Special Guest Susan Narucki Joins for Program Which Includes Works by Tüür, Mackey and Andriessen

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2009, AT 8 PM

Media Sponsor: Los Angeles Magazine

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2008/09 Green Umbrella series continues at Walt Disney Concert Hall with Assistant Conductor Lionel Bringuier leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and soprano Susan Narucki in a concert featuring works by Erkki-Sven Tüür, Steven Mackey and Louis Andriessen, Tuesday, January 20, at 8 p.m.

The program opens with Tüür’s direct and high-energy Architectonics III, (postmetaminimal dream), performed by the New Music Group under Bringuier’s direction. This third in a series of seven pieces was written in 1990 for the California EAR Unit. Following is Mackey’s Ars Moriendi, a piece commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation for the Borromeo Quartet, and performed by LA Phil members Mark Kashper and Robert Vijay Gupta, violins, Dale Hikawa Silverman, viola, and Barry Gold, cello. This extremely personal work commemorates the death of the composer’s father, and takes the listener through each stage of the elder Mackey’s final moments. The program concludes with Bringuier leading the New Music Group, Narucki, serving as a speaker, and four soloists from the Los Angeles Master Chorale in Andriessen’s De Stijl. Andriessen describes the composition as a “musical image of Piet Mondrian’s ‘Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue,’ from 1927…Just like in a painting, five colors are confronted with each other in this work: the four sopranos and the trumpets, the five saxes, the trombones and guitars, the piano solo, and the lower instruments…”

Bringuier began his tenure as Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of the 2007/08 season. In addition to this Green Umbrella program, Bringuier leads four LA Phil subscription concerts in April.

The LA Phil’s groundbreaking Green Umbrella new music series is a tribute to adventurous, open-minded and curious music lovers. The series, with a more-than-20-year history, offers two more concerts during the 2008/09 season, featuring the LA Phil New Music Group led by Esa-Pekka Salonen or guest conductors. The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group was launched in 1981 under composer-in-residence and Philharmonic percussionist William Kraft, as one of several contemporary music projects envisioned and organized by the Philharmonic’s Managing Director at the time, Ernest Fleischmann. Praised for its imaginative programming and expert and enthusiastic performances, the New Music Group is recognized as one of the premier performing groups of its kind in the country.

Remaining concerts for the 2008/09 Green Umbrella series are: Salonen conducting the New Music Group in a program of four Philharmonic-commissioned new works and his own Floof (April 7, 2009); and John Adams leading a Composer’s Choice program featuring an LA Phil-commissioned new work (May 12, 2009).

An Upbeat Live pre-concert event takes place in Walt Disney Concert Hall’s BP Hall one hour prior to the concert, and is free to all ticket holders. Steven Stucky, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Consulting Composer for New Music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, hosts.

LIONEL BRINGUIER is one of the brightest of a new generation of conductors. With the start of the 2008/09 concert season, pianist, cellist and conductor Lionel Bringuier entered his third year as Chef associé of the Orchestre de Bretagne and his second as Assistant Conductor to Esa Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Bringuier makes his debut this season with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, among others, and has received reinvitations to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y Leon and Basel Symphony Orchestra. Winner of the 49th Besançon Young Conductors Competition in 2005, he was awarded the unanimous decision of the Besançon jury, the “Prix du Public” as audience favorite, as well as the top vote of the musicians of the festival orchestra, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. Since his triumph, he has conducted some of the top orchestras in the world including the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Born in Nice, France in 1986, Bringuier began his musical studies at the Academy of Nice at the age of 5 and gave his first cello recital before the Countess of Paris at the age of 9. At 13, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (C.N.S.M.) in the cello class of Philippe Muller and furthered his academic work in chamber music, choral singing and jazz studies. In 2000, he began his conducting studies at the C.N.S.M. in Paris under the tutelage of Zsolt Nagy. He has also participated in masterclasses with Peter Eötvös and János Fürst. In June 2004, he obtained from the C.N.S.M. de Paris his diploma in cello with "Mention Très Bien à l'unanimité" as well as a "Mention Très Bien à l'unanimité" in conducting. Other distinctions include the “Médaille d’or à l’unanimité avec les felicitations du jury à l’Académie Prince Rainier III de Monaco,” the “médaille d’or” from the Lord Mayor of Nice as well as first prize in a competition organized by the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra in Ostrava. Bringuier is also a prizewinner of the Swiss Foundation Langart and the Cziffra Foundation.

