Randall Goosby receives top praise from the LA Times for Hollywood Bowl debut

Randall Goosby performing with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl (Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi)

With a focus on Black composers, a young SoCal native is poised for the big time
By Mark Swed
The Los Angeles Times
August 21, 2021

For a young musician making a debut, the Hollywood Bowl can be the scariest stage on the planet, and the most desirable. Everything is amplified, from the sound to the giant video screens to the size of the whole place. I’m classical music critic Mark Swed, this week’s ringer for Carolina A. Miranda on Essential Arts, and I’ll start by sharing something special at the Bowl.

A new name to remember

A young violinist from San Diego recently made his Bowl debut with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. At first glance Randall Goosby could be yet another of the savvy, showy young soloists on the make. Born Randall Mitsuo Goosby in 1996 to a Black father and Korean mother, he has grown up with highly marketable good looks and a chic style suitable for the cover of fashion magazines. Flashiness gets you everywhere in classical music. It always has.

Yet Goosby plays like an angel with nothing to prove. A cool, calm, collected angel. Thus far he has steered clear of high-volume repertory show pieces. His focus has been on Black composers, for which he advocates with erudite modesty.

At the Bowl he chose a little-known violin concerto by Mozart’s mixed-race contemporary, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. A colorful showman, Bologne was as famed for his fencing as for his violin virtuosity. The concerto is fairly conventional 18th century stuff with just enough potential to dazzle the French court.

Goosby avoided all exaggeration. Unless the amplification fooled us, and I don’t think it did, he made little attempt to stand out, instead approaching the orchestra with the intimacy of a chamber musician. The slow movement was infused with an imperturbable serenity, perhaps the single most elusive state to achieve in the Hollywood Bowl. He skipped so daringly lightly over the jocular last movement that his solos could barely be grasped; they were gone in a flash.

Those same rare qualities can be found on “Roots,” Goosby’s debut album released this summer. It, too, is is all but devoid of showmanship. He plays solo blues with an extraordinary grace. The serenity is everywhere, but particularly in the middle movement, “Mother and Child,” of William Grant Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano and Coleridge-Taylor’s version of “Deep River” that speaks volumes at a very low, understated volume.

Goosby includes in his “focus” Gershwin and Dvorák. Their application to Black music in their work can sound like appropriation to modern ears, but Goosby explains in his booklet notes (and you’ve got to break down and buy the CD rather than stream): For their time, they demonstrated a meaningful generosity of spirt in their advocacy of the essential contribution of Black composers to American music.

An intriguing different test lies ahead for Goosby. In October he will tackle Brahms Violin Concerto with the Pasadena Symphony in Ambassador Auditorium. A little bird has whispered that Goosby will also be a soloist with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the spring, but the cagey orchestra has yet to announce its new season.

Randall Goosby at his Hollywood Bowl debut, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the LA Phil (Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi)

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