Which explains Lauritzen’s participation in this Sunday’s Music Box 2023 which is presented by Chamber Music LA at Zipper Hall at The Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles. The concert will showcase four different chamber music ensembles (Jacaranda Music, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Colburn School’s Chamber Ensemble-In-Residence Quartet Integra and Salastina) performing string quartets written by Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schubert and a composer yet to be identified.

That last composer whose identity is being kept under wraps is where Lauritzen comes in. He has selected a piece of music and removed all details leaving it up to the musicians (Salastina’s Meredith Crawford, Kevin Kumar, Yoshida Masada and Maia Jasper White) and the audience to try to figure out who the composer is. This part of the program is called Sounds Mysterious.

Earlier this week I spoke with Lauritzen about his puzzle, Music Box 2023 and the start of the arts, not just in Los Angeles, but around the world. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

What excites you most about Music Box 2023 and and how do you think that excitement will translate to audiences who will be there?

The thing that really excites me about this particular program is that it’s about the string quartet, which is to chamber music, what the symphony is to orchestral music. It’s the pinnacle of what chamber music is. Every composer who tried to write seriously for chamber music wrote a string quartet. Generally you find in their string quartets some of their most serious, thoughtful, probing, artistic music within that structure. So to explore different styles of the string quartet, I think, is the thing that I’m most looking forward to.

Let’s take the Mozart, which opens the program. If all of four ensembles that are playing play that same Mozart, would a casual listener be able to discern a difference between how each one of them played that piece of music?

I love this question because it speaks to an element of virtuosity that is, I think, not talked about all that often. So what is virtuosity? We think about virtuosity as someone gets up in front of an audience and does something on a violin or a cello or whatever that seems humanly impossible. That’s one element of virtuosity. Another element of virtuosity is an interpretive element. This would be a cool thing for chamber music to do sometime is everybody plays the same piece. Then you can find out. I think even the casual listener would notice a difference and it might be something that you see, even if maybe they couldn’t put words on it.

What’s the criteria you use in selecting that that mystery piece of music?

I’ve done a couple of different options in the past [with Salastina] where I’m interested in both an unknown piece of music by a famous composer and a really awesome piece by an unknown composer. Those are the two extremes of the spectrum. I’m looking for music that structurally hangs together. I’m looking for music that we can hear it and we can identify things about this music that might give us a clue to what it is. I’m not really super trying to trip people up. I’m not trying to find a piece that makes you think it’s by someone and then it’s actually something else. 

What do you feel the state of classical music is in Los Angeles right now?

I think it’s a vibrant scene. We’ve got our really wonderful large companies doing amazing things. And, of course, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is – just ask the New York Times – the most important orchestra in the United States. That’s not just because of Gustavo, although Gustavo is awesome. From the largest company in the city, all the way down to the smallest chamber music organization, we’ve got some of the best musicians on planet Earth here in Los Angeles.

We have to because of the dominant industry that runs this town – the film industry. The music that’s written for film and television demands greatness from the musicians and they deliver every single time. I’m in awe of the incredible artistry of the amazing musicians of this town. It comes down to the musicians. If the music making wasn’t great, then the organizations wouldn’t work out. 

But, you know organizations of all sizes, whether it’s in Los Angeles or across the country and across the world, are having a hard time getting audiences to come back. Even one of the one of the ensembles that’s playing as part of Music Box, Jacaranda Music, is not going to be in existence at the end of this upcoming season. The million dollar question is what will it take to get audiences back? What will it take for people to embrace the collective experience of hearing music together?

You’re right, it’s the million dollar question. It’s so sad. I’ve been a Jacaranda fan for as long as I’ve lived here in Los Angeles. I was just reading yesterday about the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians. They’ve authorized the strike for various reasons. Part of the reason that management has said we can’t raise your pay is that audience levels are at 64%. Before the pandemic they were at 75%. So something has to change to bring those audience levels back. You hit on a key component of it: community.

What did we miss the most when we were all at home isolating from one another? We missed that collective experience. The joy of getting in the same space together and experiencing music There’s great resources online and yes, we can watch anything that we want to watch and listen to anything that we want to listen to. But there’s that electric experience that you’re sharing this space with your friends and neighbors and people that you don’t know that you might get to know afterwards.

