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Inside Bay Area comments -

The line between classical and pop music was appealingly blurred Monday night at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco when Elvis Costello opened his 2006 tour with a stirring program.

In a San Francisco Symphony presentation, the show opened with Costello's 2000 full-length orchestral composition, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream"), a piece commissioned by Italian dance company Aterballetto for its ballet adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Later, Costello, with the help of San Francisco's Michael Tilson Thomas, revised the score for a 2004 Deutsche Grammophon recording featuring MTT leading the London Symphony Orchestra.

MTT wasn't in the house, though. In perhaps the only rock concert moment of the evening, someone in the audience yelled, "Where's MTT?" to no response. Conducting duties went to the New Zealand-born Alan Broadbent, who has served as touring musical director for Costello's wife Diana Krall.

Before the orchestra began, Costello thanked MTT and briefly greeted concertgoers in the sold-out hall with a modest disclaimer: They wouldn't be hearing a symphony, but rather a "series of episodes" linked to certain characters. And with a nod to fans most familiar with his prolific pop career, he gave the OK for people to clap — whenever.

"Don't wait until the end to applaud. Knock yourself out," he said. "It's San Francisco. Take your clothes off."

But the audience, which looked to be a mix of open-minded symphony subscribers (who apparently got first dibs on the tickets) and die-hard Costello followers, took a short while to get with the program. It wasn't until the second or third pause in the 30-minute piece did people feel moved to clap.

Although detailed program notes outlined scenes of the ballet giving listeners markers for enjoying the music, the piece's varied landscape didn't really benefit from the explanations. "Il Sogno" represents a pleasing, if not revolutionary, blend of influences from Debussy to Stravinsky to Bernstein to Bacharach.

Not all 24 "episodes" on the recording were played. Eighteen were presented, featuring amiable melodies sprinkled throughout, with special attention given to the saxophone, vibraphone, cimbalom and jazz drum. The ending, however, came quite abruptly.

Wearing a tux for the second half of the concert, Costello took the stage to sing 13 pop songs, most fantastically dressed up in full orchestral arrangements. Just three tunes into the show, the experience began to feel like something you'd want to go on forever, hearing Costello go through his entire huge repertoire with new, evocative interpretations. He's so good, he probably could even pull off a symphonic version of "Pump It Up." (He didn't play that one.) The lineup was rich, beginning with "Still" from the 2003 album, "North," a collection of moody, bittersweet ballads. Next came the ballad "Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue" written for Charles Brown and arranged by Bill Frisell.

The ultra-poppy "Veronica," co-written by Paul McCartney, was a real treat — the only number not featuring symphony accompaniment. Costello played acoustic guitar and his longtime pianist Steve Nieve pounded out a thrilling, passionate version that highlighted Costello's often hard-to-decipher lyrics.

"Speak Darkly My Angel," off Costello's 2006 release "My Flame Burns Blue," was a tune written for his Brodsky Quartet collaborations. It was followed by a gorgeous version of "Almost Blue." The old rock standby "Watching the Detectives," done big band-style with lots of brass, took on a whole new meaning, and afterward Costello remarked he felt like Efrem Zimbalist Jr. should have been in the room.

Back in a mellow mood, Costello sang a smoky Billy Strayhorn melody, "My Flame Burns Blue," to which he wrote new lyrics, then moved to the gorgeously devastating new "She Handed Me a Mirror" from a collaboration with Copenhagen's Royal Danish Opera based on Hans Christian Andersen's infatuation with Jenny Lind. Costello said it was about "a misfit man in love with an unattainable woman."

Another Brodsky Quartet number off "The Juliet Letters," "The Birds Will Still Be Singing," preceded two heartbreaking tunes from "Painted from Memory," the amazing 1998 album with Burt Bacharach that sounds timeless.

Costello ended the show with "God Give Me Strength" and came back to encore with "I Still Have That Other Girl."

Spending most of the evening vocalizing with a microphone with a cord a la Sinatra, Costello picked up the guitar again for his classic "Alison," then closed out with an a cappella take on his Kurt Weill-like "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" that included a little singalong.

Yet audiences always expect — and get — the utmost from Costello. From pop to punk to rock to classical, he's an artist whose brainy, heartfelt songs survive, and benefit from, being stretched and reinterpreted.

The San Francisco Chronicle comments -
( extract)

Elvis Costello looks strangely at home in a tuxedo.

Posing jauntily at the front of the stage in Davies Symphony Hall on Monday night, with the San Francisco Symphony arrayed behind him, the brilliant rock songsmith turned musical omnivore gave his best impression of a finger-popping jazz stylist.

The one thing missing was a martini glass -- and that, as he pointed out to the appreciative audience, was only because he'd quit drinking.

Monday's concert, which opened with excerpts from Costello's recent ballet score "Il Sogno," was merely the latest chapter in his apparent campaign to put his mark on every available musical genre, from punk and country to classical and jazz.

He can do it, too. From the moment he burst onto the music scene in 1977 as a purveyor of particularly sophisticated new wave music, Costello was always a classicist in the broadest sense. We just didn't know it yet.

The intervening years have made it clear, though, and in his latest incarnation as a soigne balladeer, Costello has fused his taste for intricate, emotionally fraught lyrics with a tender melodic vein. It suits him down to the ground.

The predominant mood tended to be slow and torchy; a few more up-tempo numbers might have enlivened the proceedings a bit. But the combination of lush orchestration and Costello's distinctive vocal style, at once abrasive and tender, made for a number of especially poignant offerings.

Just as he did in his rock days, Costello put his vocal limitations to expressive use. The strained top notes and the vocal meandering that often precedes his settling on a particular pitch emerge as tokens of emotional urgency or a broken heart or whatever the song may call for.

And like all great music, Costello's work proves capable of endless reinvention and reinterpretation. The high point of Monday's show was a new version of "Watching the Detectives," redone to mirror the brassy, Henry Mancini-esque soundtrack that might have accompanied the TV cop show invoked by the song's lyrics and graced by dynamic solos from saxophonist Mary Fettig and trumpeter Glenn Fischthal.

Other old favorites resurfaced as well. "Almost Blue," the smoky ballad that remains one of Costello's most hauntingly perfect creations, sounded as wrenching as ever, and "Alison" responded nicely to the orchestral backing.

"Il Sogno," written for a treatment of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by the Italian dance company Aterballetto, is a flashy, entertaining collection of illustrative segments that don't stand entirely well on their own. The recent recording, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, puts a zippy sheen on the music that allows its pleasures -- punchy melodies and a number of piquant instrumental combinations -- to come to the fore.

But to judge from Monday's awkward performances, the Symphony members seemed to be sight-reading, and Broadbent's stiff, fussy conducting didn't help hold things together. The result was a few splendid moments separated by long stretches.