‘Gracias Gustavo': Details of the L.A. Phil's plans for Dudamel's final season
The end of a golden era approaches as the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday announced details of the final season at Walt Disney Concert Hall for Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, who after 17 years will move on to helm the New York Philharmonic.
The 2025-26 L.A. Phil season is being dubbed 'Gracias Gustavo.' Dudamel will conduct 14 programs from this September through June 2026, including the second Wagner Ring opera, 'Die Walküre,' with sets by friend and collaborator Frank Gehry. The season will also feature Dudamel's first time conducting one of Beethoven's most spectacular but lesser-known works, 'Missa Solemnis.'. Dudamel also will bring back — and add dance to — two ballet scores that he had previously premiered: Thomas Ades' 'Inferno' and Gabriela Ortiz's ''Revolución diamantina.'
The world premiere a work for orchestra and choir by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid is on the schedule, as well as a premiere of Angélica Negrón's Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma; and new editions to Dudamel's Pan-American Music Initiative — now its fifth year — which is close to the conductor's heart. The L.A. Phil will also embark on a two-week tour through South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
'Together, we have reimagined what an orchestra can be, and how it can serve both the community around it and the world at large,' Dudamel said in the season announcement. 'In these remarkable players, I have found both a profound wellspring of generosity, and a visionary commitment to excellence in music-making.'
Dudamel first conducted the L.A. Phil almost 20 years ago at the Hollywood Bowl. In January 2007 he again conducted the orchestra, this time at Disney Hall. Three months later, the L.A. Phil announced he was to become its next music director, beginning with the 2009-2010 season. During his tenure, the charismatic conductor became a bona fide celebrity in the city and elevated the orchestra to wide recognition as the most important in the country.
The search for Dudamel's replacement is ongoing.
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Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
Protests and curfew cancel L.A. Phil and 'Hamlet' as arts groups' losses mount
When Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday issued a curfew for downtown L.A. after the chaos of some ICE protests over the weekend, an unwelcome side effect took hold: Arts organizations inside the curfew zone had to cancel performances, notably "Hamlet" at the Mark Taper Forum and the final night of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Seoul Festival — which also happened to be the Los Angeles Philharmonic's last evening at Walt Disney Concert Hall this season. The curfew remains in effect Wednesday, and Center Theatre Group has again been forced to cancel director Robert O'Hara's world-premiere adaptation of Shakespeare's classic, starring Patrick Ball from the hit Max show "The Pitt." Other organizations including Los Angeles Opera, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad museum and the Japanese American National Museum are grappling with the snowballing effects of the civic unrest compounded by an uncertain future as thousands of National Guard troops and Marines roll into town under President Trump's orders. "As Los Angeles' largest theater company, located in downtown L.A., we are heartbroken by the events unfolding around us and affecting so many in our beautiful and diverse city," Center Theatre Group wrote in a statement. "Our mission is to be a home for everyone who calls themselves an Angeleno." The theater company said it has stayed in close contact with officials at the Music Center, as well as with leadership at other downtown cultural institutions, and that the safety of its patrons, cast, crew and staff was a top priority. The situation remains fluid and the company hopes to open "Parade" at the Ahmanson Theatre next week, as scheduled. The first preview is set for Tuesday, and opening night is on Wednesday. "Hamlet" had been sold to 85% capacity this week, Center Theatre Group said. "As a result of canceling performances of 'Hamet,' we lose approximately $35,000 in ticket sales per performance cancellation, in addition to still paying full production expenses related to the show," CTG said in its statement. "Should the curfews extend into next week, that number would increase significantly when factoring in both 'Hamlet' and 'Parade' cancellations." L.A. Opera is scheduled to present "Rigoletto" on Thursday and Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The concert "Renee Fleming and Friends" is on the calendar for Saturday. A representative for L.A. Opera said the company has not been directly impacted by protest or law enforcement activity, but that it is waiting for an update from city officials about the curfew. For now, all upcoming performances are moving forward, and the company will notify the public of any changes. The company is waiving all exchange fees for ticket holders who want to avoid the downtown area. Tickets can be exchanged online or by calling the box