Southwest Chamber Music announces details of their 2013 Summer Season at The Huntington

March 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Southwest Chamber Music Summer Festival at The Huntington Loggia (photo by CK Dexter Haven)

Just got the announcement from our friends at Southwest Chamber Music detailing the four concert Summer Season they’ll be offering at The Huntington.  I like it.  A nice mix of old and new, rare and familiar.

  • Stravinsky under the stars?  Check.
  • Britten Anniversary?  Check.
  • Eine Kleine Nachtmusik?  Check
  • Works by living composers Oliver Knussen and Gabriela Ortiz?  Check.
  • And the ever present “much more”

Full details after the jump below.

The concerts offer the very nice setting of The Huntington’s Loggia, with a choice of seating

  • On the Loggia itself if one prefers a somewhat more formal seating in a space with very good acoustics, OR
  • On the lawn where you can spread out a blanket, have a picnic while listening to the music, and be more laid back (literally and figuratively), all for less than half the price for single tickets.

Details and tickets (for both the concerts themselves and pre-concert Tea Room dinners, if one were interested) are available now on Southwest’s website (HERE).

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The LA Master Chorale to celebrate its 50th Anniversary with impressive 2013/2014 season

March 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Los Angeles Master Chorale (photo by Lee Salem)I was very happy to see this very promising information show up in my inbox this afternoon:

The Los Angeles Master Chorale announced their 2013/2014 season, a year which celebrates a pair of anniversaries:

  • 50 years since it’s founding by the legendary Roger Wagner as one of the Los Angeles Music Center’s resident companies.
  • 10 years since it moved into Walt Disney Concert Hall

By all  accounts, it’s an excellent looking season, with classics (including Carmina Burana, Bach’s B minor Mass, Verdi’s Te Deum), favorites from former Composer-In-Residence Morten Lauridsen, and newer works including four world premieres from Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Lang, Francisco Núñez, and Shawn Kirchner (current Composer-In-Residence).

The Master Chorale will also be participating in four big festivals:

  • The 2013 Hollywood Bowl season, with three performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
  • Chicago’s 2013 Ravinia Festival:
    1. August 26, 2013:  The quartet version David Lang’s the little match girl passion with soprano Elissa Johnston, mezzo-soprano Adriana Manfredi, LAMC Music Director Grant Gershon singing tenor, and bass-baritone Cedric Berry.
    2. Sept 7, 2013:  Mr. Gershon conducts the Master Chorale in a performance of John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the original soloists and the Ravinia Festival Orchestra. 
  • The Los Angeles city-wide “Britten 100/LA: A Celebration” with Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols as part of “Rejoice!,” one of four Holiday Programs
  • The LA Phil’s second “Minimalist Jukebox Festival.”

There’s much more to like in the details below after the jump.  If I were to nitpick, I would have loved to have seen some Stravinsky or Mozart or even some Haydn, but hey, a wise man once sang that, “You can’t always get what you want,” so I’ll just have to deal with all the cool stuff actually being offered.

Here’s the full press release:

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Observations from LA Phil’s 2013/14 season presser (um, “Death of Klinghoffer” perhaps?!!)

February 25, 2013 7 Comments

As promised, I did my best to tweet details of the upcoming Los Angeles Philharmonic 2013/2014 season.  That said, I’m sure there are those among you who didn’t follow along for whatever reason — perhaps you were otherwise occupied, or maybe you just don’t do that newfangled Twitter thing, or the dog ate your homework.  In any case, you can see the entire stream of consciousness HERE, some of which are included in my observations below (after the jump).

The entire press packet is available online (HERE).  That said, there were some interesting things mentioned at the press conference (aka “the presser” if you’ll permit me) that ARE NOT in that press release — the biggest one is this:

  • Deborah Borda (President and CEO) mentioned that in conjunction with the orchestra’s upcoming “Minimalist Jukebox Festival,” the Los Angeles Philharmonic will collaborate with Long Beach Opera in a performance of The Death of Klinghoffer.

Wait . . . what was that?  Really??!!!

The long saga about John Adams’s controversial opera will take forever to try to explain here, but suffice it to say that this is a big deal — “Klinghoffer” has never been performed in Southern California despite the fact that Los Angeles Opera was one of the original commissioning organizations.  I’ve asked for additional information, and we’ll see if I/we get any in the coming day or two.  (UPDATE, Feb 27:  per the Los Angeles Times, Long Beach Opera confirmed that they will present The Death of Klinghoffer in 2014, with James Robinson directing.  No other details were given).