The other component for me is storytelling. Classical music is complicated. Classical music is complex. Classical music has a high entry point and I don’t believe that it should. Who I am in the world of classical music is someone who says you may think that it’s a difficult entry point, but here’s how it’s easy. Here’s how this thing that Beethoven did that we think is this grand and glorious thing – yes, it is this grand and glorious thing – but it also relates to what we experience everyday in our world. It’s a combination of reminding folks how incredibly joyful a concert experience is, and then, once they get there, giving them the context and relevance and the kind of emotional experience of what a classical music concert can be. 

Since Schoenberg’s music is the penultimate work on this program and the first work is Mozart, I found this quote from him particularly appropriate. He said, “The way in which I write for string quartet, none can deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart.” We have a through line in this concert that is going to confirm Schoenberg’s quote. Looking forward, what do you think the through line will be? Schoenberg died in 1951, so he’s been gone for quite a while. What do you think the through line as a sequel to this would be, 25, 50 years in the future if we continued forward? 

Classical music should always be looking forward. Classical music should always be creating something new while looking back to the past and not dishonoring the past. What do we love about the great composers in history? We love Beethoven because Beethoven changed everything. We love Mahler because Mahler said everyone’s done everything with symphonies except this thing. And then Mahler blew everything up and created symphonies that no one had created before. So classical music is at its best when it’s looking forward. When it’s looking to what hasn’t been done yet, while still recognizing that there is this rich tradition and history. That as a composer or a musician you’re part of this thing that’s bigger than yourself.

To watch the full interview with Brian Lauritzen, please go here.

Main Photo: Brian Lauritzen (Courtesy Brian Lauritzen)

The post Brian Lauritzen Makes Classical Music Easy appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Chamber music ensemble Salastina’s own description of themselves on their website reads like narration from a trailer for an superhero movie. “By day, we’re world-class performers and studio musicians who’ve played on your favorite films. By night, we’re on a mission to broaden the definition of what classical music was, is, and can be.” Okay, not a Marvel or DC superhero necessarily, but it’s a heroic mission nonetheless. One Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director Maia Jasper White takes very seriously and brings intense joy and passion to the mission.

This weekend Salastina concludes their season with a performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) on Sunday, June 11th at The Huntington Library and Art Museum’s Rothenberg Hall. They are performing Arnold Schoenberg’s arrangement which will feature tenor Thomas Cooley and soprano Clara Osowski. White, along with Co-Artistic Director Kevin Kumar play violin. (I guess that makes them the dynamic duo!)

I recently spoke with White about this particular work, Mahler and the things he said, the ever-shifting ground that classical music finds itself on and the role of identity, both personal and institutional, in their thinking. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Maia Jasper White, please go to our YouTube channel.

Israeli author, Amos Oz, said about his book, The Same Sea, which came out in 1999, “I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.” In your mind, what is it about chamber music that perhaps inspired him to consider it as both a form to emulate and something that could allow him to be more gutsy and immediate?

There’s that famous Nietzsche quote about chamber music being like watching a conversation between highly intelligent people. But I think that’s a really kind of frou frou undersell and a sort of oversimplification of what’s actually happening. For me, chamber music is like when you have a conversation with a friend that you’re very, very close with and you are inspired to think differently because of the presence of your friend and the reception that you get from them and the ideas that they are throwing at you. So that kind of feeling of not necessarily even knowing how you feel or what you think until you articulate it to someone that you trust. I feel like that’s the better allegory for what happens in a properly functioning chamber music context.

Chamber music, by definition, is that there is no one leader. Everybody’s unique part is has its own integrity and is not doubled by any other person. So in that sense, it’s a really great metaphor for the individuality of human beings. Kevin likes to say that chamber music is like where the best parts of being a musician and a human being meet.

I suppose that this author was speaking about is the multi-way communication that you have with close others in a kind of trusting and encouraging space. How that leads you to feel inspired to do things and to articulate yourself in a way that you otherwise might not, and the sense that you are an important part of a bigger picture.

You are finishing the season with Das Lied von der Erde. The last song includes the line “I seek peace for my lonely heart.” Does the selection of this piece as the closing work you’ll perform for this season offer some kind of commentary about the world that we’re living in and who we are as people in very troubled times?

