During the first half of this concert music by Tan Dun (Concerto for Six), Yi-Wen Jiang (Selections from ChinaSong) and Bright Sheng (Four Movements For Piano Trio) will be performed.

Wang was born in China and joined the LA Phil in 1994. She’s a beautiful musician and audiences may know her best from her on-stage collaborations with composer John Williams. Wang is the featured soloist any year in which the Theme from Schindler’s List is played as part of the Maestro of the Movies concerts.

Wang has performed under music directors Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. She will soon find her third music director on the podium after Dudamel leaves for the New York Philharmonic.

Last week I spoke with Wang about this concert, the significance of the music she programmed and about her musical partnership with Williams. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Wang, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: What does the New Year mean to you personally and do you associate any particular music with the New Year?

All New Years means so much for many of us coming from Asia. I heard a comparison that it is like Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. I have to say it is that combined and much more. There are many traditions. Traditions with foods that we eat for Lunar New Year and of course, music. What I’m going to perform, it’s not really traditional New Year’s music. But certainly, as people will hear, it’s very effective. It’s very colorful. It’s going to be very festive. 

I guess being colorful and festive makes it easier for Western audiences to hear Chinese music. 

In fact, as I was practicing Harvest Celebration [one of the ChinaSongs], it came to my mind this is exactly the drum beats and the percussive rhythm that people would feel at a local dance. I’m going to speak at the beginning of the concert. I will ask people who has seen a Lion Dance. They will really associate that with the rhythm that they will hear in Harvest Celebration.

The concert opens with Yi-Wen Jiang’s adaptations of traditional songs. Then you’ve got music by Bright Sheng and Tan Dun. The second half of the program is Mendelssohn’s string quintet. What’s the conversation that you see taking place between the first half of the concert and the second half of the concert?

I actually wouldn’t be the expert right now to tell you. But I do want to mention that to the audience that viola quintet is a form of chamber music that’s less common than a string quartet and a piano trio. Bright Sheng’s piano trio brings back a lot of familiar memories to me melodically. So I recommended that piece and I suggested Yi-Wen Jiang’s transcription of the three string quartet pieces. In terms of Mendelssohn viola quintet, it’s a master work of the chamber music repertoire. What is the connection? I cannot just ignore that when I introduce the program. In terms of how I see that, it’s as if we give you some beautiful hamburgers on the Chinese banquet table.

Selections from ChinaSongs opens the concert. Those are based on traditional songs. What can you tell me about those songs and their cultural significance? 

The first piece is Yao Dance. It means dances of the Yao People. The Yao People is from the south west of China. They are a minority. They love to sing and dance and they have beautiful music. The second one is Shepherd’s Song, and this is folk music from the Inner Mongolia. [It’s] really about the shepherds in the prairie and has a lot to do with singing. Shepherd Song and Harvest Celebration are both very well known as solo music for violin with piano accompaniment. So these two are the pieces that I played many times when I was growing up in China.

Shepherd Song is slow. It’s beautiful. It’s music originally written for a Chinese instrument, which is called suona, which is a double reed instrument. It sounds like an extremely loud oboe. It’s an instrument that people play in festival settings like weddings and New Years. It’s very loud. A composer transcribed that for violin. It’s really a great piece that always brings down the hall because it’s so lively and loud. It’s exciting. It has syncopation. It has rhythmic changes. It’s always a fantastic piece for a performance.

Where do you believe Tan Dun’s work stands in the world of contemporary classical music in general, and in the music by Chinese-American composers?

I really think Tan Dun is very important, if not the most important, living Chinese composer. I always thought that from the very beginning. He always incorporates a lot of elements from back home and not only the familiar melodies that I grew up listening to. He went into places in China that we’ve never been to. I think he’s so innovative. I feel he’s always ahead of all time.

Tan Dun and Bright Sheng were in the same composition class at the Central Conservatory in Beijing. That’s the first class right after culture revolution ended. We always consider that to be the most important and the greatest composition class period in Chinese history. So they both attended and were in that class, and they both came to Columbia University and had their doctorate at Columbia University. We actually turned out to have two composers from the same background and education.

What does it mean to you to have Chinese music part of the programing at the Los Angeles Philharmonic or any other orchestral institution that chooses to program it?

I feel it’s very important. Not only in L.A. Society is so diverse and it’s important that we understand each other’s music and background. So I’m always thrilled to be the interpreter or to introduce that music to a broader audience. Obviously in L.A., needless to say, we have so many people of Chinese heritage.

Increased exposure to non-traditional music and contemporary classical music began in earnest under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Gustavo Dudamel has done a wonderful job of continuing that tradition. What are your hopes that whomever the new music director is announced to replace Gustavo Dudamel will follow in those footsteps and continue to present music from other cultures and from newer composers that don’t traditionally fit into programing?

I have no doubt whoever our next music director will be will be innovative and will bring their new angle and strength in this following champions of modern music. Gustavo came and look at how much music he brought in. We’ve played so much music of South American composers that we really had not a lot of exposure to before. So I feel whoever will come will bring their unique angle on this.

Is it time for a woman to be the music director?

Maybe. We will see. I think we are trying not to put an expectation to fulfill a certain agenda or a role. Yes, we are looking. We are taking our time. We are hopeful. We’ve had Gustavo for 17 years.

I noticed how carefully you skirted around that question. If Gustavo said, hey, there’s a place for you at the New York Philharmonic, would you join him?

I have to say this, I will not. My home is in LA and my part is here. 

One of the advantages of having your home in Los Angeles is the relationship that you’ve developed off-stage and on-stage with John Williams. What can you tell me about your close musical relationship with him and how that developed? 

It all started after I joined the L.A. Phil. My first summer was 1995, and then, in 1998, I remember very clearly when he first programmed a violin solo. On that program it was Sabrina and he was so thrilled. We connected and the rest is history. We have have performed yearly ever since then. So it’s more than 25 years now. I’ve also toured with him. There’s nothing else quite like that.

When I’m asked your favorite conductor, I will bring up John Williams’ name. Who will give you this kind of experience for me?

When you are on stage, immersed in this music and you look up the composer looking down at you – that kind of connection, that kind of gift and experience cannot be replaced.

He has written a violin concerto or two. Maybe you could be a soloist on one of those.

It is my goal. Yes. Someday I will play one of those concertos and not just the three minute solo, which I do love. 

