LA PHIL's West Coast, Left Coast Festival Celebrates California’s Musical Culture November 21 - December 8, 2009

Creative Chair John Adams Curates the Three-Week Multi-Disciplinary Festival

The distinctive qualities that make California a sympathetic refuge for creative renegades – from its unique landscapes that have inspired numerous masterpieces to the juxtaposed attitudes of the state’s northern and southern regions – are all explored musically in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s West Coast, Left Coast festival. Curated by the LA Phil’s new Creative Chair, John Adams, the unprecedented three-week multi-disciplinary series of events acknowledges the West Coast’s, particularly California’s, distinct musical culture and attempts to answer the questions – how did this come about and what does it all mean? In focusing on California as a land of possibility, the varied events that make up the festival provide attendees an opportunity to immerse themselves completely in music from many sources, as well as in symposia, film screenings and other events, all focusing on the West Coast philosophy.

“The West Coast, Left Coast festival is a celebration of music that is, in a sense, native born, arising from the curious and unique nature of the California sensibility,” says Adams. “When it comes to music we are still a young culture, younger than the East Coast and younger for sure than Europe or the great traditions of the Orient and the Middle East. I am not even certain that there is a single ‘West Coast sensibility.’ Part of the aim of the festival is to discover whether there is indeed such an identifying characteristic in what we do. Certainly what seems to set us apart as West Coast composers is a particular absence of orthodoxy and an openness to influences and stimuli that may come from any number of sources, whether it’s John Cage listening to ambient sounds in the environment, or Harry Partch making microtonal instruments out of recycled junk, or Brian Wilson singing his quintessential Southern California lyrics, or Lou Harrison creating an alchemy of Balinese gamelans and ancient Greek tuning modes, or Frank Zappa incorporating Varèsian sonorities and Stravinskian rhythms into his utterly individual music. As all of these pioneers and experimenters showed us, there is much to celebrate and to explore in our own backyard – both figuratively and literally! – and our festival is dedicated to that spirit.”

The festival is comprised of a wide range of musical and other events woven together to present a solid framework of the diversity of California sound and features a diversity of California artists. The festival’s first classical subscription performance features LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel as he leads the Philharmonic in a program of former LA Phil Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s LA Variations, Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto and Adams’ City Noir, November 27 – 29.  It also offers other ancillary events including a symposium as well as sound/video and photo installations in Walt Disney Concert Hall’s BP Hall. Some of the festival's musical events will take place off-site in various Los Angeles venues.

Complete festival programming:

Saturday, November 21, at 9:30 p.m.
EUREKA! Festival Opening Event
Kronos Quartet
Terry Riley
Matmos
Mike Einziger

Sunday, November 22, at 7 p.m.
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon, music director
Sergio "Checo" Alonso, folk harp

LAURIDSEN Mid-Winter Songs
MARSHALL Savage Altars (Los Angeles premiere)
DAVID O Map of Los Angeles
WHITACRE Cloudburst

The Master Chorale spotlights music by four Left Coast composers, including the L.A. premiere of Savage Altars by Ingram Marshall, the New Yorker who “found his voice” when he came to the West Coast in the 1970s.

Tickets: call 213-972-7282 or visit LAMC.org

Friday, November 27, at 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 28, at 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 29, at 2 p.m.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Marino Formenti, piano

SALONEN LA Variations
HARRISON Piano Concerto
ADAMS City Noir (LAPA commission)

Adams’ new work is about Los Angeles and was commissioned with this festival in mind.

Sunday, November 29, at 7:30pm
Piano Spheres: California Keyboard
Gloria Cheng, Vicki Ray, Mark Robson, Susan Svrcek, pianos

CAGE Music for Amplified Toy Pianos
COWELL Anger Dance
COWELL The Harper-Minstrel Sings
COWELL Fleeting
COWELL Fabric
COWELL The Fairy Answer
POWELL Settings
KRAFT Requiescat
JARVINEN Queen of Spain
LESEMANN Nataraja
NAIDOO Bad Times Coming
LENTZ Nightbreaker

Displaying powerhouse technique while bringing contemporary works to life, the innovative Los Angeles-based Piano Spheres explores the sounds and styles of notable California composers.

Tuesday, December 1, at 8 p.m.
Green Umbrella
Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group
John Adams, conductor
Kronos Quartet
David Barron, singer

MARSHALL Fog Tropes (for brass ensemble)
PARTCH US Highball
ZAPPA Selections from The Yellow Shark
Dog Breath Variations
Uncle meat
Girl in the Magnesium Dress
Questi Cazzi di Piccione
Ruth is Sleeping
G-Spot Tornado

The Yellow Shark, a collection of his avant-garde music played by Ensemble Modern, was the last recording Frank Zappa released before he died.

Thursday, December 3, at 8 p.m.
Friday, December 4, at 11 a.m.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Kronos Quartet, guest ensemble

GOLDSMITH Music for Orchestra
BATES Liquid Interface
WAXMAN Tristan und Isolde Fantasy
NEWMAN Work for Kronos and Orchestra (LAPA commission; world premiere)

Mason Bates uses both halves of his composer/DJ brain to create music that's never heard of categories.

Friday, December 4, at 9 p.m.
The Airborne Toxic Event
featuring the Calder Quartet

Hometown heroes, the timeless and romantic rock quintet is joined by strings and special guests for a one-of-a-kind evening celebrating California’s anthemic indie-rock sound.

