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  • WDCH
  • THE LA PHIL LAUNCHES THE in/SIGHT SERIES WITH VARÈSE’S AMÉRIQUES, FEATURING SPECIALLY CREATED VIDEO BY REFIK ANADOL AND LED BY ESA-PEKKA SALONEN
  • Oct. 28, 2014
  • Program Also Features Newly-Added Mezzo-Soprano Susan Graham and Includes Music By Herrmann, Weill and Salonen

    Thursday, November 6, 2014, at 8 PM
    Friday, November 7, 2014, at 8 PM
    Sunday, November 9, 2014, at 2 PM

    WHAT: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s multimedia presentation of Edgard Varèse’s Amériques launches the new in/SIGHT series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Thursday and Friday, November 6 and 7, at 8 pm, and Sunday, November 9, at 2 pm. Led by Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen, the program showcases a new video created by gifted young video artist Refik Anadol. Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is also on the program singing selected songs by Weill.

    The presentation of Amériques is accompanied by the new Anadol site-specific architectural video installation, which was developed to illuminate and enhance the Varèse composition and to activate the architecture of Walt Disney Concert Hall. The dynamic visual program created by Anadol uses custom-built algorithmic sound analysis to listen and respond to the music in real time, using architecture as a canvas and light as a material. Additionally, the movements of Salonen, as he conducts, will be captured by next generation Microsoft Kinect hardware and 3-D depth camera analysis to inform the visuals displayed. The result is a powerful and immersive experience for the audience that will engage their visual and auditory senses. In a recent interview with the Huffington Post, Anadol stated regarding this work, “Instead of creating a media screen, there will be a story inside the space. What happens if you add a video layer that speaks to the audience in a whole new experience? We're exploring the boundaries of what is real, what is physical, what is virtual…”

    Leading up to the climactic presentation of Amériques, the concert opens with composer Bernard Herrmann’s iconic Suite from Psycho followed by selected Broadway musical songs from Kurt Weill, performed by Graham – “My Ship” and “One Life to Live,” both written for Lady in the Dark, “September Songs” from Knickerbocker Holiday, and “Speak Low” and “I’m a Stranger Here Myself” from One Touch of Venus. Following on the program is Salonen’s Foreign Bodies. Written in 2000, the piece, among other things, reflects Salonen’s relationship with his adopted hometown of Los Angeles.

    Following intermission the concert concludes with Amériques.

    The LA Philharmonic’s in/SIGHT concerts are enhanced with video installations, and in some cases, additional artistic elements for a complete and immersive experience. Remaining in/SIGHT concerts in the 2014/15 season are: the staged production of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with video, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (January 9 - 11, 2015); the West Coast premiere of Unsuk Chin’s fully-staged opera Alice in Wonderland, featuring unique use of video projection created by director/designer Netia Jones combined with the gonzo illustrations of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas artist Ralph Steadman (February 27 - 28, 2015); and Steve Reich’s Three Tales performed by Ensemble Signal, led by their music director Brad Lubman and accompanied by images from video artist Beryl Korot (May 29, 2015).

    A lauded composer and world-renowned conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen has a restless innovation that marks him as one of the most important artists in classical music. Salonen is currently the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Conductor Laureate for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992 until 2009. The 2014/15 season findd him as the first-ever Creative Chair at the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, which has commissioned a new piece for orchestra and chorus from him and will perform nine other Salonen pieces throughout the season. Salonen opened the 2014/15 season with a performance of Berlioz's Requiem with the Philharmonia Orchestra, will tour extensively throughout Europe and Japan with the Philharmonia, and will lead the “City of Light: Paris 1900-1950” festival as the thematic focus of the season. Throughout their relationship, Salonen and the Philharmonia have curated landmark multi-disciplinary projects, such as the award-winning RE-RITE and UNIVERSE OF SOUND installations, which allow members of the public to conduct, play, and step inside the Philharmonia Orchestra with Salonen through audio and video projections of musicians in performance. Salonen also drove the development of a much hailed app for iPad, The Orchestra, which allows the user unprecedented access to the internal workings of eight symphonic works. Salonen's extensive recording career includes a new album of one of Henri Dutilleux's most important works, recorded with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in the presence of the composer, released in 2013 on Deutsche Grammophon on the composer’s 97th birthday, with the composer present at the launch. In 2012, Salonen’s releases included the first-ever recording of Shostakovich's previously undiscovered opera prologue, Orango, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as Out of Nowhere, featuring Leila Josefowicz and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, a collection of Nyx and Salonen's Violin Concerto, which won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award.