office. "Our thoughts are with the greater Los Angeles community and especially with those who have been directly impacted," L.A. Opera said in a statement. A representative for the Music Center, which includes Disney Hall, the Taper, the Ahmanson and the Dorothy Chandler, said the organization won't know the financial impact for some time. "Our hearts go out to all those who may be personally impacted by the recent events," the center said in a statement. "We remain steadfast in our values, including the protection of free speech and the right to peaceful protest. As always, we will continue to ensure the Music Center campus remains a safe, inclusive and welcoming environment for all." The situation is different for downtown museums, most of which close before the 8 p.m. curfew. MOCA closed its Geffen Contemporary building early on Sunday "out of an abundance of caution" and initially said it expected to reopen as usual on Thursday. However on Wednesday afternoon, a MOCA representative told The Times that the Geffen Contemporary will remain closed for the rest of the week. The durational performance "Police State," staged by Pussy Riot frontwoman Nadya Tolokonnikova, was originally scheduled to continue in the warehouse through Sunday. It is being paused and its conclusion postponed to a later date. (On Sunday Tolokonnikova remained in the museum after it closed, broadcasting sounds of the protests outside, mixed with her heartbeat, to the empty museum.) The main MOCA campus on Grand Avenue was open regular hours Tuesday, although attendance was lower than usual, the representative said. MOCA Grand Avenue will close at 5 p.m. on Thursday and cancel its usual late-night hours. (The museum typically stays open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.) The museum will contact affected ticket holders for refunds or rescheduling options. The Broad museum, also on Grand Avenue, remains open to the public and is monitoring the situation closely with local officials and its onsite security team. Due to the curfew, however, the museum plans to close at 5 p.m. Thursday, which means that its weekly free Thursday evening admission to "Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me" will not be offered. Any ticket reservations for Thursday evening will be honored at any other time during the run of the show, which closes Sept. 28. The Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo suffered a significant amount of graffiti. The museum said it has installed fencing to protect the glass facade of the pavilion. A group of volunteers cleaned up the graffiti earlier this week. "Some areas will require additional, specialized attention due to the surfaces involved," a representative for the museum wrote. "This will entail some unexpected expense, though we don't have an estimate for that yet." The pavilion has been closed to the public since January in preparation for a scheduled renovation, but JANM did postpone a film screening originally scheduled for Tuesday night in its Democracy Center. The museum is evaluating whether to move forward with upcoming public programs on a day-to-day basis. The Little Tokyo Public Safety Assn., which organizes the annual Little Tokyo Sparkle cleanup, is arranging another cleanup effort on Thursday, gathering in JANM's plaza. "We know that the tagging does not represent the majority of those making their voices heard," wrote Board Chairman William T. Fujioka in JANM's monthly email newsletter. "JANM is and always will be a voice for social justice. We continue to stand with our immigrant communities and with those who exercise their constitutional rights to peaceful protest. Peaceful protest can lead to positive change for everyone." Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
18 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Protests and curfew cancel L.A. Phil and ‘Hamlet' as arts groups' losses mount
When Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday issued a curfew for downtown L.A. after the chaos of some ICE protests over the weekend, an unwelcome side effect took hold: Arts organizations inside the curfew zone had to cancel performances, notably 'Hamlet' at the Mark Taper Forum and the final night of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Seoul Festival — which also happened to be the Los Angeles Philharmonic's last evening at Walt Disney Concert Hall this season. The curfew remains in effect Wednesday, and Center Theatre Group has again been forced to cancel director Robert O'Hara's world-premiere adaptation of Shakespeare's classic, starring Patrick Ball from the hit Max show 'The Pitt.' Other organizations including Los Angeles Opera, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad museum and the Japanese American National Museum are grappling with the snowballing effects of the civic unrest compounded by an uncertain future as thousands of National Guard troops and Marines roll into town under President Trump's orders. 'As Los Angeles' largest theater company, located in downtown L.A., we are heartbroken by the events unfolding around us and affecting so many in our beautiful and diverse city,' Center Theatre Group wrote in a statement. 