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  • WDCH
  • GEHRY + MUSIC: ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, DEBORAH BORDA AND STEPHANIE BARRON IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANK GEHRY AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL
  • Jan. 11, 2016
  • Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 8 pm

    Tickets on sale Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 10 a.m.

    Los Angeles, Monday, January 11, 2016 – In conjunction with the special exhibition Frank Gehry, on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) through March 20, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and LACMA present Gehry + Music: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Deborah Borda, and Stephanie Barron in conversation with Frank Gehry at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Thursday, February 4, 2016 at 8 pm. This program – the third in a series which focuses on Gehry’s three areas of interest: art, science and music –will focus on Gehry’s process and collaboration during the planning and construction of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

    Joining Gehry for this conversation are Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Laureate for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992 until 2009; Deborah Borda, President and CEO, Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Stephanie Barron, LACMA’s senior curator of Modern Art and curator of Frank Gehry.

    Tickets are on sale Tuesday, January 12 at 10 am. 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.

    Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947.  Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned over five decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe and Asia.  His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, the Pritzker Prize, the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture), the Praemium Imperiale Award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Friedrich Kiesler Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and the Getty Medal. Notable projects include: Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Expansion at the University of Minnesota; Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague; DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Maggie’s Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, Scotland; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; Hotel Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain; Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Ontario; Peter B. Lewis Science Library in Princeton, New Jersey; Lou Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada; New Campus for New World Symphony in Miami, Florida; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City; Opus Hong Kong Residential; Signature Theatre in New York City; House for the Make it Right Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana; Biomuseo in Panama; the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France; the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and the West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California. Current projects include: King Street Development in Toronto, Ontario; Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; Battersea Power Station Development, London, United Kingdom; Grand Avenue Development, Los Angeles, California; Facebook Campuses in New York City, Seattle, London and Dublin; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; and the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. Projects under construction include the LUMA / Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France; Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, Germany; and the Ohr O. Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi.

    Deborah Borda’s career has been distinguished by her creative leadership, commitment to innovation, and progressive outlook on the role of the orchestra in the 21st century. Prior to becoming President and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2000, she was Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic for a decade, General Manager of the San Francisco Symphony, and President of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In Los Angeles, Borda designed an acclaimed business and curatorial plan, which restored the Philharmonic to robust artistic and fiscal health; oversaw the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the addition of a new shell to the Hollywood Bowl, the LA Phil’s summer home; expanded artistic programming at both venues; and spearheaded the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel as Music Director. Under Borda’s leadership, the LA Phil has made ambitious, forward-looking advances in its artistic and social objectives. The orchestra maintains the most active commissioning program in the country and has garnered international acclaim for its interdisciplinary productions and work with new technologies. In the community, the orchestra has become a valued resource, offering such programs as YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), which has become a model for effecting social change through music on a national stage. A Bennington/Royal College of Music alumnus and a former professional violist, Borda is in demand internationally as a consultant and lecturer. In 2015 she became the first arts executive to join the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership as a Hauser Leader-in-Residence.

    Esa-Pekka Salonen has a restless innovation that marks him as one of the most important artists in classical music. Salonen is 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. This season will find him as the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, a three-year position. He is Artistic Director and cofounder of the annual Baltic Sea Festival, which invites celebrated artists to promote unity and ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea. Salonen takes the Philharmonia Orchestra to the Edinburgh International Festival, the BBC Proms, on tour in Switzerland and France, and will lead the Myths and Rituals festival, an exploration of Stravinsky's work that continues into next season. He will make guest appearances with the North German and Bavarian radio symphony orchestras; the New York, Vienna, and Los Angeles philharmonics; the Orchestre de Paris; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the joint forces of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, united for the first time, in addition to conducting Strauss's Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera and Bartók's Le Château de Barbe-Bleue and Poulenc's La Voix Humaine at the Paris Opera. Salonen's work combines intricacy and technical virtuosity with playful rhythmic and melodic innovations. His pieces for symphony orchestra include LA Variations (1996), Foreign Bodies (2001), Insomnia (2002), Wing on Wing (2004), and Nyx (2011), as well as two concertos: for pianist Yefim Bronfman and for violinist Leila Josefowicz. The latter was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award and was featured in a 2014 international Apple ad campaign for iPad. In 2014 the Tonhalle Zurich Orchestra, where he was the first-ever Creative Chair, premiered Karawane for orchestra and chorus, to great acclaim. Karawane will be performed this season by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic. Salonen and the Philharmonia have curated landmark multi-disciplinary projects, such as the award-winning RE-RITE and Universe of Sound installations, which allow the public to conduct, play, and step inside the Philharmonia with Salonen through audio and video projections. Salonen also drove the development of an app for iPad, The Orchestra, which allows the user unprecedented access to the internal workings of eight symphonic works.

    Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator and Modern Art Department Head at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been responsible for more than 100 exhibitions over the past 40 years, several of which have been designed by Frank Gehry, including “The Russian Avant- Garde: 1910-1930: New Perspectives”; “German Expressionist Sculpture”; “ Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany”; “Exiles + Émigrés – The Flight of European Artists from Hitler” and recent exhibitions on Ken Price and Alexander Calder.  She has been responsible for the David Hockney retrospective, “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images”, “Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures” and most recently “New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933”. Ms. Barron has been decorated twice by the German government, receiving the Order of Merit, First Class and the Commanders Cross. Her exhibitions and publications have five times been voted the best in the United States by the International Art Critics Association. Ms. Barron is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Art Advisory Panel of the IRS. She is a trustee of the John Baldessari and Mike Kelley Foundations.

    Designed by architect Frank Gehry, Walt Disney Concert Hall (WDCH) is an internationally recognized architectural landmark and one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world. From the stainless steel curves of its striking exterior to the state-of-the-art acoustics of the hardwood-paneled main auditorium, the 3.6-acre complex embodies the unique energy and creative spirit of the city of Los Angeles and its orchestra. Thanks to the vision and generosity of Lillian Disney, the Disney family, and many other individual and corporate donors, Los Angeles has a new “living room” in which it enjoys the music of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and visiting artists and orchestras from around the world.

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  • Contact:

    Sophie Jefferies, sjefferies@laphil.org, 213.972.3422
    Lisa Bellamore, lbellamore@laphil.org, 213.972.3689
    Photos: 213.972.3034