Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Last fall, the Los Angeles Master Chorale kicked off its 50^th season with a loving look back. It’s a stance the ensemble has maintained much of this season with shows revisiting high points of the group's repertoire and history. But when the season came to a close this Sunday, the tone was decidedly different. The LAMC, and particularly the LAMC under Music Director Grant Gershon, has a great commitment to contemporary music and this was the focus of the final program. The show consisted entirely of recent works from living composers with close relationships to the ensemble, three of which were world premieres. And if there was any doubt about where the LAMC is headed, the evening put an emphatic exclamation mark on the season with two premieres that may be among the ensemble's greatest moments. Yes, it was that good.

Sunday started well with a new commission from the LAMC’s composer-in-residence Shawn Kirchner who set four poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins to evocative and worthwhile music. There was also a recognition of the Chorale’s longstanding commitment to working with youth when the choristers were joined by local students for a recetnly performed commission from Francisco Nunez. But as appropriate as these moments were, thre was something much more remarkable waiting in the wings. The evening ended with a one-two punch of mammoth proportions.

David Lang has a long history with the Chorale and his latest gift to the group was an absolute stunner. the national anthems is exactly what it portends to be – a collection of phrases and words Lang collected from the English translations of national anthems from current UN member states. It sounds bookish and overly clever on the surface but the practical effect was shattering. Over five movements, Lang goes from a sort of tongue-in-cheek ribbing of the paranoid and bombastic undercurrent in the genre to something deeper. The blood, honor, and victory soon give way to something more humanistic. Lang is able to find the love and hope in these texts as well. The fragmented musical style that marked his award-wining the little match girl passion returns in the national anthems. But the effect this time is grander, taking on all of humanity in a touching emotionally unifying way. The blood bursts into flower and water falls from the sky. This is some of Lang’s best work. It’s a surprising blast of hope and beauty in an unlikely place and it's achingly gorgeous music to boot.

How do you follow such a momentous premiere? How about with another one. The final work on the program was a world premiere commission supported by the vocalists of the LAMC themselves. It was fitting that they received the last word in this auspicious season and they chose to do that through the music of long-time frined and colleague Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen has been on a musical roll in the last few years and Iri da iri continued in the trend of an every increasing body of profoundly ambitious and darkly substantive work. Salonen chose the closing lines from Dante’s Paradiso for the single movement. The author’s eyes look out on a phantasmagorical universe and all its mechanics. And what he sees is a system of faith founded in and driven by love. The vocal layering of the piece is a challenge and Salonen gave the ensemble a work worthy of their world-class talents with its complex harmonics. The grandeur of the conclusion resonated through everyone in the room. It was one of those great Disney Hall moments that sadly don’t come around as much as they used to but are still achievable. The LAMC has always been about looking forward and the new music they offered on Sunday at the end of their big anniversary season suggested that the mot exciting moments may be yet to come.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 13/14

Sometimes context and surrounding circumstances can change a single performance into something much larger than the sum of its parts. Such was the case Sunday as the Los Angeles Master Chorale continued it’s 50th anniversary season with a show highlighting the ensemble’s fervent commitment to contemporary music under music director Grant Gershon. The evening was structured around two large works by living composers – David Lang’s the little match girl passion and Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations). Both are works the chorale is very familiar with, the latter a commission for the chorale, which they have recorded and performed around the world. But what informed the evening more than any of this was another event. Earlier in the week came news of the passing of the chorale’s music director emeritus, the great Paul Salamunovich. It cannot be understated how critical Salamunovich was in making the Chorale into the world-class ensemble it is today, and the evening started appropriately with an understated and powerful tribute to him. The tribute took the form of a performance of one of the former conductor’s favorite choral works, Ave Maria by Tomas Luis da Vittoria. It was a searing moment with Gershon conducting from the first row of vocalists and leaving the conductor’s spot vacant in memory of Salamunovich. The Amen was followed by silence, the Chorale leaving the stage without a sound. It was perhaps one of the most profound and appropriately stirring tributes to the passing of an artistic colleague I’ve yet seen on the stage.

The rest of the evening proceeded as planned, but the spirit of the former Music Director and grief and joy in his wake permeated everything in the rest of the show. Lang’s passion is well known and its twist on the story of humanity’s redemption is one of the darker and most emotionally fraught moments in contemporary music. The sparse rhythmic retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl and her lonely death in the New Year’s Eve cold can be shockingly warm and beautiful. It can also be hard to listen to given the bleakness of its subject matter. But I’ve never quite heard the soaring spirit of the work’s redemptive core as much as I did on Sunday. The Chorale managed the tricky rhythmic aspects of the piece with ease, and Lang received a well-deserved and very enthusiastic reception following the performance.