Being a young girl growing up in China, could you ever have imagined this kind of experience with the most beloved film composer of all times, with arguably the greatest orchestra in the United States? What does it mean to you every night when you get on stage, whether you’re a member of of a small ensemble, as you will be Tuesday, or a soloist with the entire Philharmonic?

Thank you for asking me that question, because I feel that every day. I could not have imagined. When I attended the Middle School of Shanghai Conservatory and practiced around the clock. When I came here on a full scholarship to attend Peabody Conservatory. Then when I attended Manhattan’s School of Music and studied under Glen Dicterow, who is a colleague at USC Thornton School of Music. I could not have imagined that my professional path would have taken me this far. Even when I joined the L.A. Phil at age of 26, I could not have imagined how my professional development have evolved and grown.

I have an important part of my career that is teaching now. I already have one former student in the orchestra and I have another incoming former student. This is really the greatest feeling to see the next generation, developing under my guidance.

On your page on USC’s website, you are quoted about your teaching philosophy that, “The intent is always to motivate and to inspire them to become better instrumentalists and complete musicians.” I was intrigued by complete musician. When did you realize you were a complete musician and what does it mean to you? Or how do you define what a complete musician is?

I hope I live by example. You don’t only win the job and play the notes and make a salary. Complete musicians means you’re devoted. That you are involved in music. Your responsibility includes sharing, cultivating, giving, which is so important. I would say at my ripe old age, I feel I’m still changing and hopefully getting better. I’m still hoping to become a better musician, artist and a teacher. That, for me, means you’re complete musician. You are immersed and giving.

Berl Sinofsky [one of Wang’s former teachers] is quoted as saying that, “Music is a higher calling than just a profession or living. It is an effort in understanding something bigger than yourself. It is an effort at striving to be something bigger than you are.” In what ways has music given you that understanding of something bigger and that ability to be something bigger? 

I doubt I can give really a deserving answer to your question. I think that’s a great statement that he gave. I hope to do more is really part of my answer. It’s going to be what I said earlier. I think by really doing good with my music and really becoming more than just a musician by really helping others and be involved and immersed in a community. I think that’s that’s what I’m hoping to do.

To watch the full interview with Bing Wang, please go here.

All photos courtesy of Los Angeles Philharmonic

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Siegel and I spoke last week just before she left her home in New York to fly to the West Coast for the final four concerts. All that remains are shows on December 13th in San Diego and the final show on Friday, December 15th at Walt Disney Concert Hall. These will be emotional shows for the Siegel and her partners Cheryl Bentyne, Trist Curless and Alan Paul.

Bentyne joined in 1979 after original member Laurel Massé was injured in an automobile accident. Curless joined after founding member Tim Hauser passed away in 2014. But don’t think these concerts will be a memorial to their 50-year career. This is going to be a celebration. An emotional one, for sure, but a celebration nonetheless.

In my conversation with Siegel we spoke about her feelings going into the final four concerts. 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.

Q: Janis Siegel, we’re having this conversation the day before The Manhattan Transfer has the final four concerts before calling it a day after half a century. What are you feeling emotionally right now going into these final four shows? 

I’m feeling all the feels. We’ve been on the road. But now as we’re coming up to the final four and especially Disney Hall, it’s definitely hitting me. In a way it’s like grief. It’s like mourning, which is not a straight line; it appears when you least expect it. Suddenly you’re crying or you’re angry or you’re joyful. It comes up in unexpected ways, but very, very mixed feelings. It’s very bittersweet. I’m excited about what’s to come for all of us. 

Does part of that grief ultimately include a point where relief comes in as part of that? Is that something that you’re considering as part of your process? 

If relief comes I would be very happy. In my own life, grief never really disappears. You adapt to something missing in your life: a person or an experience, a marriage or a death. You never really get over it. It’s always a part of you. It’s always a part of your heart. 

Why do you think The Manhattan Transfer made it 50 years? 

It was the music. It kept us together. I think we all, at certain points, realized that what we created together was worth working on. It’s been a marriage really for 50 years with different people.

How much do you think you’ll feel Tim’s presence on that stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall? 

Very much. This was his vision. He changed my life, certainly. We celebrate him every time we step on the stage.

The Manhattan Transfer, as we more commonly know them [there was a previous iteration that made on album prior to this quartet] was introduced to the world in the 1975 album The Manhattan Transfer. The first song on that album was Tuxedo Junction. The last song on your most recent album, Fifty, is God Only Knows. How do these two songs reflect the musical journey you have been on with The Manhattan Transfer?

Tuxedo Junction was probably one of our first forays into vocalese because we’re singing the Glenn Miller arrangement. It’s very rudimentary and, you know, beginner like, but we’re trying to emulate the sound of the muted trombones. 

God Only Knows was really championed by Cheryl, who feels, and I agree with her, that it’s one of the greatest pop songs ever written. And it’s very emotional, you know? We’re saying God Only Knows where we’d be without our audience and each other.

Vocalese (1985) happens to be my favorite Manhattan Transfer album. It feels really special. Is it equally special for you?

Yes, definitely special. I adored Jon Hendricks [of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross]. He was my musical father, for sure. A mentor. A friend. I worked very closely with him, especially during the Vocalese album, but even afterwards. I find lyrics that he left here all the time. I’m actually going to be recording some in January.

You’re not letting any moss grow under your feet, are you? You’re going right to it.

Yeah I am. If I’m married to anything it’s the music, certainly.

When you look at a vocalist like Marilyn May, who I would assume has to be a role model on a certain level for what anybody can do late in life…

Sheila Jordan, too.

Are these the type of careers you envision yourself having in this next chapter of the Janis Siegel story?

Absolutely. But also, I still want to travel. I want to spend a lot of time in Europe. That feels more like my home in a way, musically and culturally even. I don’t really like what’s going on here. I’m looking towards Europe. I love to eat. I love to cook. I’m considering maybe even going back to school. I’d like to embellish my life with some other things. But I would certainly look towards Sheila Jordan and Marilyn Maye as shining inspirations for what you can do.

Is there any one thing, or even two, that you’ve learned most during this five-decade journey? 

I really believe I’ve learned how to collaborate. It’s not easy. In all our configurations, you’ve got four very different people and everybody’s got different creative ideas and prioritization. To be able to work through differences and work through anger or differences of opinion and not just throw a chair and walk out has been a real learning experience, I think, for all of us.

I’ve learned a lot also from solo work that I’ve done. You learn different ways to collaborate and different ways of working. I feel like it’s been very valuable because I’ve brought those different ways back into the group.

