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Posts tagged 'Los Angeles Philharmonic'

New Works by Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon at the LA Phil

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 29, 2016, 12:04 p.m.

(photo: Kate Soper: © The New Yorker; Mario Diaz de Leon: © Katrin Albert)

The Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella series has become a vital part of America's New Music landscape, commissioning and featuring composers and performers from around the country. On Saturday, October 1, Green Umbrella presents a "composers-as-performers" concert, featuring World Premieres of new works by PSNY Composers Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon, along with PSNY composer Timo Andres performing a new work written for him by Ingram Marshall.

Soper will perform her new work, The Ultimate Poem is Abstract—written for soprano and ensemble—alongside the LA Phil's New Music Group, conducted by John Adams. This work questions the relationship between voice, text, music, and abstraction, setting texts by Soper, Wallace Stevens, and many other contemporary writers in a work that points toward vocal experience over vocal description. To get in the spirit, check out a performance of Soper's Cipher with the composer joining recent PSNY Greenroom artist violinist Josh Modney:

Diaz de Leon's new work, Lightmass, for brass ensemble and electronics, is a three-movement work that turns these two concepts—light and mass—into a descriptive and narrative musical dialectic. The three movements are inspired by urban spaces and architecture; in Diaz de Leon's words, "outward manifestations of inner experience, a living building as a divine body." Listen to a performance of de Leon's Trembling Time II by the Talea Ensemble:

Tags: brass quintet Kate Soper Los Angeles Philharmonic Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group Mario Diaz de Leon Timo Andres

Andrew Norman Premieres "Split" at the New York Philharmonic

by Ted Gordon on Dec. 8, 2015, 11:24 a.m.

As Will Robin writes in his recent in-depth profile on Andrew Norman in The New York Times, a premiere of a new work by Norman is "a major event in the music world." Describing his somewhat hermetic, labor-intensive compositional practice, Norman reveals his dedication to the orchestral institution: "I love the orchestra, and I believe in it, and I think there’s a future there, and I think we should all be trying as hard as we possibly can to figure out where that medium can go."

On the heels of his successful premiere of Switch at the Utah Symphony, and in anticipation of a new commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Norman will see his new work for the New York Philharmonic, entitled Split, premiere on December 10th, performed by pianist Jeffrey Kahane. Picking up on ludic cues from Switch, Split also involves a game-like architecture of percussive activation of large swaths of instruments—a feature that Norman culls from our saturated world of media, games, and screens.

Clearly, Norman's vibrant, interactive musical style has resonated strongly with the contemporary orchestral landscape. In 2015, he has been one of the top ten most performed living composers in America, with nineteen performances of his orchestral works alone. And, only a few years after his Companion Guide to Rome was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Norman's Play, recently recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Of course, Play has already shown up on year-end top-ten lists from NPR, Rhapsody, and others; Alex Ross and other critics have hailed it as "a modern classic".

Tags: Andrew Norman Grammy Awards Jeffrey Kahane Los Angeles Philharmonic New York Philharmonic Pulitzer Prize Utah Symphony

Christopher Cerrone in Los Angeles, Albany, Charleston, and more...

by Ted Gordon on May 19, 2015, 4:50 p.m.

Just after being awarded this year's prestigious Rome Prize, PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone has a slew of performances and premieres throughout the US before heading off to Italy. Last Friday, May 15th, saw the premiere of Cerrone's Four Naomi Songs at EMPAC, as a part of the composer collective Sleeping Giant's residency. Performed by The Dogs of Desire, the Albany Symphony Orchestra's resident new music ensemble, along with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Cerrone's songs were accompanied by contributions from the other composers in the collective—which includes Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Jacob Cooper, and Robert Honstein. Check out a preview of the Naomi Songs, with Cerrone, Bleckmann, and Andres, here:

Coming up next is Cerrone's premiere of The Pieces That Fall to Earth by the LA Philharmonic on May 26th. Commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, the piece is a symphonic setting of poems by Kay Ryan. The premiere takes place as part of the LA Phil's Green Umbrella series and will be conducted by John Adams with soprano Hila Plitmann as soloist.

Rounding out Cerrone's activities in May, The Living Earth Show will be performing his Double Happiness, along with Timo Andres' You Broke It, You Bought It and Adrian Knight's Family Man at the Spoleto USA Festival on May 28th. Check out the band performing Andres' piece at San Francisco's Mission Science Workshop below.