After the break, by contrast, was the more celebratory You Are (Variations). Admittedly, I’ve not always been the biggest fan of Reich’s incessantly bubbly and seemingly vacuous sound. Even this piece, which is so closely associated with the LAMC, can come off as unchangingly bright. But tonight it provided the perfect counterpoint to Lang’s sad reflection. Here was the celebration of life and art that the Chorale moves on with. The effusive warmth and glow of the work filled the hall with an oscillating movement of happy pulsing music that was both reassuring and in its own way, liberating. Reich, like Lang, was present at the performance and received an enthusiastic ovation. And even if everyone had not come to the performance planning on paying their respects to Salamunovich, by the end of the night, the unity of feeling and purpose was there. This was the Master Chorale he built: one that looks forward and engages today’s world.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 13/14

The Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 50th Anniversary season continued its victory lap this past weekend. The Chorale has been revisiting cornerstones of their repertory and no anniversary would be complete without one of the grand scale works of the choral cannon. And while the LAMC has been very close to contemporary music, the works or Morten Lauridsen will be featured in the upcoming Mar 16 program, they have never slacked off on staples either. Take last weekend’s glowing performances of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. The Chorale and music director Grant Gershon pulled off the tricky feat of delivering the best of both worlds. On the one hand, Gershon went for a mid-20th century large ensemble approach to the piece relying on an orchestra populated with contemporary instruments and big sound. On the other he managed an often delicate and spritely performance that never bogged down. The approach seemed perfectly fit for the occasion, a big anniversary, and the space, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, with its secular worldview and grand design. The surety of the performance only grew more formidable as the evening drew on and the "Dona nobis pacem" hit home with full a profound quiet force. This is not always the case for performances of the Mass even with the most experienced of ensembles, but once again Gershon displayed his world-class conducting gifts.

As always the chorale offered up an array of exciting soloists throughout the night. I hesitate to single anyone out with such a large group of fine soloists so suffice it to say the Chorale’s team players were on top of their game all night from beginning to end. It was an exciting and hearty reminder that the LAMC has grown to a point and has such a rich depth that musically, not much phases them from Bach to brand new music. The season roles on and given the quality of performances so far, the remaining shows this season all come highly recommended.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 13/14

It's the season for round numbers here in Los Angeles. The one you surely know about is the 10th anniversary of the Walt Disney Concert Hall the LA Philharmonic has been promoting. But there’s a more important big anniversary downtown. That one is a 50th and it’s the number of seasons now being celebrated by the Los Angeles Master Chorale now under Music Director Grant Gershon. On Sunday the chorale kicked off their big season with a mega show. A nostalgic look back on the first fifty years of the ensemble through the musical eyes of its four former and current music directors. A hodge-podge of pieces by dozens of composers was presented to provide an overview of the musical interests and temperments that have helped shape the group's repertory. And while it may not have always been the most cohesive performance musically with such a scope, the show did provide a great sense of the LAMC’s history and direction and had a lot to say about where the group is right now.

It’s worth remembering that at its inception, the LAMC was an oddity – a resident performing chorale ensemble in a major Americna arts organization that not only collaborated with the local orchestra, but also provided a season of independent chorale performances. Founding Music Director Roger Wagner managed to put choral music front and center in the genesis of LA's Music Center giving it a place in the city's largest arts organization unrivaled elsewhere in the U.S. His vision paid off grandly and much of Sunday's anniversary program focused on the cornerstone pieces that made the company's reputation in the first two decades under his leadership. The evening moved on revisiting the Scottish works and influences that were a hallmark under John Currie's tenure with the organization complete with bagpipes and drums. Some of the strongest musical moments followed a long break when the chorale performed pieces from favorite composers of former Music Director Paul Salamunovich. Associate Conductor Lesley Leighton led works of Maruice Durufle and Gershon presented Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium. It is precisely these sorts of performances that established the chorale's international reputation in the 90s and they continue to be a high water mark in the artistic life of the company.

But all of these works still had a rough hewn quality in their performance Sunday. There was a disjointed feeling to this large and diverse program until the audience and the many vocal artists of the chorale turned the corner and dove into the last decade or so of the organiztions history. These, of course, are the years under current Music Director Grant Gershon. And if there was any lesson to be taken away from this anniversary concert Sunday it was that while the history of the LAMC is indeed formidable, today, this chorale is musically Grant Gershon's in its very heart and soul. The emphasis on newer music and on an increasingly diverse world of chorale music traditions has been a hallmark of this last decade. And Gershon has shaped an ensemble that thrives on the unexpected. Reeling from Nyowon Woo's ME-NA-RI to fragments from Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil to Ellington's setting of The Lord's Prayer and finally to Gaspar Fernandes' Dame albricia mano Anton, the chorale sounded seemless and natural. The warmth and energy the chorale projected in such rapidly shifting and diverse settings was astounding. In fact the vocalists seemed to thrive on it. Almost as if to say "now watch me" the chorale swelled with its own light and a sense of power. Everything clicked suddenly and the evening climzxed with a performance of Randall Thompson's Alleluia which provided an opportunity for the chorlae memebers to be joined by the many LAMC alumni present who joined the current members on stage. It was an exciting moment and one that was undoubtedly special for everyone involved. And it was a brillinat start to a season that encapsulates everything this single evening was trying to achieve with performances of the Carmina Burana and Bach's B Minor Mass to work from Lauridsen, Recih, Lang and Salonen. Gershon and his LA Master Chorale aren't about to forget where they've been. But don't think for a second that they are about to take a rest.

Labels: LA Master Chorale 13/14