wanted to come and couldn't afford to pay for admission price.

So that was a really, really strong commitment, but it's also the one that led to her determined hustling for contributions.

Very, very, very much so.

People see her coming down the sidewalk, they might cross the street because they knew she was going to ask for money.

And sometimes I could feel a little uncomfortable about that because I would often be out with her around downtown Redlands or elsewhere.

She was very, very, very determined and nothing would put her off.

Eventually she managed to get a lot of the elite on board, which is how she helped fund these things in the early years, in addition to be able to provide this phenomenal level of performance for anyone who wanted to come.

It was Grace Stewart Mullen's vision to have the finest in performing artists grace the Redlands Bowl stage, and actually the first opera singer that came to the Redlands Bowl was Eleanor Marlowe in 1924.

Very renowned opera singer, and we continue in that legacy of making sure that the artists are the finest in the world truly on the Redlands Bowl stage.

♪ There will never be a day ♪ ♪ when I won't think of you.

♪ We bring world-class performing artists from around the world who've played the finest venues all over the world, and many of them are Grammy, Emmy, and Academy Award winners.

So we truly prioritize something for all, making music accessible to people that they can recognize, but also giving them new experiences and helping them to learn to love new art forms.

We often hear ... We do opera every summer is one of our classically based program pieces.

We hear oftentimes people come, "I've never thought that I would like opera, and I came to the Bowl and suddenly I've learned that I love it and I want to see and hear more about opera."

[singing opera in Italian] What I love about the bowl is that it's truly music for everyone.

Stuff that you would pay Vegas big money, Frankie Avalon, they're going to have next Saturday.

The Modern Gentlemen who are ...

When Frankie Valli does Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, they're the Four Seasons, so and just the Mariachi Divas.

All the shows are top rate.

We've got world-famous entertainers that come and to our humble, beautiful Redlands.

♪♪ It's a blue mountain.

♪ ♪ A blue mountain.

♪ Having grown up in Tennessee, in the beginning of the Jim Crow era, before coming to California, Mrs. Mullen had seen firsthand what segregation looked like, and it was very important to her early on to make sure that the performances at the Bowl reflected the greater community.

So there were absolutely acts that came that were made of African-American performers.

There were performers with Spanish and Mexican backgrounds.

This Bowl tells a story of history.

It tells a story of how arts create a civilization, and the fact that Grace Mullen thought so much of the arts to then say I want to bring this back to my community so that this is something that can represent who we are and then also dictate who we're going to be is a beautiful thing.

I feel like I'm part of the community just having been here and being here for the second time, I can't wait to come back.

It's a very special place and I feel like I'm part of the family, so it's an honor.

The Redlands Bowl audience deeply appreciates its artists and has great joy in that ... kind of that synergy that happens between an artist on the stage and in the audience.

The energy was through the roof.

It was great.

They got up on their feet, they were starting to dance, and we had a party.

You could feel the energy.

People wanted to get up right away, start dancing.

It was a very good time.

♪ Grab a real close friend and do the boot scootin' boogie.

♪ I could feel it.

I could feel like we were starting a rollercoaster ride that I hoped they would enjoy and come along with us, and they did.

Also, artists often express to us how much they love the stage itself.

It's very vast, it's very stately.

It just gives a beautiful backdrop to truly any art form.

Really early on, I mean, by the end of that very first summer season, Mrs. Mullen was already advocating for a new venue, someplace that she envisioned were concerts year round.

She knew that the band stand, the band shell that was in the area that they were now calling the Bowl was really too small and that Redlands needed something much more grand for their new summer music festival.

And by the end of the 1920s, she had managed to convince two philanthropists in Redlands, Clarence and Florence White that something new was needed, and they agreed to provide the funds to build what we call today the Prosellis.

Now remember, this is right at the beginning of the Great Depression, which makes this even more remarkable because 1929 is the stock market crash, by the time we're in 1930, the United States is in a bad way.

In fact, the whole world was in an economic depression, and yet, people were still willing to step forward with their own funds to do something to better this community.