Soprano SUSAN NARUCKI is recognized as one of today’s leading interpreters of contemporary music. Her engagements during the 2007/08 season included Elliott Carter’s Tempo e Tempi with James Levine and MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, Stravinsky’s Les Noces (in a new orchestration by Steven Stucky) with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gerard Grisey’s L’icône paradoxale at IRCAM’s Festival Agora with the Orchestra of Radio France at the Cité de la Musique, and Liza Lim’s Mother Tongue with the ELISION Ensemble at the Maerzmuzik Festival in Berlin. Her portrayal of “Mama” in Elliott Carter’s opera What Next? (directed by Christopher Alden) was praised by The New York Times as “compelling and luminous.” Narucki’s recent appearances include the Cleveland Orchestra with Pierre Boulez, the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music with Marin Alsop, and the New York premiere of Oliver Knussen’s Songs for Sue at Zankel Hall under the baton of the composer. The soprano has been a guest with the Brentano String Quartet, the Orion String Quartet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Norfolk, Yellow Barn, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals and has appeared in recital with pianist Boris Berman in works Schoenberg and Mussorgsky at Yale University. Narucki earned both Grammy and Cannes awards for her recordings of the works of George Crumb and a 2002 Grammy nomination in the Best Classical Vocal Performance for Elliott Carter’s Tempo e Tempi, all on Bridge Records. Her extensive discography includes Louis Andreissen’s Writing to Vermeer on Nonesuch, and the Netherlands Opera production of Claude Vivier's Rêves D'un Marco Polo on Opus Arte DVD. Of her recent release on Koch of song cycles of Aaron Jay Kernis, Opera News wrote “There seem to be no heights she is unafraid to scale.” Narucki joined the faculty of the University of California at San Diego in Fall of 2008 as Professor of Voice.

The Grammy-nominated LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE is led by Music Director Grant Gershon, who also serves as associate conductor/chorus master of the LA Opera. The Chorale, currently celebrating its 45th season, is in its sixth season as the resident chorus at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Among other accolades, the chorus received the 2006 WQXR Gramophone Award for its 2005 Nonesuch Recording of Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations), and “Voices Within,” one of the Chorale’s highly successful outreach programs, earned the coveted Chorus America Education Outreach Award in 2008. Founded in 1964, the Chorale was the first organization in the nation to offer a complete season of great choral masterworks. In addition to presenting its own concert series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Chorale performs regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Chorale has recorded two other CDs under Gershon’s baton, including Daniel Variations by Steve Reich on Nonesuch Records, and an RCM recording featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen’s first choral work, Two Songs to Poems of Ann Jäderlund, and Itaipu, by Philip Glass. It previously released three CDs under the baton of Music Director Emeritus Paul Salamunovich on RCM, including the Grammy-nominated Lauridsen-Lux Aeterna. The Chorale is also featured on the soundtracks of numerous major motion pictures, including Lady in the Water, License to Wed, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Waterworld.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, presents the finest in orchestral and chamber music, recitals, new music, jazz, world music and holiday concerts at two of the most remarkable places anywhere to experience music – Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to a 30-week winter subscription season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the LA Phil presents a 12-week summer festival at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and home of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. In fulfilling its commitment to the community, the Association’s involvement with Los Angeles extends to educational programs, community concerts and children's programming, ever seeking to provide inspiration and delight to the broadest possible audience.

EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2009, AT 8 PM

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, 111 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles



Green Umbrella



LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC NEW MUSIC GROUP

LIONEL BRIGUIER, conductor

SUSAN NARUCKI, female speaker

MEMBERS OF THE LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE

CLAIRE FEDORUK, RACHELLE FOX, sopranos

AMY FOGERSON, ALICE KIRWAN MURRAY, mezzo-sopranos

GRANT GERSHON, music director

MARK KASHPER, violin

ROBERT VIJAY GUPTA, violin

DALE HIKAWA SILVERMAN, viola

BARRY GOLD, cello



TÜÜR Architectonics III (postmetaminimal dream)

MACKEY Ars Moriendi

ANDRIESSEN De Stijl



Media sponsor: Los Angeles Magazine



An Upbeat Live pre-concert event takes place one hour prior to the concert in BP Hall at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and is free to all ticket holders. Steven Stucky, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Consulting Composer for New Music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, hosts.

Tickets ($24 - $49) are on sale now at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office, online at LAPhil.com, or via credit card by phone at 323.850.2000. A limited number of $10 rush tickets for seniors and full time students may be available at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office two hours prior to the performance. Valid identification is required; one ticket per person; cash only. Groups of 12 or more may be eligible for special discounts for selected concerts and seating areas. For information, please call 323.850.2000.

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