Yes, certainly. I think that we’re always trying to be sensitive about reading the room of the current moment; what’s in the zeitgeist. How are we feeling about life and the universe and everything? The idea of taking tremendous hardship and sublimating it into something beautiful is very, very front of mind for us and was certainly a driver of the selection of this piece. 

If you’re trying to stay in touch with the zeitgeist at the moment, it seems like it changes on almost a daily basis. How do you get to the point where you’re able to just lock in and say, you know what, this is going to be our statement regardless of how things change? 

We try to take our own temperature about what are we really longing to play and share and why is that? Sort of trusting that instinct and, of course, trying our best to market it well and using that kind of language to try to connect with the audience. Are you feeling kind of how we are right now? If you are, you might enjoy this concert. So at a certain point, you do have to leave things up to fate.

What’s at stake for you emotionally when you’re playing a piece like this? If you’re translating these beautiful notes on a page to this emotional experience that the audience is going to have, I can’t imagine that it’s without emotion for you.

That applies across the board for any piece when you’re putting yourself out there and your interpretation out there. It’s a little bit personal. If you’re asking about what are the stakes for me, it is this kind of fear of doing artistic harm by not adequately releasing the beauty of this piece. Certainly when the piece has as much gravitas as the Mahler does, that gets dialed up in some senses.  

It has words for starters. It’s not to say that I feel the relief of being able to hide behind text, but perhaps a little more confident that the overall meaning and the gravitas is going to come through and that I am just a vessel at that point. So in some sense, there is a release for me in a piece like this compared to a Beethoven violin sonata or something like that. 

I recently spoke to the choreographer Alonzo King who has said to his dancers over the years, “I don’t want to see you thinking, I want to see you dancing.” Is it possible to just play and not think while you’re playing?

Yes and no. I like to compare focus and attention to an image of drawing a circle around a four-year-old and telling the four-year-old to stay there. So the four-year-old is likely to leave, and that’s okay. You just have to keep bringing it back. For me, that’s what focus and attention is. And improving that muscle is just bringing your focus back faster and faster and recognizing when you have left the circle.

I think that sometimes non-performers may idealize what that looks like because it appears so effortless and transcendent and hypnotic and all of those things. But as far as the inner experience of a performer, I think the more accurate description is like that. It’s sort of constantly roping yourself back and building that muscle so that you can do so with more and more agility.

In your mission statement you address changing perception or definition of what classical music is. How much does that definition change from season to season, or more broadly, say, in five or ten year increments? 

Even eight years ago I felt that we were still a bit more in rejection of tonality land. It was just starting, but not necessarily being taken as seriously. One thing I would add, too, is that the inclusion of non-Western classical music has also sort of exploded. 

When I get applications for our Sounds Promising Young Artist program, it’s almost as if every single composer is leading with their identity, their ethnic background, their gender, all of these things. What we thought maybe eight years ago was very fresh and new has already become quite ingrained in the new music culture. So it does change a lot.

Right now we’re thinking what does that look like now? What’s that next frontier for modern music? If anything, it feels to me a bit like maybe not leaning so heavily on one’s unique identity. Maybe that’s the beta version of the post-World War Two, “I’m going to invent my own musical language because I’m me and I’m godlike and everyone should care.” So who knows where that’s going to go? But I’m smelling maybe a bit of fatigue with the contemporary classical composers identity capital “I” being the be-all end-all basis for their compositions. Maybe that’s not so interesting and universal to the audiences.

Mahler is quoted as having said, “It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and created anew.” What are the challenges you face as a musician and as a leader to perform and present works that have been performed time and time again and make them not just new for the audience, but new for you as well?

I think one thing that musicians need to caution against is wanting to perform a traditional work because of the feeling that it’s my turn. I don’t think that’s enough. I think that what needs to come first is reading the room and combining that and letting that inform your own desire to play a certain piece and to analyze one’s desire to play a certain piece. Why is it that I want to play this piece and share this piece? What is it about this piece that is worth communicating to others? Why would anybody want to hear this piece right now the way that we are going to do it? How are we going to do it? Really being inquisitive in all those different directions, I think, is really a joy and a struggle, too. 

