Project Marks Beginning of Three Year LA Phil Residency for Yuval Sharon

Los Angeles, September 12, 2016 - The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association's new Artist-Collaborator Yuval Sharon, The Industry and composer Rand Steiger will debut their collaborative installation, Nimbus, on October 1 during "Green Umbrella: Noon to Midnight," the LA Phil's daylong event of contemporary music around Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Kicking off a three-year LA Phil residency for director Yuval Sharon, Nimbus is a temporary installation that transforms a transitional space at Walt Disney Concert Hall into a performance site. The installation acts as a time piece for the Concert Hall as Steiger's commissioned music changes over the course of the day, alternating between computer generated musical atmospheres and compositions built from materials recorded by soloists from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. These pieces, spatially distributed over 32 Meyer Sound speakers, alternate with periods of silence interrupted by brief related sounds triggered by motion sensors. 

The installation includes a naturalistic cloud visually realized by Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics and designed by Ed Carlson and Danielle Kaufman. The cloud will be placed above the escalator and staircase that connect the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking garage to the lobby. The installation will be open to the public and can be experienced by anyone who passes by the Concert Hall.

For more information, please visit www.laphil.com/nimbus

Installation Details:

Nimbus
Performance Installation by The Industry
Concept and Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music and Sound Design by Rand Steiger
Visual Realization by Patrick Shearn
Production Design by Ed Carlson and Danielle Kaufman
Recorded Performances by LA Phil Musicians -
          Martin Chalifour, principal concertmaster
          Robert DeMaine, principal cello 
          Marion Arthur Kuszyk, associate principal oboe
          Boris Allakhverdyan, principal clarinet
          Andrew Bain, principal horn
          Thomas Hooten, principal trumpet

Nimbus presented in partnership with Meyer Sound

About Yuval Sharon
"LA's avant-garde opera darling" (Hollywood Reporter) Yuval Sharon has been creating an unconventional body of work exploring the interdisciplinary potential of opera. His productions have been described as "thrilling" (The New York Times), "virtuosic" (Opernwelt), "dizzyingly spectacular" (New York Magazine), "ingenious" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "staggering" (Opera News). In 2016, he made his Wiener Staatsoper debut with a new production of Eötvös' Tri Sestri. He is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his acclaimed production of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, originally produced at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe. In the 2016/17 season, beyond his continued duties as Artistic Director of The Industry, an experimental opera company in Los Angeles, Yuval Sharon will embark on his three year Artist-Collaborator residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While there, he will produce Night and Dreams: A Schubert & Beckett Recital and Lou Harrison's Young Caesar, conducted by Marc Lowenstein. He will also return to Staatstheater Karlsruhe for a new production of Die Walküre, and to the Cleveland Orchestra, where he will originate a new semi-staged production of Pelléas et Mélisande, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. Yuval Sharon founded The Industry, where his inaugural production of Anne LeBaron's hyperopera Crescent City was praised by the Los Angeles Times as, "groundbreaking" and "reshaping LA opera." His second production with The Industry, Christopher Cerrone's Invisible Cities, took place among the everyday life of Union Station, with audiences hearing the live performance on wireless headphones. The production, a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music and hailed as "the opera of the future" by Wired Magazine, was a runaway success.

About Rand Steiger
Rand Steiger's music has been commissioned and performed by many ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, International Contemporary Ensemble, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Southbank Sinfonia, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Talea Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Composer Fellow under André Previn. His Double Concerto was the first piece played on the inaugural Green Umbrella concert in 1987. Soloists he has composed for include Matthew Barley, Maya Beiser, Claire Chase, Daniel Druckman, Peter Evans, Alan Feinberg, George Lewis, Mark Menzies, Susan Narucki, Vicki Ray, and Steven Schick. Throughout his career, Steiger has been involved in computer music research, having held three residencies at IRCAM, and enjoying a long fruitful collaboration with Miller Puckette, the leading computer music researcher of his generation. He was Composer-in-Residence at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology from 2010 to 2013. Many of Steiger's works combine orchestral instruments with real-time digital audio signal processing. They also propose a hybrid approach to just and equal-tempered tuning, exploring the delicate perceptual cusp between a harmony and a timbre that occurs when tones are precisely tuned. Steiger was also active as a conductor specializing in contemporary works until deciding in 2010 to concentrate entirely on composition. Steiger is a Distinguished Professor, and holder of the Conrad Prebys Presidential Chair in the Music Department at U.C. San Diego, and is a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. In 2009 he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University.

About the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under the vibrant leadership of Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, presents an inspiring array of music from all genres - orchestral, chamber and Baroque music, organ and celebrity recitals, new music, jazz, world music and pop - at two of L.A.'s iconic venues, Walt Disney Concert Hall (www.laphil.com) and the Hollywood Bowl (www.hollywoodbowl.com). The LA Phil's season at Walt Disney Concert Hall extends from September through May, and throughout the summer at the Hollywood Bowl. With the preeminent Los Angeles Philharmonic at the foundation of its offerings, the LA Phil aims to enrich and transform lives through music, with a robust mix of artistic, education and community programs.

Subscriptions for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 2016/17 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall are currently available. To purchase, please visit LAPhil.com or the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office. For more information, please call 323.850.2000.

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