'Our mission is to be a home for everyone who calls themselves an Angeleno.' The theater company said it has stayed in close contact with officials at the Music Center, as well as with leadership at other downtown cultural institutions, and that the safety of its patrons, cast, crew and staff was a top priority. The situation remains fluid and the company hopes to open 'Parade' at the Ahmanson Theatre next week, as scheduled. The first preview is set for Tuesday, and opening night is on Wednesday. 'Hamlet' had been sold to 85% capacity this week, Center Theatre Group said. 'As a result of canceling performances of 'Hamet,' we lose approximately $35,000 in ticket sales per performance cancellation, in addition to still paying full production expenses related to the show,' CTG said in its statement. 'Should the curfews extend into next week, that number would increase significantly when factoring in both 'Hamlet' and 'Parade' cancellations.' L.A. Opera is scheduled to present 'Rigoletto' on Thursday and Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The concert 'Renee Fleming and Friends' is on the calendar for Saturday. A representative for L.A. Opera said the company has not been directly impacted by protest or law enforcement activity, but that it is waiting for an update from city officials about the curfew. For now, all upcoming performances are moving forward, and the company will notify the public of any changes. The company is waiving all exchange fees for ticket holders who want to avoid the downtown area. Tickets can be exchanged online or by calling the box office. 'Our thoughts are with the greater Los Angeles community and especially with those who have been directly impacted,' L.A. Opera said in a statement. A representative for the Music Center, which includes Disney Hall, the Taper, the Ahmanson and the Dorothy Chandler, said the organization won't know the financial impact for some time. 'Our hearts go out to all those who may be personally impacted by the recent events,' the center said in a statement. 'We remain steadfast in our values, including the protection of free speech and the right to peaceful protest. As always, we will continue to ensure the Music Center campus remains a safe, inclusive and welcoming environment for all.' The situation is different for downtown museums, most of which close before the 8 p.m. curfew. MOCA closed its Geffen Contemporary building early on Sunday 'out of an abundance of caution' and initially said it expected to reopen as usual on Thursday. However on Wednesday afternoon, a MOCA representative told The Times that the Geffen Contemporary will remain closed for the rest of the week. The durational performance 'Police State,' staged by Pussy Riot frontwoman Nadya Tolokonnikova, was originally scheduled to continue in the warehouse through Sunday. It is being paused and its conclusion postponed to a later date. (On Sunday Tolokonnikova remained in the museum after it closed, broadcasting sounds of the protests outside, mixed with her heartbeat, to the empty museum.) The main MOCA campus on Grand Avenue was open regular hours Tuesday, although attendance was lower than usual, the representative said. MOCA Grand Avenue will close at 5 p.m. on Thursday and cancel its usual late-night hours. (The museum typically stays open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.) The museum will contact affected ticket holders for refunds or rescheduling options. The Broad museum, also on Grand Avenue, remains open to the public and is monitoring the situation closely with local officials and its onsite security team. Due to the curfew, however, the museum plans to close at 5 p.m. Thursday, which means that its weekly free Thursday evening admission to 'Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me' will not be offered. Any ticket reservations for Thursday evening will be honored at any other time during the run of the show, which closes Sept. 28. The Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo suffered a significant amount of graffiti. The museum said it has installed fencing to protect the glass facade of the pavilion. A group of volunteers cleaned up the graffiti earlier this week. 'Some areas will require additional, specialized attention due to the surfaces involved,' a representative for the museum wrote. 'This will entail some unexpected expense, though we don't have an estimate for that yet.' The pavilion has been closed to the public since January in preparation for a scheduled renovation, but JANM did postpone a film screening originally scheduled for Tuesday night in its Democracy Center. The museum is evaluating whether to move forward with upcoming public programs on a day-to-day basis. The Little Tokyo Public Safety Assn., which organizes the annual Little Tokyo Sparkle cleanup, is arranging another cleanup effort on Thursday, gathering in JANM's plaza. 'We know that the tagging does not represent the majority of those making their voices heard,' wrote Board Chairman William T. Fujioka in JANM's monthly email newsletter. 'JANM is and always will be a voice for social justice. We continue to stand with our immigrant communities and with those who exercise their constitutional rights to peaceful protest. Peaceful protest can lead to positive change for everyone.'
