LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC 2023
GREEN UMBRELLA NEW MUSIC SERIES
BEGINS JANUARY 30
AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
Complete list of concerts through spring:
Monday, Jan. 30, at 8 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 8 p.m.
Tuesday, March 14, at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 1, at 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 20, at 4 p.m.
WHAT:
Curated by John Adams, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2023 Green Umbrella series at Walt Disney Concert Hall presents five concerts of groundbreaking new music by noted composers in the first half of 2023, performed by members of the LA Phil New Music Group, as well as guest soloists and ensembles.
The Green Umbrella series begins with Ensemble intercontemporain, led by conductor Matthias Pintscher, who is in his final season with the ensemble after a celebrated near decade-long tenure. Under his baton, the oldest ensemble purpose-built for new music will perform Olga Neuwirth’s new score for the 1924 silent film Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews).
Concerts featuring the LA Phil New Music Group will focus on the world premieres of music of Courtney Bryan and women composers, the world premiere of a new work by Anthony Cheung and a salute to Steve Reich.
The series concludes with the world premiere of a new operatic work commissioned by the LA Phil, Stranger Love, from Dylan Mattingly and Thomas Bartscherer. The six-hour performance features a new production conceived by Lincoln Center Theater Resident Director Lileana Blain-Cruz, performed by Contemporaneous with David Bloom conducting.
Regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary music groups, Ensemble intercontemporain make a rare appearance to present Olga Neuwirth’s score for the 1924 silent film Die Stadt ohne Juden, based on the novel of the same name by Hugo Bettauer from 1922. Under their music director Matthias Pintscher, the French musicians will accompany the movie directed by Hans Karl Breslauer with Neuwirth’s music that is “both touching and harsh, warm-hearted and open, amusing and furious, involved and distanced, humorous and sad all at once.”
Matthias Pintscher, conductor
Ensemble intercontemporain
Olga NEUWIRTH Die Stadt ohne Juden (The City Without Jews) (score played live to film)
Courtney Bryan premieres her own piano concerto, on a program with two other world premieres. “A pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (The New York Times), Bryan is a pianist, organist and composer whose music is in conversation with jazz, experimental music, gospel, spirituals and hymns. Mexican-born composer and violinist Erika Vega is currently studying the connection between the elements of poetry and those of music. Katherine Balch captures the magic of everyday sounds, becoming in the process a veritable “musical Thomas Edison—you can just hear her tinkering around in her workshop, putting together new sounds and textural ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle). This fascinating program features multiple world premieres from these award-winning women composers.
Paolo Bortolameolli, conductor
Courtney Bryan, piano
LA Phil New Music Group
Carolina HEREDIA Ausencias/Ausências/Absences
Erika VEGA No oyes ladrar a los perros for sinfonietta and organ (world premiere, LA Phil commission with generous support from the Deborah Borda Women in the Arts Initiative)
Katherine BALCH all around the sea blazed gold (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
Courtney BRYAN Piano Concerto, House of Pianos (world premiere, LA Phil commission with generous support from the MaddocksBrown Fund for New Music)
As part of his 75th birthday celebrations, LA Phil John and Samantha Williams Creative Chair John Adams leads a Green Umbrella concert—from the series he watches over so carefully—that features the world premiere of an LA Phil commission from Anthony Cheung, whose music has been described as “gritty, inventive and wonderfully assured” (San Francisco Chronicle) and praised for its “instrumental sensuality” (Chicago Tribune).
LA Phil New Music Group
John Adams, conductor
Teng Li, viola, John Connell Chair
Esa-Pekka SALONEN Objets Trouvés for solo viola
Anthony CHEUNG Parallel Play (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
Katherine YOUNG For Daphne and Delia
John ADAMS Scratchband
This all-Reich concert culminates with a remarkable collaboration between composer Steve Reich and artist Gerhard Richter. Richter will provide a computer-generated film of his painting 946-3. The result: a stream of images interpreted by music and a musical composition visualized by film images.
LA Phil New Music Group
Brad Lubman, conductor
Steve REICH Double Sextet
Steve REICH Traveler’s Prayer
Steve REICH Reich/Richter (LA Phil commission with generous support from the MaddocksBrown Fund for New Music) (film by Gerhard Richter & Corinna Belz)
The first thing the composer will tell you is that “Stranger Love is not practical.” It’s six hours of music and theater with an orchestra built on three microtonal pianos. But at a time when everything in our lives is cut shorter and shorter, taking six hours to discover “a world where time bends to love like gravity, and moments of bliss, of fear and of rapture—the moments in which you’ve felt most alive—are the pillars that hold up the fabric of the stars” is entirely the point. Not practical? Perhaps. But in this modern world, it might be essential.
Stranger Love is the fruit of a conversation between Mattingly and librettist Thomas Bartscherer about music and language over many years. It follows two lovers whose romance unfolds to the rhythm of the seasons. Inspired in part by the structure of Plato’s Symposium and set on a vast time scale against the ever-expanding universe, it broadens in scope and frame over the course of three acts, moving from the personal to the archetypical to a vision of the divine—a love supreme.
Contemporaneous
David Bloom, conductor
Lileana Blain-Cruz, director
Dylan MATTINGLY/Thomas BARTSCHERER Stranger Love (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
WHERE:
Walt Disney Concert Hall
111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012
TICKETS:
Tickets for the Green Umbrella concerts, as well as the entire Los Angeles Philharmonic 2022/23 season, are available for purchase online at
laphil.com and via phone at 323 850 2000.
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About the LA Phil
Under the leadership of Music & Artistic Director
Gustavo Dudamel, the
LA Phil offers live performances, media initiatives and learning programs that inspire and strengthen communities in Los Angeles and beyond. The Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra is the foundation of the LA Phil’s offerings, which also include a multi-genre, multidisciplinary presenting program and such youth development programs as
YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles). Performances are offered on three historic stages—
Walt Disney Concert Hall, the
Hollywood Bowl and
The Ford—as well as through a variety of media platforms. In all its endeavors, the LA Phil seeks to enrich the lives of individuals and communities through musical, artistic and learning experiences that resonate in our world today.