What do you want to say most with your music now as a solo artist moving forward that perhaps you haven’t been able to say previously?

I have done a lot of eclectic records as a soloist. I mean, I’ve explored country jazz. I’ve explored Yiddish music. I’ve done dual collaborations with Fred Hersch, you know, very intimate reconstructing of pop songs and jazz standards. I collaborate with many people in Brazil. I sing with a Latin big band now. When I go out into the world I’m going to still be doing all of these eclectic things. I love singing with the big band. I’ll be singing with the Count Basie Orchestra in February and collaborating with a lot of different people.

Nine years ago I spoke with Alan Paul and I asked him what the future was for The Manhattan Transfer at that time. He told me, “Come the new year, we’ll finally have a chance to really sit down and really try to figure out what we’re going to do.” Do you remember what those conversations were like in early 2015? Was there a point somewhere around there when you all realized the 50th anniversary might be the right time to hang it all up?

We didn’t think about that then. Tim died around that time. That threw everything into disarray. If Tim had stayed alive we would be in a totally different place, in a different direction, I think, because his input was strong and usually wonderful. So who knows what would have happened. We only started talking about the end, probably during the pandemic.

If you could go back in time when Tim Hauser would wear a Howdy Doody mask and you were in a diaper with high heels, at that point could you ever have dreamed this career that you have had?

No. And that’s what I mean. In the beginning Tim was the dreamer, but I was the practical worker bee. So I was just like, okay, what has to be done today? Who’s writing this arrangement? What’s happening here? I’d never expected this at all. I was on another path completely.

When did you allow yourself to dream? 

You need time to dream. That’s the thing with creative people. I think you need alone time. My time to dream, honestly, is on the treadmill or in the shower. That’s when nobody can bug me. My body is busy doing stuff and my imagination runs free.

If you could go back in time and talk to the young girl who was part of [her first group] Young Generation or [a subsequent group] The Loved Ones, what advice would you give her that would be most important as a way of understanding who you are and where you are today?

When you’re in your 20s or when you’re a teenager, there’s certain insecurities, I think, that you have. I would just tell myself that all crises do pass. You don’t know that when you’re young. You think it’s the end of the world when this breakup happens or this doesn’t go the way you want it to go. But things happen, I think, for a reason and paths diverge and they come together. I mean, we’re getting into some heavy duty territory here with the idea of free will and what’s faded and what can you control in this life.

The other thing is you have to be good at saying goodbye.

Yes. I’ve had a lot of loss the past ten years or so. Oh, man, it’s hard. It’s really hard. But yet the world goes on spinning.

To see the complete interview with Janis Siegel, please go here.

Main Photo: Trist Curless, Janis Siegel, Cheryl Bentyne and Alan Paul of The Manhattan Transfer (Photo by Scott S. Schafer)

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On Sunday, November 12th, McVinnie will perform a recital on both the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. That concert will feature works by Johann Sebastian Bach, inti Figgis-Vizueta, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly and Gabriella Smith.

On Tuesday, November 14th, McVinnie will give the world premiere performance of Samuel Adams’ Eden Interstates as part of the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series. This concert is also at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

On Friday, November 17th and Saturday, November 18th, he joins the San Francisco Symphony where he will perform Smith’s Breathing Forests. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts those concerts.

With an upcoming repertoire that covers over three centuries of music, McVinnie and I had plenty to talk about when we spoke on Halloween. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with McVinnie, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Robert Schumann is quoted as having said about the organ, “No other instrument takes such an immediate revenge on sloppiness in composition and playing.” As a performer, how do you determine what music won’t allow sloppiness from you and does not represent sloppiness from a composer?

The organ had its zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries when music was all about counterpoint. That was the high point of that style of music making and there’s a kind of utopian ideal to counterpoint that always appealed to me. You have music made up of voices and the music works on these horizontal axes and the voices interact to create the piece of music, and there’s absolute equality of importance. You could play a Bach figure, for instance, and you take out one note and the whole artifice of the expedition falls apart. The organ’s an ideal instrument for counterpoint. You have this incredibly uniform quality to the sound across the range so you can hear every voice as clearly as the other.

That’s the compositional side. From the playing side there’s really nowhere to hide on the organ. Even if you think acoustics will cover you up, you’re perhaps on the wrong track there.

These concerts that you’re doing with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and with the San Francisco Symphony are a part of the California Festival, which is showcasing works by composers primarily written within the last five years. How do you know if most of the recent compositions that would qualify for inclusion in this festival – whether or not they are being performed by you or anyone else – represent the future you would like to see in contemporary classical music?

The composer whose work I’ve loved getting to know most recently is Gabriella Smith. Her music has this incredible immediacy to it. Her music hits a very deep note in how I think about what music should be and how immediate and how accessible music should be to everyone. 

Her work is predominantly preoccupied with the climate crisis. Humanity and the arts have been going hand-in-hand since the year dot. Gabriella has always been very keen that her music is a call to arms, really, and a way of making these issues that we’re faced with very prescient and very immediate.

This organ concerto I’m playing, Breathing Forests, is about the life cycle of a forest. It’s in three contiguous movements. Grow, Breathe and Burn are the three movement’s names. It’s about the natural lifecycle of the forest and forest fire is a natural part of what happens. This is a commentary on when fire becomes an unnatural part. I can think of no better way than to ignite imagination in listener and performer alike.

You gave the world premiere in February a year ago with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The climate crisis has gotten worse since then. As somebody who cares about the environment and who cares about music, how has your relationship to this particular piece and its message changed since you gave that first performance?

It’s just much more immediate. I’m sitting here in Devon, England, and there’s a storm happening outside. September was the hottest on record. I mean, it really is changing month by month. I’m 40. I don’t have kids. But, I fear for the kids that I see around and what kind of experiences they will have to endure as they grow older. It is something that I feel is growing in proportion in people’s general consciousness over here. Of course, that will be the case in the States as well. So it’s very urgent. 

You’re going to be doing Imaginary Pancake by Gabriella Smith in Los Angeles, which is a piano work that was commissioned for Timo Andres. Unless people are at both concerts, they aren’t going to know if there’s a conversation that happens between those two works. From a performer’s perspective, is there a dialog that you can see between the solo work of Imaginary Pancake and the robust relationship that the organ has with the orchestra in Breathing Forests?