Saturday, December 5, at 8 p.m.
Sunday, December 6, at 2 p.m.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
John Adams, conductor
Paul Dresher, Quadrachord
Joel Davel, Marimba Lumina
Joseph Pereira, timpani
Leila Josefowicz, violin

DRESHER Glimpsed from Afar for Quadrachord and Marimba Lumina
KRAFT Timpani Concerto No. 1
ROSENMAN Suite from Rebel Without a Cause
ADAMS The Dharma at Big Sur

The amazing Josefowicz plays The Dharma at Big Sur’s electric violin solo, composed for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Sunday, December 6, at 8 p.m.
Songs of the Sun
Brian Wilson
Dave Alvin
Additional special guests to be announced

One of California’s most iconic and influential songwriters and vocalists, Brian Wilson performs a very special set for this LA PHIL festival celebrating the Left Coast. Downey’s own roots-rock hero, Dave Alvin shares his heart and soul through down-to-earth blues and modern Americana music.

Tuesday, December 8, at 8 p.m.
Jazz Concert: Beat Poets
Charles Lloyd Quartet
Michael McClure, poet performer
Kurt Elling, Joshua Redman, Christian McBride, Peter Erskine and Alan Broadbent, special guests
Other readers TBD

The poetry of the Beat Generation and the bebop of jazz were indelibly linked by their hip non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. The audience will have an opportunity to relive those heady days with some seminal Beat poems and jazz with a fresh twist from some of today’s finest artists including the LA Phil’s own Christian McBride and Redman with a new take on Kerouac’s “Blues & Haikus.”


Walt Disney Concert Hall – BP Hall/Lobby (throughout the festival)

MARSHALL Alcatraz (sound/video installation)

From the team of Ingram Marshall (music) and Jim Bengston (photography), this extraordinary work – which captures the feelings and thoughts of those who inhabited the island Alcatraz – was created while Marshall lived in the San Francisco Bay area (1973-1985).

Deborah O’GRADY Dreaming Coyote, Dreaming the World (photo installation)

O’Grady’s video installation takes a look back at her photographic exploration of California using special projected text and landscape imagery selected to “loosen the grip of our ocular epistemology and allow imagination to re-enter our encounters with the land.”

OFF-SITE EVENTS

REDCAT
631 W. 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Wednesday, November 11 – 14, 8:30 p.m.
Parades & Changes, Replays (2008)
A re-interpretation of the celebrated collaboration between Anna Halprin and Morton Subotnick
Anne Collod, conception and artistic direction
Morton Subotnick, music

This pinnacle work came out of the 60s, when Morton Subotnick – one of the pioneers of electronic music and a founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center – was teaching at Mills College and developing one of the most important technological breakthroughs in the genre.

General admission $25-30 [Students $20-25, CalArts students, faculty and staff $12-18] Tickets: Visit redcat.org or call 213.237.2800.

First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
1220 2nd Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401

Saturday, November 14, at 2 p.m.
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus
A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS

Highlighting various historic influences and developments in California, this program features Christmas-related music from Spain, France, China and Mexico, as well as works by contemporary California composers Conte, Holmes, Adams, La Roccha and Gibson.

PRE-CONCERT DISCUSSION – 1pm
Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic, will lead a discussion on historical influences in California as demonstrated in this program, relating it all to the festival’s theme of California as a sympathetic refuge for creative renegades.

Tickets: Call 626.793.4231, Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Saturday, November 14, at 8 p.m.
Jacaranda

ADAMS Road Movies
HARRISON Solstice
MARSHALL Soe-Pa, for amplified guitar w/ reverb and loops
ADAMS Shaker Loops

Santa Monica-based group Jacaranda presents a concert of California composers, including two works by Festival Director John Adams.

Tickets: Call 800.595.4TIX or visit JacarandaMusic.org.

The Getty Center, Los Angeles 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049 Sunday, November 22, at 3 p.m. Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster Deep Listening® Experimental artists Pauline Oliveros (accordion) and Stuart Dempster (trombone) present the transformative experience of Deep Listening®, a philosophy and practice developed by Oliveros in San Francisco that distinguishes between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. Co-presented by The J. Paul Getty Museum and the LA Phil. Tickets: Free, reservations required – visit Getty.edu or call 310.440.7300.

Zipper Hall at the Colburn School
200 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Monday, November 30, 8 p.m.
Amy X Neuburg and the Cello ChiXtet
The Secret Language of Subways

San Francisco-based singer, composer and electronic instrument performer Amy X Neuburg bridges the boundaries between classical, experimental and popular music in her California take on New York City in this song cycle about the inane and perpetually unfinished businesses of love and war.

Co-presented by The Colburn School and the LA Phil

$15 tickets; Los Angeles Philharmonic Association selling tickets

Grand Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Saturday, December 5, 2 – 4 p.m.
Symposium – “The Art of the State”
John Adams, Phil Lesh, Thomas Newman and Kevin Starr

Audiences can engage more deeply with the festival’s themes and enjoy a first-hand curatorial perspective at this lively public discussion of “West Coast, Left Coast” and its implications for the future of music in California.

$10 tickets; Los Angeles Philharmonic Association selling tickets.

Source (Information/photo): LA Philharmonic Orchestra