The Pacific Symphony’s choice of Alexander Shelley as its next Music Director has been a solid so far. He has crafted compelling programs. He’s made concise yet informative pre-performance comments from the podium. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s young, dashing, personable, and therefore a marketing department’s dream. Most importantly, he’s shown the capacity for …
I touched my lips to the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. Kinda. OK, perhaps not quite, but I came close. More on that in a minute . . . This weekend’s concerts at WDCH were the latest salvo in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the debut of the venue’s famed … Continue reading
Admit it: the first time you heard that Los Angeles Opera had decided to pair the Baroque charms of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with the expressionistic horrors of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, you didn’t exactly say to yourself, “Oh yeah, that makes total sense.” No, at best, you probably thought, “Hmmmm — that’d be interesting.” If … Continue reading
Tant y a feme scet bon taire! Femme est dehors religiouse, Dedanz poignaunt e venimose . . . (When it comes to women, men, hold your tongue! On the outside she’s religious, On the inside keen and venomous . . .) — excerpt from “The Vices of Women,” 13th Century poem, used in the … Continue reading
With Esa-Pekka Salonen beginning the second week of a three-week residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I thought it was worth sharing this exchange between him and writer Vesa Sirén. This interview was first published a few weeks ago, but it’s still relatively new to me, and unless you follow the Twitter feed of the Finnish-Angeleno … Continue reading
I made the following update to my original post on the subject from this past Saturday, but in the spirit of providing some additional information . . . I’ve recently been told that at this point: John Sipher is the only remaining candidate for the open position of Principal Trombone with the Los Angeles Philharmonic His … Continue reading
Back by popular demand: our annual look at the changes in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s roster of musicians at the start of this year. As usual, we’ve had a mix of arrivals and departures, some expected and explained, some . . . well, not so much. Let’s start with the percussion section. Principal Percussionist Raynor Carroll … Continue reading
When is an organ recital more than that? When the entire LA Phil brass section joins the fray, as it will this coming Sunday, October 12th, at 7pm, for a tenth birthday party of sorts. Continue reading
The works of John Williams are as ubiquitous as orchestral music can be in our 21st Century pop-dominated, globally diffuse society. It’d be an interesting experiment to see if a random sampling of people on the street would be as successful identifying such classical music standards as Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik or Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as they would the … Continue reading
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and their Music Director, Jeffrey Kahane, can almost always be counted on to present compelling programming, interesting soloists, and thoughtful interpretations. For their 2014-15 season opener, Mr. Kahane and the orchestra rolled out more of the same, care of a new work by Cameron Patrick, an infrequently-heard bit of piano concerto sass … Continue reading
When I got the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s email informing me that one of their former Dudamel Conducting Fellows, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, had been selected as the orchestra’s Assistant Conductor, the first thing I thought was, “Oh, good for her.” The second thing I thought was, as a diacriticly-challenged English-speaker, “Wait — how exactly do you say that name?” I reached out … Continue reading
When Julien Beaudiment was still just a teenager in France, he was already a prominent enough flutist to warrant attention from his hometown newspaper. “I was doing a concert in my hometown, and I was saying that my dream was to work in America. For me it was always something that was really fascinating to … Continue reading
Gustavo Dudamel is in the midst of a two-week stint at the Hollywood Bowl, conducting an eclectic mix of music ranging from the usual summer classical offerings by Beethoven to less common Bowl fare such as verismo opera and Pan-American music of various genres. Tonight’s program even includes the premiere performances of Mr. Dudamel’s own score for … Continue reading
Kudos and endless gratitude to Tim Mangan for originally finding and sharing this blast from the past: Carlo Maria Giulini rehearsing the opening of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. According to the voice over at the beginning of the video, this was filmed during one of ten(!) … Continue reading
A little bit of Esa-Pekka Salonen is better than none at all. And so it turned out this past week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The original plan was that the orchestra’s beloved Conductor Laureate was supposed to be at the Hollywood Bowl for two concerts, beginning Tuesday night when he and pianist Yefim Bronfman (long-time … Continue reading
A tip of the hat to Shannita Williams (LA Opera’s Associate Director of Communications, Social Media) for pointing me towards “Weird Al” Yankovic’s latest release, “Word Crimes,” an absolutely spot-on ode to proper grammar and word usage, set to the tune of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” I’m a little sad he didn’t skewer “very unique” in his rant, and … Continue reading
All is Yar 