The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and Assistant Conductor Yasuo Shinozaki present a program of the works of Arnold Schoenberg on Monday, October 29 to open the 2001/2002 Green Umbrella series at Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School of Performing Arts. The concert is part of this season’s on-going “Schoenberg Prism,” a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death through concerts, discussions, events, and seminars presented across Los Angeles.

The program features the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte; the Chamber Symphony No. 1; and Pierrot lunaire. Baritone Christòpheren Nomura joins the New Music Group and Shinozaki for the Ode, a setting of Lord Byron’s meditation on war and glory, which Schoenberg set at the beginning of World War II. The Chamber Symphony No. 1, an earlier work (1906) finds the younger Schoenberg experimenting with atonality, subverting traditional key structures. For Pierrot lunaire (1912), one of his most controversial and revolutionary works, Schoenberg unveiled Sprechstimme (Speech-song), a method of vocal delivery that combined singing and speaking. Barbara Sukowa joins the New Music Group and Salonen to deliver the vocal part in their performance of Pierrot.

Single tickets ($26) are available at the Philharmonic’s Music Center box office, all Ticketmaster outlets (Robinsons-May, Tower Records, Ritmo Latino, Tu Música, and selected Wherehouse locations), and by credit card phone order at 213/365-3500. Tickets are also available on-line at laphil.com . For further information, please call 323/850-2000.

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, the tenth conductor to head the Los Angeles Philharmonic, began his tenure as Music Director in October, 1992. Salonen made his American debut conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in November 1984, and he has conducted the Orchestra every season since. Among the many highlights of Salonen’s activities with the Philharmonic have been world premieres of new works by composers John Adams, Bernard Rands, Rodion Shchedrin, Steven Stucky, and Salonen himself, a well-received Ligeti Festival, appearances at the Ojai Festival, seven critically acclaimed international tours since 1992, and his extensive discography with the Orchestra for Sony Classical. Salonen was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1958. He made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979, and he has been one of the world’s most sought-after conductors since his debut in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra in September 1983. He served as principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia of London from 1985 to 1994 and as principal conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1995.

YASUO SHINOZAKI completed his conducting studies at the Vienna Musikhochschule with Leopold Hager and also worked with Bernard Haitink, with Myung-Whun Chung and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, and with Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood. Mr. Shinozaki made his opera debut with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in Tokyo in 1993 and subsequently has conducted at several opera houses in Japan, including the Tokyo Nikikai Opera and the Japan National Opera Theatre. He has worked extensively with orchestras throughout Japan in a wide range of repertoire, and this season he returns to the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Musica Celeste and the Osaka Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Shinozaki will also make his debut with the Fukuoka City Philharmonic Orchestra. Yasuo Shinozaki was born in Kyoto, Japan in February 1968.

Since making his New York City debut in 1992 at the Tisch Center for the Arts, Baritone CHRISTÒPHEREN NOMURA has earned a place of prominence on the operatic, concert and recital stages. He has given more than 250 recitals throughout North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. Nomura has collaborated with the Skampa, Boromeo and St. Lawrence String Quartets and pianists Martin Katz, Dalton Baldwin, Charles Wadsworth, Jean-Ives Thibaudet and William Balcom at the Santa Fe, Marlboro, Tanglewood, La Jolla, and Spoleto Chamber Music Festivals and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In the realm of opera, Mr. Nomura is a noted Mozartean, known for his portrayals of the title role of Don Giovanni, Papageno in The Magic Flute, the Count in Le nozze di Figaro and Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte. Christòpheren Nomura has appeared with the Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Utah Symphony Orchestra in repertoire ranging from Early Music to contemporary. Christòpheren Nomura’s discography includes recordings on the Sony, Dorian, Teldec, London, Denon, TDK and L’oiseau Lyre labels. His recording of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 on Telarc was nominated for a Grammy (Best Classical Ensemble Recording).

German actor BARBARA SUKOWA has enjoyed a distinguished career on the stage in Europe, but is best known in the United States for her powerful performances in latter-day masterpieces of the New German Cinema. Sukowa played the victimized Mieze in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, for which she won the German Best Actors’ Award. She received the German Gold Medal for best actress for her title role in Fassbinder’s Lola. Equally memorable were her portrayals of fiercely independent radicals in two films directed by Margarethe von Trotta… Marianne and Julianne, which earned her the Golden Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival, and Rosa Luxemburg, for which she won the Palme d’Or for best actress at the Cannes Film Festival. Other credits include Zentropa (Lars von Trier), M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg), The Sicilian (Michael Cimino), Voyager (Volker Schlondorff), The Third Miracle (Agnieszka Holland) and Tim Robbins’ The Cradle Will Rock. Sukowa is an internationally renowned concert artist and has been critically acclaimed as a leading interpreter of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, which she has performed in Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Barcelona, Los Angeles, and New York.

EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

GREEN UMBRELLA

-SCHOENBERG PRISM-

Monday, October 29, 8:00 p.m.

ZIPPER HALL AT THE COLBURN SCHOOL

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC NEW MUSIC GROUP

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, conductor

YASUO SHINOZAKI, conductor

CHRISTÒPHEREN NOMURA and BARBARA SUKOWA, reciters

SCHOENBERG: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte for String Quartet, Piano, and Reciter, Op. 41; Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9; Pierrot lunaire for Reciter and Chamber Ensemble, Op. 21

Single tickets ($26) are available at the Philharmonic’s Music Center box office, all Ticketmaster outlets (Robinsons-May, Tower Records, Ritmo Latino, Tu Música, and selected Wherehouse locations), and by credit card phone order at 213/365-3500. Tickets are also available on-line at laphil.com. For further information, please call 323/850-2000.