One of the interesting things about music is that there are often seemingly simple cycles and progressions that repeat over time, which I guess has been the way most music has been put together. But her version is incredibly vital. That’s one of the reasons why I think the music is incredibly approachable from a layperson’s perspective. There are these moments in Imaginary Pancake that use exactly the same kind of grammar and the same kind of language. So yeah, definitely they’re kind of companion pieces. But that’s true of a lot of her music.

How important is it for you as a listener, or for you as an artist, that the music being composed today has that approachability?

It is important. You can have in MoMA a CRU modernist chair that’s beautiful to look at, but not terribly comfortable to sit on. We’ve gotten to the point in music where we can have an approachability and an intellectual element to it that can sit by, for want of a better kind of terminology, a prettiness to the music. Nico Muhly’s music does all of those things. It’s very beautiful music to listen to, but it’s acutely complex as well. Gabriela’s music as well. We have to remember as classical musicians that most people on the street say their idea of music is so different from mine or yours. Not that we should ever dumb ourselves down, but you have to give people a way in.

The first of your two concerts in Los Angeles is a recital where you’re going to be playing both the monster organ that is at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. What’s the conversation that you want to create between the music that you choose to play on each instrument? 

What I have done in putting together this program is the music has the most important thread through the recital and have a sequence in program of music, irrespective of the instrument that I’m playing on. I’m actually playing an organ piece on the piano and I’m playing a piano piece by Meredith Monk on the organ. So I want to play around with this idea of what we think of as being the idealized instruments for the music.

In the second half, I’m playing music entirely by Philip Glass. There I’m using the organ rather like a synthesizer. I’m playing Music in Fifths, which is a piece that dates from the 1960s that he wrote for his ensemble. It’s possible to play that piece of music as a soloist on the organ, but use the organ in a way which is a nod to the sound of that very austere world. There are lots of ways of circumnavigating people’s expectations, which I try to do with my programing and the instruments that I play.

I like Counterpoint, the album you released where you went back and forth between Glass and Bach, because I thought that it was easy to see a throughline between the two of them.

Definitely. Philip’s music has the same kind of economy I was talking about at the beginning about counterpoint. I called the record Counterpoint for that reason. If you take one of the tunes on the piano by Glass and you take one note away, it’s the same kind of effect that the artifice of the music completely disintegrates. It has a real integrity to it. I chose for that recording movements from Art of Fugue and the C Minor Prelude and Fugue. It’s that kind of intensity to that music and that immediacy and austerity, for want of a better way of describing that music, which is shared by lots of this music from the 1960s by Glass as well.

In a 2021 column for the New York Times, you were asked about the five minutes that will make you love the organ. You said, “Bach is the ultimate composer for this extraordinary, timeless instrument.” If you were to posit who, amongst composers writing for the organ today, is at the top of their game, who would you say it would be and why?

Nico Muhly’s music for the organ is incredibly natural. He understands how the organ works. It’s been very interesting working with other composers who are perhaps less familiar with the way in which you write in the compass of the instrument and the registration of possibilities.

The other people that I work with…Tom Jenkinson is on the other end of the spectrum. He’s an amazing musician who works and releases music under the name of Squarepusher. So if you’re into nineties electronic music, he’s absolutely a cult household name. Cecilia McDowall over here is a wonderful composer for the organ. I admire her music hugely. There’s Judith Bingham who has a huge catalog for the organ, a slightly different musical ecosystem to the one I work in. Her music is very well worth checking out. And then, of course, there are a few pieces by Arvo Pärt’s that I love playing.

French organist composer Charles-Marie Widor is quoted as having said, “Organ playing is the manifestation of a will filled with the vision of eternity.” How would you define your will when you are sitting at the organ bench and what visions do you have while you’re playing about what eternity might be? 

Wow, what a question. It sounds like Widor’s talking about his religious faith. I don’t know whether he was, but I think it’s safe to assume that he was a religious man. Most organists in the 19th century were. I like liturgy and I like church music. Where I stand on the spectrum of faith is a complex issue. I guess the only thing I can say is the organ is definitely the most transcendental instrument that you could possibly play – whether you’re in a cathedral or in a concert hall or a tiny room playing to your friends on a two-stop chamber organ. To those who have religious faith, obviously it has huge implications. For those who don’t, it’s still an extraordinary instrument that goes to the very heart of who I am as feeling as I could have a vocation to do what I do. It’s a wonderful thing.

To see the full interview with James McVinnie, please go here.

Main Photo: James McVinnie (Photo by Graham Lacadao/Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

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This album of standards had instantly become her favorite album at the time. Nilsson covered songs such as It Had to Be You, As Time Goes By and Aunt Ruth’s favorite track, Makin’ Whoopee! I have no recollection why that song was so special to her. But that’s just one of many things Il’l never understand about my mother’s sister.

That was fifty years ago and I haven’t given the album much thought for quite some time. Until I saw that singer/songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff, who specializes in folk and Americana, was touring and playing Nilsson’s A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night live in a series of concerts. He’s performing on Wednesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall and then on April 1st at David Geffen Hall. Though he’s performing with an orchestra, he’s not performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic nor the New York Philharmonic, the two orchestras who call those venues home.

What prompted an artist who wasn’t born until five years after the album’s release to celebrate A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night? I can’t speak for Rateliff, but I know what made Harry Nilsson a compelling artist – thanks to my aunt.

If you know Nilsson at all it might be for the song Everybody’s Talkin’ which appeared on his 1968 album Aerial Ballet. It was later featured rather famously in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy starring Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles and Brenda Vaccaro.

He first coined the Schmilsson name with his 1971 album Nilsson Schmilsson. He received a Grammy Award nomination for Album of the Year for the album that introduced the song Coconut to the world. (Fans of Reservoir Dogs will know this one!)

Long before sequels were standard industry fare, Nilsson released Son of Schmilsson in the summer of 1972. It was a bold move because Nilsson Schmilsson was still on the charts and doing well. This album featured contributions from Peter Frampton, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Perhaps you’ve heard Spaceman from this album.

Less than a year later came A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. Long before Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan recorded albums of classic songs, Nilsson created a great album that set the standard for those and many other artists. It didn’t hurt that he called on Frank Sinatra’s great arranger Gordon Jenkins to make it sound like it was from another era and completely fresh at the same time. Who arranges Irving Berlin’s Always by first playing a few bars from Over the Rainbow? Or uses music from As Time Goes By as a prelude for Makin’ Whoopee!?

