Los Angeles, CA (October 28, 2019) - The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series at Walt Disney Concert Hall continues its tradition of providing audiences with intellectually daring forays into new music with its 2019/20 season. Overseen by LA Phil Creative Chair John Adams and performed by the LA Phil New Music Group, the Green Umbrella series invents the future of sound with each unique partnership of living composers and masterful musicians. The 2019/20 season advances this vision with a vibrant palette of innovative performances, with each conductor collaborating with guest artists to curate their respective programs.

The series gets underway November 5 with a cello-centric performance co-curated by Adams and rising star cellist Jay Campbell. Though the two had never met before Adams approached Campbell to work on the program, they quickly established a creative rapport to develop the lineup. The resulting program includes LA Phil co-commissioned world premieres from Sky Macklay and Marc Sabat, along with an Eric Wubbels work for cello and piano and Tristan Perich’s work for solo cello and electronics.

The next concert in the series, December 10, honors the music and life of Oliver Knussen, a long-standing friend to the LA Phil. LA Phil Principal Guest Conductor Susanna Mälkki and violinist Leila Josefowicz, both of whom also had long-standing ties with the composer, have put together an evening featuring three of his creations surrounded with chamber-sized music by his friends, colleagues and students Colin Matthews, Helen Grime, Huw Watkins and Jonathan Harvey.

Going into the new year, the series continues on February 4, 2020, with two of the LA Phil’s 2017 Reykjavík Festival stars, composer/conductor Daníel Bjarnason and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. The two join together for an all-Nordic concert featuring composers from Denmark, Finland, and their Icelandic homeland, including Bjarnason’s Possibilities and a world premiere from Thurídur Jónsdóttir, plus a U.S. premiere by the Danish Bent Sørensen.

Next, Ted Hearne’s LA Phil-commissioned Place has its West Coast premiere March 24, as part of the LA Phil’s Power to the People! festival. The program, created by Hearne, Patricia McGregor and Saul Williams, examines gentrification and the complexities of what we call home. Beth Morrison Projects is a co-producer and co-commissioner.

The series continues with the collaboration between composer Du Yun and conductor David Bloom of the New York-based group Contemporaneous on April 21. Yun, whose LA Phil-commissioned Thirst had its world premiere at an LA Phil concert during the 2018/19 season, returns with another new work to accompany two additional world premieres on the program. The wide-ranging lineup begins with Carlos Gutierrez Quiroga’s Jintili for tiny pan flutes and loofahs.

The Green Umbrella’s 2019/20 series concludes with an all-Steve Reich program on June 6. The Noon-to-Midnight anchoring concert culminates with the premiere of a collaboration between Reich and artist Gerhard Richter, conducted by Brad Lubman. Richter provides a computer-generated film of his painting 946-3, resulting in a stream of images interpreted by music and a musical composition visualized by film images.

John Novacek, piano