Los Angeles Times
7 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
There's more to Korean music than K-Pop. Young composers show how in L.A. Phil's Seoul Festival
K-pop. Oscar-celebrated cinema. Samsung in the living room. Political urgency in the press. However prominent Korean culture seems to be, there is surprising lack of coverage of the classical scene at large. Already at 21, Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status. Myung-Whun Chung, whose conducting career began as an assistant to Carlo Maria Giulini at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1977, was just selected, over a veteran Italian conductor, to head La Scala in Milan with the blessing of Italy's nationalist president, Giorgia Meloni. And now the L.A. Phil has turned to the South Korean capital for an eight-day Seoul Festival as a follow-up to its revelatory Reykjavik and Mexico City festivals. Unsuk Chin, today's best-known Korean composer, is the curator. She is, in fact, today's only Korean composer who's well known internationally. Despite a seeming wealth of renowned performers, Korea remains a musically mysterious land. Most of what happens, even now, in Seoul's classical music scene doesn't roam far from Seoul. The mostly youngish composers and performers in the first L.A. Phil festival event, an exceptional Green Umbrella concert of new music at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, were all discoveries. Korean music is a discovery for much of the world. But California does have a head start. Chin, whose music has a visceral immediacy, has long fit in to L.A., championed by Kent Nagano at Los Angeles Opera and by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel and Susanna Mälkki at the L.A. Phil. Moreover, ancient Korean court music and its instruments became an obsession with the echt-California composer Lou Harrison. Its noble gentility has been subtly adding to the DNA of the California sound. Only two Korean composers before Chin have made an indelible impression on the world stage, and both, as is Chin, became avant-gardist emigres. As outsiders, they have striking relevance. Isang Yun ((1917–1995) had a shocking career. A brilliant pioneering composer who melded traditional Asian music with contemporary techniques, Yun had been briefly arrested for his participation in the Korean independence movement of the early 1940s. He fled to West Germany, where he became a prominent composer before being kidnapped and returned to Korea. Imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a death sentence, he was eventually freed thanks to pressure from a consortium of internationally influential musicians (Igor Stravinsky, György Ligeti and Herbert von Karajan among them) and returned to West Berlin. And then there was Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Though famed for having been the first major video artist, Paik was a classically trained pianist and composer who began his career following in Schoenberg's footsteps by writing 12-tone music. His route to video was an erratic one that began when he fell under the spell of John Cage and became one of the more outrageous members of the anarchic Fluxus art and performance movement. I once asked Paik, who taught briefly at CalArts when it opened, about whether he always considered himself a composer. He said only a yuppie — 'you know, those people who work in a bank during the day and only go to concerts at night' — would think he wasn't. The Yun and Paik zeitgeist of going your own original and expressive sonic way while always being aware of tradition, whether embraced or rejected, pervades Chin, 63, and the generation of Korean composers who came after her and whom she has invited to the festival. Chin herself left Seoul to study with Ligeti in Europe. The Hungarian composer's music, thanks to Salonen's advocacy, is also in the L.A. blood. The orchestra has, of course, had a Ligeti festival. For the Green Umbrella concert, Chin revealed a great range of approaches among the four exceedingly interesting next-generation composers. She also invited a dazzling array of soloists specializing in Western and Korean instruments as well as the magnificent Ensemble TIMF, which joined the L.A. Phil New Music Group. All were making debuts alongside the luminous and poetic young conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi. In the four pieces (each about 15 minutes), Korean, European and American traditions can serve as sources for reinvention. Juri Seo's Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, given a dashing performance by pianist HieYon Choi, consists of short movements that include a jazz fughetta and Schumann-esque romanticism. Sun-Young Pahg's austerely formal 'L'autre moitié de Silence' for daegeum and ensemble featured Hong Yoo as soloist bending notes and bending time on the bamboo flute used in Korean folk and traditional music. In Yie-Eun Chun's spritely Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the L.A. Phil for the festival, scale-like passages got the Paganini treatment from soloist SooBeen Lee. Dongjin Bae's 'reflective — silky and rough' for standard western flute and spacey strings, another L.A. Phil commission, had an ancient feel with its silences and breathy solos played with enthralling focus by Yubeen Kim. Chin's 'Gougalon (Scenes From a Street Theater),' which ended the program, is a riotous evocation of Hong Kong. Rather than musically reproduce street sounds and people sounds, Chin transforms them into spectacular orchestral chatter. The effect is what their joy must sound like, what their meals must sound like, what their walking and talking and laughing and crying must sound like in a language you don't understand because exhilaration isn't language. All of this is music by distinct personalities, each striving for something sonically personal. Musically mixing East and West dispenses with regulations when crossing borders and becomes an an act of individuality and often resistance. Chun's do-re-me scales become cockeyed before you grasp what's happening. Bae's silky flute, when rough underneath, evoke the feeling you might get when taking a break from Bach an instant before the world's most compelling composer overtakes your own senses. The conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi favors transparency and sensuality at the same time with expressive gestures that seem to magically mold sound. Each piece had different instrumental combinations involving both L.A. Phil and TIMF players. Everything worked. The festival continues with weekend orchestra concerts featuring different mixes of four more new Korean scores commissioned by the L.A. Phil, Chin's 2014 Clarinet Concerto and a pair of Brahms concertos. A chamber music concert with works by Schumann and Brahms played by Korean musicians is the closing event Tuesday. Meanwhile, for a better idea of what Unsuk Chin is up to, last month in Hamburg Kent Nagano conducted the premiere of her new opera, 'The Dark Side of the Moon.' It is a philosophical reflection on the relationship between quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung that profoundly reflects how ideas and traditions interact. It can be watched on YouTube.