From his opening vocals on Lazy Moon he had me glued to the speakers. I had never heard the song, but there was something about Nilsson’s vocals that instantly drew me in. It wasn’t just his tenor voice, but there was something bordering on the ethereal in his singing. Perhaps it was his 3-1/2 octave range that first grabbed me. Just listen to the way his voice goes just slightly up in the first verse of For Me and My Gal.

Certainly an evening of songs Nilsson wrote would be compelling. He was a great songwriter. But Rateliff is doing A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. As he says on the website for this event, “The courage of Nilsson to release an album of standards…at the height of his fame is wild to contemplate. And to create something so beautiful that takes listeners on an emotional journey through love and loss is what I’m excited for audiences to experience.”

He also told Relix in 2020, “The artistic side of that is what’s interesting to me. It’s about continuing to do something that’s true to yourself—even if the audience won’t necessarily be happy about it.” He went on to say he’s always wanted to perform this album.

Now Rateliff is doing just that. If Rateliff’s audiences prove to be happy with this choice of his, I hope they’ll go back and discover what made Harry Nilsson such a unique artist.

Both Nilsson and my Aunt Ruth have long since passed away. I’m not even close to being twelve years old. But as Nilsson sang in the penultimate song on A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night:

Wandering rainbows, leave a bit of color for my heart to own
Stars in the sky, make my wish come true before the night has flown
And let the music play as long as there’s a song to sing
And I will stay younger than spring

(from This Is All I Ask, written by Gordon Jenkins)

To watch Harry Nilsson perform songs from this album in a 1973 filmed performance, please go here.

Photo: The cover of A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (Courtesy Sony Music Entertainment)

The post A Little Touch of Schmilsson In My Past appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Place was a Pulitzer Prize-finalist in 2018. The committee called it, “A brave and powerful work, marked by effective vocal writing and multiple musical genres, that confronts issues of gentrification and displacement in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.” Hearne wrote the music and part of the libretto. He collaborated with poet Saul Williams who write the rest of the libretto.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group is presenting Place on Tuesday evening at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Hearne will be conducting the performance which is directed by Patricia McGregor. She was recently named the incoming Artistic Director at the New York Theater Workshop.

Last week I spoke via Zoom with Hearne about Place, how he’s reconciled his own ideas about the issues the work raises and how his composing allows him to understand himself better. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

You stated previously that you were confronted with your own feelings after hearing Spike Lee speak at the Pratt Institute about people and the relationship they have to their neighborhood. How did composing and writing Place impact your own perception of how you relate to your neighborhood? Has the time since the work debut altered your perceptions about that relationship, if it has?

One thing that changed is that I started to see the divisions that I created in my own life and my own sense of identity and my own self and how maybe I’ve created a proxy for thinking about those divisions. What I mean by that is that through this process, I started really looking at texts about whiteness and white identity and white supremacy and it got very personal in a way that I think it hadn’t before this process. And that’s a big way that my thinking changed. 

It was as blunt of an interrogation of the tenets of white supremacy and that systemic racism that were embedded in my own upbringing, in my own identity. That was totally not academic because all of my artistic work was right there front and center and that’s a big part of my heart and soul.

I think part of growing up in a place with so much systemic racism as a white person is often, at least in my house, in my generation, it is growing up with the idea that your perspective as a white person is like the neutral one. No one ever like told me, “Oh, that’s a better perspective” or that you’re better than anybody else explicitly. But also no one really told me that to be raised as a white person entailed kind of its own identity. So in a way being raised with this paucity of identity itself. I don’t think anyone should be raised that way. But this process was like a cartography process of mapping all the ways that white supremacy or racism was present just in all of my individual small interactions and the fundamental structures of family.

I’m happy to say that I think the conversation around all these issues has progressed a lot since when I started writing the piece. I’m not saying that any of this stuff was taught to me intentionally. But that’s, of course, the problem. This process really helps me connect all of these concepts which I’ve been wrestling with since basically coming of age in this culture so it makes sense.

Having come through this process how do you reconcile the dichotomy between the shining concert hall on the hill that is Walt Disney Concert Hall and the huge homeless community, mostly non-white, that are mere blocks away. Should that impact the way an audience experiences Place?

I hope it influences the way people see work like this. That dichotomy is all around us in this in this culture, right? In this society and this in this country, in the city. We’re living at a time of a large increase in the number of unhoused people in the city. And there’s a huge increase in aggressive, violent police action to remove unhoused people from the places that they’re dwelling.

Part of the process in writing this piece has been to think about displacement and the connections of displacement and systemic racism. Wrestling with inequalities that have been built into the systemic fabric of these institutions. I know that there are good people within these institutions that are trying to root out these inequalities and trying to create really safe spaces for all sorts of different types of people. But it’s not easy.

Including, I would assume, safe spaces for artists who aren’t just white to be recognized in the performing arts world as well.

Especially American music. There are these incredible innovators who just were never included in institutional music or classical music as we now call it. And I think that the reason that they weren’t included is because they’re not white. Duke Ellington being the most obvious example of a composer who was creating music that is symphonic and who’s pushing boundaries in so many different directions; creating this unique American work. I’m not saying that that necessarily affected Duke Ellington’s reputation, but I do think that when we say classical music we should acknowledge that it’s based on this history of exclusion.

When we think about the language that we use to talk about why certain artists are innovative or important we often romanticize it and leave out all of these very blunt and important sociological contexts: who had access to certain streams of money and who is a white man. These are actually very important parts of it. When we take all this together, we can see how the genre and institution of classical music has been sculpted.

During the pandemic you did an at-home version of Place that was streamed online. Did that prompt any reconsideration of the work that you had already completed or any reflection on what to do next?

I don’t feel like the piece was done until we did the version in March 2020 where we were all sheltering in place. We had already made the album and the album was about to come out. We had all the tracks from all the instrumental performances, from all these brilliant instrumentalists that we recorded across the country to make the piece. But then these singers, who were prepared and all ready to do the whole show, were stuck at home as we all were. So we decided to make this at home version.

The people in the cast, the singers, they all live very differently and they were all affected differently. It was more traumatic to some than others. Something about that, plus the fact that this is a piece about place and displacement. Through people just capturing themselves at their microphone, but capturing the whole environment, we were able to get a really personal picture into the lives of all the singers. I think that was the last key to understanding the piece. It gave us something that we didn’t get when we were doing a large stage version. It made the piece really intimate and we use that in the remount of the piece that we’re doing now in 2022. 

Saul Williams wrote in Said the Shotgun to the Head, “I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped in terms of being.” Ted, what is offering yourself to the inkwell of composing allowing you to be?