In the meantime, here are some other observations about the 2013/2014 season:

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Planning to live tweet from today’s LA Phil 2013/2014 season announcement

February 25, 2013 Leave a comment

The Los Angeles Philharmonic will be announcing the details of their 2013/2014 season today’s at 12noon Pacific Time.

I will be there, and for those wanting up-to-the-minute info, I am planning to live tweet from today’s press conference using the hashtag “#LAPhil1314″ starting around 11:45am.  To follow along, click HERE to get to http://www.twitter.com/MrCKDH or if you prefer, you can see the most recent tweets on the sidebar in the right.

The LA Phil has been pretty tight-lipped so far, but they did tweet this over the weekend:  ”BIG announcement this Monday at noon. Hint: It’s time to celebrate!”

The upcoming season will represent the 10th anniversary of the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, so that probably has something to do with it. Also, some concert info has already been released by other performing arts organizations in other cities.  From Lincoln Center’s Great Performers and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County come details about these concerts:  

  • March 16, 2014 (Avery Fisher Hall, New York):  Corigliano – Symphony No. 1; Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 5 (Gustavo Dudamel, conductor)
  • March 17, 2014 (Avery Fisher Hall, New York):  Bjarnason – New Work; Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 1 (Yuja Wang, piano); Brahms – Symphony No. 2 (Gustavo Dudamel, conductor)
  • April 26, 2014 (Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa):  Bartok – Violin Concerto No. 2 (Gil Shaham); Macmillan – Three interludes from The Sacrifice; other works TBD (Stéphane Denève, conductor)

We’ll see very soon what else they have in store.

 

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LA Opera announces 2013/2014 season

January 8, 2013 Leave a comment

Billy Budd at LA Opera (2000 production)
Los Angeles Opera announced their 2013/2014 season today.  As far as I’m concerned, the most noteworthy things:

  • Not a big increase in number of productions and performances versus the 2012/2013 season, but the mix is a bit more diverse — including three performances of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach.
  • Tenor Brandon Jovanovich returns to L.A. this fall as Don Jose in Carmen
  • Nino Machaidze appears twice (Carmen and Thaïs)
  • Plácido Domingo won’t be singing until late in the season (May-June 2014) when he takes on another baritone role, Athanaël in Thaïs; he’ll be seen at the beginning of the season conducting four performances of Carmen
  • Grant Gershon conducts the three remaining performances of Carmen
  • Music Director James Conlon will be conducting the vast majority of the performances throughout the season (thank goodness).
  • The only conductor appearing this season who does not hold some kind of title with the company will be Massenet specialist Patrick Fournillier in, appropriately enough, Massenet’s Thaïs
  • The company will celebrate the Britten centenary with a production of Billy Budd featuring Liam Bonner (last seen around here in Albert Herring in Spring of 2012) in the title role and will play a major role in “Britten 100/LA: A Centenary Celebration,” a county-wide celebration.
  • No Wagner opera this year.  The only opera to be sung in German will be The Magic Flute in the company’s well-known production by Sir Peter Hall and Gerald Scarfe.  The cast includes Janai Brugger (recently seen locally as Musetta in La Bohème) and, making her company debut, Erika Miklósa as Queen of the Night (click HERE to see a video of her singing the Queen of the Night’s big aria)
  • The company will make two visits to Orange County for one concert performance each of Falstaff and Thaïs
  • Mr. Conlon will conduct two performances of the world premiere of Alexander Prior’s Jonah and the Whale,  inspired by Britten’s Noye’s Fludde
  • Dmitri Hvorostovsky appears in recital and Audra McDonald performs a one-night concert

The short version of the schedule (all performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion unless otherwise noted):

  • Carmen (Bizet):  Seven performances, Sep. 21 ̵ Oct. 6, 2013
  • Einstein on the Beach (Glass):  Three performances, October 11, 12 and 13, 2013
  • Audra McDonald in Concert:  October 26, 2013
  • Falstaff (Verdi):  Six performances, Nov. 9 ̵ Dec. 1, 2013; ; additionally, there will be one concert performance in Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on Nov 26, 2013
  • Billy Budd (Britten):  Six performances, Feb. 22 – March 16, 2014
  • Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti):  Six performances, March 15 – April 6, 2014
  • Jonah and the Whale (Alexander Prior):  Two performances at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, March 21-22, 2014 (World Premiere)
  • Thaïs (Massenet):  Six performances, May 17 – June 7, 2014; additionally, there will be one concert performance in Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on May 22, 2014
  • Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Recital:  May 22, 2014

Complete details taken from the official Los Angeles Opera press release are below:

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