San Diego Symphony’s Rady Shell sails into its second summer

“Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stewart Copeland happily began singing the praises of the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park even before he first performed there last summer with the San Diego Symphony,” writes George Varga in Sunday’s (6/12) San Diego Union-Tribune. “Similar sentiments were voiced from the stage of The Shell … by … other artists who performed there during last year’s opening season…. The Shell is now gearing up for its second summer season. The lineup features Rock & Roll Hall of Famers (Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, the Beach Boys) and Broadway stars (Bernadette Peters, Megan Hilty, San Diego’s Christian Hoff). It also includes R&B and hip-hop greats (Common, Jennifer Hudson, Kool & The Gang) and younger artists (experimental future bass maverick Flume, the jazz-funk jam band Lettuce, Swedish electro-pop group Little Dragon), along with … jazz luminaries … Lea Slusher, the symphony’s vice president for artistic administration and audience development … said, ‘‘One of our main goals last summer is that we wanted every artist we could get to play The Shell—with or without the orchestra—so that the artists would think, ‘I want to come back here.’ We want our audiences to react the same way.’ ”