I’m pretty impulsive. I make like really large works sometimes that take years to make. I feel like often it’s driven by things that I feel in a moment or things that I feel [in] a cumulative succession of moments that feel powerful. I tend to use that as an engine. And then look later at the thing I made.

It’s the learning that comes from the rigorous process of composing. It’s through the rigor of holding yourself to really high standards and making sure that the piece understands and respects itself. Setting those strictures up as clearly and as well-constructed as possible. I think that through that discipline I can come to a much clearer understanding of who I am and who I am in the world. Without composing I don’t know if I would have any motivation to do that. If I didn’t have that process, I think that I would be drawn to living in a way that had no impact. Through composing I can continually examine my impact. 

I am really interested in living in a way that helps other people be better. But I have to help myself be better. I know it’s very presumptuous to think you can help other people be better without really putting yourself through the paces continuously. So I think composing is just the whole apparatus for that. 

Place is produced by Beth Morrison Projects. To see when Place might be performed in your area, I suggest you go to BMP’s website here.

Main photo: Ted Hearne conducting Place (Photo courtesy Unison Media)

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Not playing it safe has proven to be quite successful for Schneider. She is a 7-time Grammy Award winner. Her most recent album, Data Lords, not only earned her two of those trophies, but Schneider was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In its first half Data Lords examines tech companies and their control of our lives and information. Then second half allows for communion with nature. It’s a monumental work and one that she is only now able to support through live performances.

The Maria Schneider Orchestra starts a min-tour of the West Coast this weekend with appearances on Friday at Walt Disney Concert Hall; Stanford University on Saturday and Sonoma State University on Sunday.

Before we got into the themes of Data Lords, I first asked Schneider about something legendary bandleader Mary Lou Williams told Marian McPartland in 1964: “Anything you are shows up in your music. Jazz is whatever you are playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.” Exactly 50 years later Schneider told Ted Panken, in a Downbeat interview, that the biggest thing that inspired her about Gil Evans was “knowing him and seeing how devoted he was to being himself.” What point in your career did you realize that being yourself was pivotal in terms of being able to fully express who you were as an artist and who you were as a person?

I think that in life so many people struggle with the questions of who am I, am I forgetting how to express that? I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with when they’re young and maybe when they’re old and their entire life. When I worked with [composer/arranger] Gil [Evans] and when I worked with [pianist/composer] Bob Brookmeyer and when I was around people like [drummer] Mel Lewis and all the greats that there are, they all have that thing that is just identifiable and that it’s them. And I wondered how somebody found that and it was through studying with Bob Brookmeyer that I found it. 

Your music becomes you. It reveals you. You don’t say, “Oh, this is this because this is who I am.” Your music starts to reveal you to yourself. I would say that art helps you know yourself. It helps people find that thing in themselves that maybe eludes them for almost a lifetime. 

As Stephen Sondheim wrote in Sunday in the Park with George, it all starts with “a blank page.” How intimidating is that blank piece of paper before ideas start being added to it?

That is the process of writing: getting people to ask questions and to take risks and try things they don’t know how to do and dare to have it fail. I got the really great experience of working with David Bowie a few years ago and and he was so great because I was so scared and I was like, “Oh my god, David, what if it sucks? What if you just regret having come to me about this and singing with a big band?” And he just laughed. I’ll bet he had fear here and there, too, but it sure didn’t seem like it. He said “The amazing thing about music, the fantastic thing is that if you fail, if the plane crashes, we all walk away.” It really is true. We feel like we’re going to die if something creative we do isn’t good. It preceded this music on Data Lords, maybe almost all of it. And so that gave me courage to try crazy things and throw it all on the paper.

What role do your musicians – to whom you give enormous respective and attention in your concerts – play in realizing your compositions?

For me the thing of connecting to musicians and people playing my music – that energy feeding me is so important. I mean, it’s the reason I’m a jazz composer because my music isn’t completely formed and then they bring something to it. Then that makes me want to write something. So much of my music would not be my music without them. Not just because of the way they play it. I literally wouldn’t write what I’m writing without the ways in which they are like my limbs.

Not being able to tour behind Data Lords must have been frustrating. After its release and now that you have been able to perform that work live, what responses are you getting?

It was a bummer because I couldn’t sell CDs on the road and I always do that and we had a big promotional tour planned. Everything was canceled. As a matter of fact that’s what this tour is replacing. My band is only just geared up. Last week we played a full week in New York. It was the first time we’ve really done something other than a single gig last November and played it on a dock in DC for an hour in September. But other than that, we have not played. So we’re just getting back in the saddle again it.

It was really remarkable that Data Lords really hit home because people found themselves straddling both worlds that I’m talking about: the world of big data that we depend on, that you and I are speaking through. I didn’t even know what Zoom was prior to COVID. And then maintaining connection or trying to step away. That struck people. So I’m writing about awe walks like AWE, you know, going out and reconnecting with birds and nature and valuing what we lost. People really embraced the concept a lot.

I assume that your position on the Googles and Spotify companies of the world has been supported by other musicians.

Oh, yeah, and students – mostly students. When I go to colleges they just don’t know what to do. I have musicians all the time thank me. I’m like, “Why don’t you get behind the horse too? I can’t drag this corpse along by myself, you know?” It’s such a full-time job just being a musician and it seems so daunting and impossible to fight the tide, but the tide is unfair. The tide is about taking the value of our music and turning it away from being money into data for them. They’re giving something away, that a lot of times they don’t have the right to to be giving on their site – in exchange for getting the data.

I spent months writing one piece and then thousands and endless thousands rehearsing it and recording it. We’re talking a quarter million dollars to make Data Lords. Then somebody is sharing that for free? I’ve got a pretty small niche audience so I need to be able to set my own price so that I have a chance in making that money back so I can make the next record.

You have described your education as “largely self-taught. I studied scores and I watched the band rehearse.” In fifty or sixty years when up ‘n’ coming composers and arrangers are studying your scores, what would you like them to discover about your work?

I would hope it would be maybe broad picture things kind of like it was for me with Bob and Gil. I hope that whatever they find in my music might be different for different people. That it would inspire them, like Gil and Bob did, just to explore their own things. Because in the end I don’t want to sound like Bob. I don’t want to sound like Gil. I wanted to figure out who Maria is and I think that’s the beauty in music and art; everybody trying to find out who they are. If there are a few little nuggets here and there that they find in my music that helps them get there, go for it.