So they managed to hire an architect named Herb Powell, who happened to be an alumnus of University of Redlands.

So he was hired to design the Prosellis, which actually is a created word.

There is no other Prosellis in the world.

They took two Latin words 'pro', which means 'before', and 'sellis', which is talking about seats, and you put them together and it says 'before the seats'.

So that's the idea of the Prosellis, and it was completed in 1930 in time for that season.

So more than just the music that she brought to our community, she really created community and it's a beautiful thing to watch.

So far, three generations of the family have been coming to the Bowl regularly.

We have been coming for 60 years.

The Redlands Bowl is one of the exceptional places in Southern California, and we're lucky that it's in Redlands.

It's magical.

The Redlands Bowl is community.

The Redlands Bowl is passion.

Is energy, is love, it's summer nights.

I love when the summer's starting and the kids ask, "Are we going to go to the Redlands Bowl soon?"

My grandkids have come here ever since they were babies, and it's part of their growing up education just as much as it was for my own children because you don't learn those things by watching the TV, [gentle laugh] you learn by witnessing it in person.

What do you like about the Redlands Bowl?

It's fun to watch.

It's amazing.

I love it.

We all hope our children will grow into responsible adults, and this is one of the ways that endeavors their growth experiences.

The people that started the Bowl, the people that put money into the Bowl, how lucky are we that they had that vision back then to bringing culture, beautiful culture to this little town.

People that cannot afford to go to LA because this is the kind of programs that they bring, that quality and that anybody can come.

Anybody.

We don't want this to disappear, never.

We want to keep it alive for our future generations and generations and generations.

The Redlands Bowl is situated in the historic district of downtown Redlands, California, and that in itself adds to its uniqueness.

There's just an ambiance here that's very special, and when the concerts are about to start and people are visiting with their neighbors, and you'll see kids playing frisbee on the lawn and someone's got a picnic basket and the musicians come out on stage and they're warming up and the sun is starting to set, it's this amazing, beautiful scenery that is really spectacular.

We love the people here.

We love meeting new people.

They're all so nice and they just love the arts.

To the outside observer, it may seem that the Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival really is just June to August, but the staff here work really hard year round to continue music education.

So it's not only happening on the stage at the Bowl, but they're actually going out and impacting the lives of tens of thousands of youth throughout the communities in our area, youth who may not otherwise be exposed to this kind of music at all.

So it's a real entry point and opportunity for these kids to learn about all kinds of different music and styles of performance.

Our hope and vision in doing so is to ignite their interest and curiosity in the arts, and this is something that again, can bring them great joy in their own lifetimes and also, again, help them with social and emotional relationships.

[excited laughter and chatter] One of the thrilling things that we're able to do is bring young people performances by truly world-class artists.

For example, Celtic Spring, they were finalists a number of years ago on America's Got Talent , so what an amazing opportunity it is for children to be just up close and interacting with these artists, dancing alongside them, learning the steps.

The first time the 'Music in the Schools' program came, I was so impressed by the behavior of the students because the kids were so engaged.

I have something really cool to share about Mariachi Garibaldi.

They're actually going to play today at the World Series.

[boisterous cheering] They were being exposed to things that perhaps they would not have had the opportunity to be exposed to.

[kids shouting] Olé The arts have often gone by the wayside, and so it's so valuable and it's so important.

And many of the performers share a story that they had to work hard to get to where they are, and in that working hard, success came and kids need to know that.

And I can see that they start projecting, well, if they're from that situation and maybe I have similar circumstances, maybe I can do the same thing that they're doing.

It's important so they know that they can achieve whatever they put their mind to.

[young actor] This is a colorful subject.

It has motivated some of my students to pick up instruments and even to try out for the talent show, and so it's given them confidence to be able to try something new.

The gift that the Redlands Bowl provides our students is just tremendous.

These programs enrich their lives.

They expand the horizons, they challenge them.

They give them the opportunity to see things that some may not otherwise see.

We want to just ignite their interest and enjoyment in the arts.

It's kind of a full circle thing for me.

I came here as a kid a lot.