One thing I’d also like to mention. If we’re talking Mahler quotes, “A tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” That’s a Mahler quote that I love. I think that that also informs the spirit of our approach towards the classical repertoire as well. Preserving fire also means supporting contemporary music. Something from which I derive a lot of personal glee and chuckles sometimes is when I read reviews every now and then about Salastina to see how others describe us as either an organization that mostly focuses on the classics or a organization that focuses heavily on contemporary music. There doesn’t seem to be agreement there. I love it. I’m okay with it. People can’t peg us, so much the better. That means we’re doing Mahler’s quote justice.

To see the full interview with Maia Jasper White, please go here.

Main Photo: Maia Jasper White and Kevin Kumar of Salastina (Courtesy Salastina)

The post Maia Jasper White & Her Superhero Mission appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Goldenthal won his Oscar for the score to Julie Taymor’s film Frida. (Taymor, it should be noted, is also his partner). Amongst his other film credits are Drugstore Cowboy, Interview with the Vampire, Heat, The Butcher Boy, Titus (a particular favorite), Collateral and most recently The Glorias.

On stage he has written scores for Juan Darién (and received a Tony Award nomination), The Green Bird and the 2017 revival of M. Butterfly.

In 2006 Los Angeles Opera gave the world premiere production of his opera Grendel, which look at the Beowulf story from the point-of-view of the monster. I was lucky enough to attend opening night of that production.

[As a side note, I wish more companies would be as excited about giving third, fourth or fifth productions of new operas as they are about offering up premieres. Let’s see another production of Grendel!]

Amongst other important compositions of Goldenthal’s is Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio which was commissioned by the Pacific Symphony in 1993.

If you need more details about Goldenthal, he studied with Aaron Copland and John Corigliano.

With all this information, it is no wonder that on Tuesday, April 27th, this massively talented composer will be joining Salastina for their weekly Happy Hour. The Zoom event will take place at 6:00 PM PDT and last approximately one hour.

There’s no charge to join in the conversation. I’ll be there…will you?

Photo of Elliot Goldenthal/Courtesy Salastina

The post Happy Hour with Elliot Goldenthal appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

So maybe you are asking yourself who is Salastina and who is O’Regan. Allow me to answer those in order.

Salastina is a chamber music ensemble that puts an emphasis on contemporary classical music. They hold traditional salons (in the Covid-era they are online and presented as Happy Hours) in which they celebrate musicians and composers.

O’Regan is an award-winning British composer. Amongst his most recent works is The Phoenix, an opera about Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist who collaborated with Mozart on Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, and Così fan tutte. His opera was considered so important that a documentary was made on its creation and first production that starred Thomas Hampson as da Ponte.

His Celestial Map of the Sky is considered one of the best new compositions of the 2010s. The American premiere took place with Pacific Chorale in 2017 where he served as Composer in Residence for three years. The recording was O’Regan’s first orchestral album. I happen to personally love this record!

In Charlotte Gordon’s BBC review of his album Threshold of Night, she wrote of the composer, “O’Regan is a phenomenal choral composer with a language that, whilst thoroughly contemporary and unique, draws from past choral tradition. Perhaps this should be no great surprise given his years at Oxford and Cambridge universities where choral evensong is part of the fabric of life, but there are plenty of Oxbridge-based composers who have left these rich musical pickings untapped. O’Regan’s complex yet elemental-sounding music reaches for the divine with a maturity far beyond what one expects of a composer barely thirty years of age, and his settings work on several levels, translating more than just general mood.”

O’Regan’s compositions have been performed all over the world including Dutch National Ballet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Sydney Dance Company, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Opera House, London.

Salastina’s Happy Hours are done via Zoom. You will need to register in advance to join.

This should be a fascinating conversation and whatever music is scheduled to be performed will certainly be interesting. Pour yourself a glass of wine or make a cocktail and enjoy Salastina’s Happy Hour No. 29. (There are more scheduled and you can find details on those on their website).

Photo: Tarik O’Regan (Photo ©Marion Ettlinger/Courtesy of tarikoregan.com)

The post Salastina Happy Hour with Composer Tarik O’Regan appeared first on Cultural Attaché.