For tickets to any of the three concerts click on the link in the third paragraph. To purchase DATA LORDS click on the link in the second paragraph.

Main photo: Maria Schneider (Photo by Greg Helgeson/Courtesy of the artist)

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Adolphe is considered one of the finest composers of her generation. She has multiple commissions ahead of her and a handful of works that have yet to have their premieres. She writes in all forms: chamber music, choral, concerti, orchestral and opera. Her compositions have been performed by LA Phil, the New York Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and more.

The day before Thanksgiving, I hopped on a Zoom call to talk with Adolphe about Woven Loom, Silver Spindle and the nature of creativity during the pandemic and its impact on how she approached this concerto. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

What inspired you to compose Woven Loom, Silver Spindle? 

I think one of the fun parts about a concerto is that it has a dynamic that’s already set up which is the orchestra and the soloist. And so I think one of the first questions for every concerto is what is that relationship between the two and how does it change over time? Also, you think about the the specificity of that instrument. So the violin in particular has this beautiful, bright sound. And that’s sort of where I came up with the idea of this silvery spindle image; that bright kind of yellow, silver, orange colors, light green, that you can kind of hear in a violin. And so the the title, it kind of evokes that relationship of the violin in the orchestra where the the orchestra is sort of the large woven loom that carries this kind of silvery thread throughout.

How much do the times we live in influence how you feel and what you write by extension?

It’s interesting that you ask that in relation to this piece because, of course, I wrote this during the height of the pandemic. And this piece actually the first and second movements are quite different in feeling. I’ve never done this before, but I actually was switching back and forth between writing them based on what mood I was in because sometimes I just felt like it was so hard and I didn’t want to live in this sort of darker, angrier music. And so the first movement is quite light and playful. And so I would do that when I felt that way. But then sometimes I felt like I had to be in that dark place because I was so angry or scared. And so then I would write the second movement. So I’ve always written chronologically, and this is the first time that I haven’t done so. I felt so emotionally disregulated that I kind of needed to jump back and forth. 

What are the challenges for you after a world premiere in finding other opportunities for people to hear this music through other performances of the work? 

You kind of hope for a recording or a second performance. But honestly, I’m kind of on to the next piece in a way. I keep telling myself I want to spend time getting my existing works out. But I don’t know, I’ve sort of moved on. I think you kind of have to. 

You don’t worry about the legacy of a piece or the lifetime of a piece because you’ve moved on?

No, because I think my next piece is already better, maybe, or, I feel like that’s part of letting go of your work. When you finish a piece you kind of are aware of its imperfections and things; maybe you want to do differently. Like I do want to have more aggressive drums next time. I’m finishing up the piece for the Boston Symphony and I’m focusing more on brass. I’m just kind of on to the next thing.

I saw the video that you posted last month called Letting Go of Your Work, which I thought was refreshingly candid. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a composer speak that way before. And you ask a question towards the end “if there is an unfiltered, more direct version of my sound that comes out when I’m not trying to make things perfect?” One month later, and a week before the world premiere of this work, do you have an answer to that question? 

Can you ask me next week? I might have an answer because I haven’t heard this movement that I wrote that I felt was so different than the previous two. It’s so much more tonal. God forbid it has a key signature. It’s very repetitive. I’m assuming the answer is yes, not that one is better than the other, but there is a more distilled version of my voice that comes out in this third movement because I was letting go and not analyzing it. You write music and then you sort of complicate it. You write an idea and then you expand and develop it and vary it. So in a way, it’s building out. It’s interesting to see what it is when it’s just the more pure distilled thing and if that feels like enough to me.

The L.A. Phil had announced that your violin concerto was going to be premiered in May. Obviously, that was postponed. On that program it was paired with the Mahler 5th Symphony. This program it’s paired with the Beethoven 7th. Do you think that there is a better conversation to be had between your work and the Mahler or your work in the Beethoven? If you had a preference, which it would be?

I don’t know how to answer that question. Mahler maybe I feel more affinity to some of his work and his sound worlds more than Beethoven. I don’t really think about what the piece is programed with. And honestly, it’s always either Mahler or Beethoven. (She laughs) Once I got programed with Debussy. That was exciting because, you know, color and his impressionistic style is very, very impactful to me. But I do feel quite removed from Mahler and Beethoven so I don’t really have a preference.

If you could program your work with any composer or a couple of composers, who would they be? 

I’d love to to to be on a concert with George Crumb and Sofia Gubaidulina. I want to be on programs with more contemporary composers, even though they are now of older generations. I think that kind of ritualistic sound world that they both share is kind of otherworldly. I don’t know if you can hear that in my music, but I’m definitely influenced and inspired by the two of them.

It’s interesting you brought up Sofia Gubaidulina because I read an interview that she gave where she said “There is a deep necessity for human beings to realize his or her unconscious. This is art. This is not only music, but it’s an art. This is what art does. It’s absolutely necessary.” Do you agree with her? And if so, how do you think your work helps you realize your unconscious? 

I one thousand percent agree with her. My work is a way for me to process how I feel. To process the images that come into my mind that are in my unconscious, my dreams. All of that goes into my music. Sometimes even I get ideas for titles from my dreams. The hope is that by being as authentic and true to how I feel as possible that it will create a space for others to access their own internal world.

That’s why I don’t really share what my pieces are about. I want to give some imagery that people can imagine and latch onto. Working on it helped me process my unconscious. But I don’t want them to be distracted by it, by me. I want my music to be a vehicle for them to access their own unconscious. And that’s one of the beautiful things about music is because it does not have words. It gives you that freedom to to access your own imagination.

To see our complete interview with Julia Adolphe, please go to our YouTube channel here.

Photos of Julia Adolphe courtesy of the composer

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We lost this summer’s Hollywood Bowl season due to the pandemic. It wasn’t a surprise that the first half of the season at Walt Disney Concert Hall would also be cancelled. Still, somehow, there was optimism that we as a nation and we as a responsible public could navigate our way through this crisis more effectively than we have. That turned out not to be the case.

It bears repeating that these continuing cancellations have a profound impact on the organizations and the thousands of musicians, ushers, stagehands, box office personnel, food service employees and others who work with and for an organization like the LA Phil.

Then there’s the loss of the live performances for all of us who could certainly use it right now. We can all listen to Yuja Wang perform John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? on the superb Deutsche Grammophon recording by the LA Phil, but it doesn’t compare to hearing the piece performed live either in the WDCH or at the Bowl.