    Born in Istanbul in 1985, Refik Anadol lives and works in Los Angeles.  He holds an MFA degree from the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, as well as an MFA in Visual Communication Design from Istanbul Bilgi University. He is a media artist and director working in the fields of live audio/visual performance and immersive art-in-architecture installations. In particular, his work explores the hybrid spaces of the digital and physical worlds, using technology to create a relationship between architecture and media art. As an artist, designer and spatial thinker, Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the transformation of the subject of contemporary culture requires rethinking the new aesthetic, technique and dynamic perception of space. Anadol builds his work on the nomadic subject’s reaction to, and interactions with, unconventional spatial orientations. Embedding media art into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post-digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. He invites the viewer to visualize alternative realities by re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural formations. Anadol’s work suggests that all spaces and facades have the potential to be utilized as the media artists’ canvas. An award winner in the fields of both art and technology, Anadol has served as artist in residence and guest lecturer around the world. His past site-specific audio/visual performances in the public space include The International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal (Canada), Arts Electronica Festival (Austria), l’Usine | Genève (Switzerland), Arc De Triomf (Spain), Zollverein | SANAA’s School of Design Building (Germany), Santralistanbul Contemporary Art Center (Turkey), Outdoor Vision Festival, Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA), Istanbul Design Biennial (Turkey), and the City of Sydney (Australia).

    Susan Graham – dubbed “America’s favorite mezzo” by Gramophone magazine – rose to the highest echelon of international artists within just a few years of her professional debut, mastering an astonishing range of repertoire and genres along the way. Her operatic roles span four centuries, from Monteverdi’s Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which was written especially for her. Graham won a Grammy award for her collection of Ives songs, and her recital repertoire is so broad that 14 composers from Purcell to Sondheim are represented on her most recent album, Virgins, Vixens & Viragos. Throughout her career, however, this distinctly American artist has been recognized as one of the foremost exponents of French vocal music; a Texas native, she was awarded the French government’s prestigious “Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur,” both for her popularity as a performer in France and in honor of her commitment to French music. Graham’s distinguished discography includes solo albums such as Un frisson francais, a program of French song recorded with pianist Malcolm Martineau for Onyx; C’est ça la vie, c’est ça l’amour!, an album of 20th-century operetta rarities on Erato; and La belle époque, an award-winning collection of songs by Reynaldo Hahn with pianist Roger Vignoles, from Sony. Among the mezzo’s additional honors are Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year and an Opera News Award.

    Complete Program:

    HERRMANN                     Suite from Psycho
    WEILL                            Selected Songs
                                         “My Ship”
                                         “One Life to Live”
                                         “September Song”
                                         “Speak Low”
                                         “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”
    SALONEN                        Foreign Bodies
    VARÈSE                          Amériques (with video)

    Upbeat Live pre-concert events takes place in Walt Disney Concert Hall’s BP Hall one hour before each concert, and are free to all ticket holders. Thomas Neenan, lecturer in music history and music theory at the California Institute of Technology and Director of Music at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades, hosts.

    For full artist biographies, please visit: http://laphil.com

    WHO:         LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC
                      ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, conductor
                      REFIK ANADOL, video artist
                      SUSAN GRAHAM, mezzo-soprano

    WHEN:       Thursday, November 6, 2014, at 8 PM
                      Friday, November 7, 2014, at 8 PM
                      Sunday, November 9, 2014, at 2 PM

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

    HOW TO PURCHASE: Subscriptions and single tickets for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2014/15 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall are currently available. To purchase, please visit LAPhil.com, the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office or any Ticketmaster outlet. To order by phone with credit card, please call the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office at 323.850.2000, or Ticketmaster at 800.745.3000. For more information, please call 323.850.2000.

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  • Contact:

    Sophie Jefferies, 213.972.3422, sjefferies@laphil.org 
    Lisa White, 213.972.3408, lwhite@laphil.org