2 West Coast Premieres Conducted by Jeffrey Kahane at LA Chamber Orch Season Openers

By -

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's 2012-13 season launches with a dynamic program of works both familiar and new when Music Director Jeffrey Kahane conducts and performs as soloist. It features two highly anticipated West Coast premieres, including LACO Composer-in-Residence and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Andrew Norman’s The Great Swiftness, commissioned and premiered by the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2010. Inspired by the city’s signature Alexander Calder sculpture, La Grande Vitesse, the piece prompted the Grand Rapids Press to describe it as “sliding down the giant sculpture's graceful arms.” The other West Coast premiere, True South by James Matheson – recipient of the prestigious $200,000 Charles Ives Living Award and heralded by The New Yorker as “an early thirty-something American composer who is ignoring style labels and writing synthetic, satisfying music that avoids the glib theatricality of postmodernism” – was commissioned and premiered in 2010 by the New York Philharmonic with influences ranging from Judas Priest to Nietzsche. Kahane himself is the featured soloist in Ravel’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto in G major. The program concludes with the LACO debut of 28-year-old German violinist Augustin Hadelich performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, the composer’s only violin concerto and one of the most venerated works in the violin repertoire. Kahane calls Hadelich, winner of the 2009 Avery Fisher Grant, “one of the great violinists performing today,” and The New York Times states, “(he) stands out amid gifted young violinists for his prodigious technique, gorgeous tone and ability
to deliver.”

Both Norman and Matheson are participating in LACO’s Concert Preludes, pre-concert talks providing insights into the music and artists, which are held one hour prior to curtain and are free to ticket holders.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra is considered one of the nation’s premier orchestras as well as a leader in presenting wide-ranging repertoire and adventurous commissions. Its 2012-13 season, the orchestra's 44th, features a compelling mix of beloved masterpieces and genre-defying premieres from firmly established and notable up-and-coming composers programmed by Jeffrey Kahane, one of the world’s foremost conductors and pianists, who marks his 16th season as LACO’s music director.

Tickets ($25 – $110) are on sale now and may be purchased online at laco.org, by calling LACO at 213 622 7001, or at the venue box office on the night of the concert, if tickets remain. Discounted tickets are also available by phone for seniors 65 years of age and older and groups of 12 or more. College students may purchase rush tickets one hour before curtain; also available for college students is the $25 “Campus to Concert Hall All Access Pass” – good for all seven of LACO’s Orchestral Series concerts at either the Alex Theatre or UCLA, LACO’s Discover Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 at Ambassador Auditorium and for all three Westside Connections concerts at The Broad Stage, plus other benefits.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more