Ah yes, the Bowl. In the press release that went out today, Chad Smith, CEO of the LA Phil said, “Together with all of Los Angeles, we will arrive on the other side of this pandemic. We now look toward next summer, when we will welcome audiences back to the Hollywood Bowl and The Ford and celebrate each iconic venue’s centenary with new meaning and purpose.”

I pray he’s right. I would love nothing more than to be able to return to the Bowl next summer. But realistically what are the odds of that? There’s no vaccine (and who knows how many people will take it once there is one), the long-discussed second wave appears to be on us already and frankly this virus is baffling scientists.

The LA Philharmonic had no choice in making this decision. Thankfully they have invested time and resources into projects like Sound/Stage and In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl. These shows remind us how vital a role live music and this orchestra plays in our lives – whether you live in Los Angeles or not.

As the pandemic continues its hold on America and the world, I look forward to the day when the cancelling of culture is no longer necessary and we can begin restoring our souls and our psyches with dance, theater and live music at venues across the world – including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl.

R.I.P. Los Angeles Philharmonic 2020-2021 season. It was going to be a great season.

Photo: Walt Disney Concert Hall Boxoffice May 2020 (Photo by Craig L. Byrd)

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It is week two for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Power to the People! Festival. And much like the program last week, this week’s schedule reflects another diverse and fascinating series of events.

This week the festival starts very strongly on Tuesday, March 10th when pianist and composer Conrad Tao performs a solo recital featuring works by Aaron Copland and Frederic Rzewski. The centerpiece of the concert is an epic 60-minute composition by Rzewski entitled The People United Will Never Be Defeated! For a more detailed preview go here.

Wednesday, March 11th, Rapper Rakim will join cultural critic and activist Bakari Kitwana; associate professor of African American Studies and Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA Gaye Theresa Johnson and moderator Tyree Boyd-Pates (one of the festival’s curator) for a conversation about his book Sweat the Technique: Revelations on Creativity from the Lyrical Genius. They will also discover hip-hop as a force in activism. This is a free event at the California African American Museum. RSVPs are required and books will be available for purchase at the event.

On Thursday, March 12th, Oscar nominee and five-time Grammy winner Terence Blanchard will discuss his career and his collaborations with filmmaker Spike Lee in a conversation at the California African American Museum. Moderating this “Songversation” will be Hamza Walker, executive director of the Los Angeles nonprofit art space LAXART. This is also a free event, but again RSVPs are required.

Friday, March 13th there will be a performance of five “actos” by legendary playwright Luis Valdez at A Noise Within in Pasadena. Valdez is the playwright who gave us Zoot Suit. An acto is defined as a short, realistic play, usually in Spanish, that dramatizes the social and economic problems of Chicanos.

The five actos being performed are “Los Dos Caras del Patroncito,” “Los Vendidos,” “No Saco Nada de la Escuela,” “La Conquista de México,” and “Huelgustas.” Directing the evening is Michael John Garcés. Appearing in the program are Natalie Camunas, Cristina Frias, Michael Garcia, Jeannette Godoy and Bethany Navas.

The movie music of Spike Lee & Terence Blanchard will be performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Saturday, March 14th. Joining the LA Phil will be Blanchard with The E-Collective, Anthony Hamilton, Ben Harper and Valerie June. Damon Gupton conducts.

Amongst the Spike Lee joints that Blanchard has scored are Jungle Fever, Malcom X, Clockers, 25th Hour, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and BlackkKlansman.

Sunday finds a particular highlight of the festival when Cécile McLorin Salvant performs Ogresse. This 90-minute song cycle is not in the vein of her usual jazz standards. Her Salvant tells the story of a grotesque woman who ends up eating her lover. It may sound odd, but this work, written by Salvant, has garnered terrific reviews and standing ovations. We’ll have a more detailed preview later this week.

For tickets to Conrad Tao go here.

To RSVP for the Rakim event go here.

To RSVP for Terence Blanchard Songversation go here.

For tickets to Luis Valdez’s Actos go here.

For tickets to the Movie Music of Spike Lee & Terence Blanchard go here.

For tickets to Cécile McLorin Salvant go here.

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The series starts with Herbie Hancock joining Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil. The first half of the concert begins with an 8-minute piece by Jessie Montgomery entitled Banner which was written to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

Courtney Bryan’s White Gleam of Our Bright Star is next. The title comes from a line in poet James Weldon Johnson’s Life Every Voice and Sing.

The first half concludes with a performance of jazz saxophone legend Wayne Shorter’s Aurora which uses text by Maya Angelou. (The work is part of a planned bigger piece setting Angelou’s text from her poem The Rock Cries Out to Us Today which she wrote in 1992 for Clinton’s inauguration.)

Hancock joins for the second half which will feature two of his compositions: Ostinatio: Suite for Angela from his album Mwandishi and I Have a Dream from his album The Prisoner – which was a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.

On March 6th Patti Smith and her band will perform. (You don’t really need me to tell you who she is or why this is going to be an amazing concert do you?)

March 7th finds two concerts. The first, at the California African American Museum, is free. Composer and vocalist Imani Uzuri will hold a Revolutionary Choir Salon where she examines protest songs and performs them. (There will be a second performance of this on Sunday, March 8th at 1 PM in BP Hall at Walt Disney Concert Hall which is free and open to tickets holder’s of Yolanda Adams’ Sunday afternoon concert listed below.)

The second concert is back at Walt Disney Concert Hall and features Puerto Rico’s Residente (a Grammy Award-winning rapper/writer/producer) performing with the LA Phil. The first part of the program opens with Montgomery’s Banner which is followed by Gabriela Ortiz‘s Teneek – Invenciones de Territorio. This work was an LA Phil commission that had its world premiere in 2017.

The first week of Power to the People! concludes with gospel singer Yolanda Adams performing with Dudamel and the Phil. Once again, Banner, by Jessie Montgomery opens the program. That is followed by Duke Ellington’s Three Black Kings.

Three Black Kings was Ellington’s last composition. It celebrates King Balthazar, King Solomon and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is one of many large-scale symphonic works Ellington wrote during his career. (And if you’ve never heard one of them performed live by an orchestra, you should.)

For tickets to Herbie Hancock go here.

For tickets to Patti Smith go here.

To RSVP for Imani Uzuri at the California African American Museum go here. (RSVP’s are requested)

For tickets to Residente go here.

For tickets to Yolanda Adams go here.

Image of Gustavo Dudamel, Patti Smith and Herbie Hancock courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

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