My parents would bring me here to the Bowl, and I just was inspired and wanted to be up there and to perform.

And so over the years, I've conducted many of the Broadway musicals that have been here and now getting more recently into conducting guest artists and concerts, but it's just - It's magnificent.

It's such a dream come true.

[announcer] Please welcome our 100th Anniversary Centennial Show Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Nolan Livesay.

[♪ sweeping, triumphant tune ♪] What we're hoping too, is that we are growing and cultivating the Redlands Bowl's audience of the future.

My first memories were an opera a number of years ago, and they needed extras, so I was a banner waver.

I was like about 12 or 13, but you really felt like you were a star on the stage waving the banner.

I started coming to The Bowl after I met Larry, which,um, was after college.

I just remember the excitement of coming to something that was outdoors and was fun.

Charlotte had gone to Laguna High School and they had the Pageant of the Masters and all that, and I felt kind of good that we had... Well, 'and now look at this' because these were all top flight names that were known all across the country.

If they had to go buy a ticket for this event, they would be spending about $100 for two people.

I think the Redlands Bowl is one of those points of pride.

It's really quite amazing, but I don't want to overemphasize the free.

There's still the need and obligation of a whole lot of us to keep it going.

What's so beautiful is to this very day, for all these decades, those in the community who feel that this needs to go on, that they're dedicated to this mission going on for their children and their children's children, they contribute every year.

And Redlands Bowl Performing Arts is really a village.

It's a village of some very dedicated people.

We have a professional staff, board of directors.

And we have over 1,000 volunteers at the Bowl from our Bowl associates who help with fundraising, our red shirt ushers who assist in greeting guests, our assisting volunteers help sell ice cream, and most importantly, our community partners who volunteer their time as ushers to collect the free will money during intermission.

These are groups like our National Charity League.

The Redlands Bowl cannot be what it is without our volunteers.

The community helps make the magic happen every summer, not just a few people, an entire community.

One of the most remarkable parts of the whole Redlands Bowl story is how it was really created by and perpetuated by women who believed in their community.

It happened that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, his wife Eleanor visited Redlands, and Mrs. Mullen at that time was not well, but Eleanor Roosevelt, before going to speak at Memorial Chapel at University of Redlands, visited Mrs. Mullen woman to woman in her recovery bed, so that they could meet firsthand and talk about the great work that she was doing.

More or less.

A year later, Eleanor invited my grandmother to an event at the White House, which I think occurred shortly before World War II.

And so I imagine two strong women that that was just sort of a match made in heaven.

They probably understood each other very well in terms of vision.

I can only imagine what she would say if she were told that 100 years later, her great -great-grandchild would be here to see a program presented under the same basic principles that applied to that very first program, and I'm sure she would be profoundly moved by that.

She was a great, great role model.

The Redlands Bowl was the passion of Grace Stewart Mullen's life, and she served it with great love and devotion until her death in 1967, at the age of 91.

We are so proud of this beautiful foundation that was laid by our founder, Grace Stewart Mullen, and since then we've expanded to include many other genres of music.

Over the years, we added a community musical, which is very popular within our region.

People come from all over Southern California to audition and also to watch.

We also have jazz, and there's a funny story that Grace Stewart Mullen did not care for jazz and she didn't even care for 20th century composers, but we now have both of them that of course, we've added over the years.

And in addition to that, we have our Young Artist Concerto Competition, which is one of the oldest scholarship programs in the state of California, and that is to enhance and help the careers of aspiring young classical musicians.

And we've added many other beautiful culturally diverse offerings of music and dance from all over the world.

I'd like to think that if Mrs. Mullen were to suddenly reappear and see how the Bowl has continued and is thriving in the years since she passed that she would be proud and excited to know that we still have thousands of people who come down every summer under the stars in the beautiful Redlands Bowl space.

I have no doubt that the Redlands Bowl will always be part of the fabric of this incredible community.

We are the torch-bearers going forward, and it's so important to us to continue this mission and provide the best world-class performing arts free of admission charge so that we can all continue to gather around beautiful music at the Redlands Bowl.

[♪ inspiring piano music ♪]

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