Acclaimed architect Frank Gehry and the world premiere of “Frank’s House” by LACO composer-in-residence Andrew Norman inspired by the celebrated architect’s extraordinary Santa Monica home will be spotlighted at Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s (LACO) Westside Connections concert next week.
The special concert will be held Thursday, Feb. 5, at 7:30 pm at the Moss Theater on the campus of New Roads School in Santa Monica.
Gehry will be joined by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, The Juilliard School’s Ara Guzelimian, LACO music director Jeffrey Kahane, and LACO concertmaster Margaret Batjer for an unprecedented evening exploring compelling connections between music and architecture.
The Westside Connections series concert, curated and hosted by Batjer, includes conversations with the special guests as well as musical offerings connecting form, structure and line featuring Kahane, LACO Principal Timpani/Percussion Wade Culbreath, percussionist Ted Atkatz and pianist Joanne Pearce Martin.
On the program are Bartok’s “Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion” (1937) and two works by Bach, transcribed by Kurtag for piano four hands, “Chorale Prelude,” “O Lamb Of God Most Holy” (VIII), and “Sonatina From Actus Tragicus,” “God’s Time Is The Best Time,” BWV 106, as well as the world premiere by Norman, whose music has been hailed by the New York Times for its “daring juxtapositions and dazzling colors.”
Gehry, one of the most acclaimed architects of our time, is renowned for his bold, iconic postmodern designs including architectural masterworks such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Dancing House in Prague and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, which opened in late 2014 to great acclaim.
Based in Los Angeles, he received the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1986, was the subject of a documentary film by director Sydney Pollack, and has become a leading figure in mainstream culture, appearing in an Apple commercial and playing himself in an episode of the hit television show “The Simpsons.”
He compares architecture to music, saying, “It’s like jazz. You improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something.”
The three-part Westside Connections series, now in its seventh season, continues on March 19, 2015, with special guest award-winning architect Frederick Fisher, who approaches architecture as a collaborative process, and Brahms’s breathtaking String Quintet as well as Kevin Puts’s Arches for solo violin, featuring Batjer.
It concludes April 30, 2015, with Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne as special guest and the West Coast premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s Bradbury Studies, inspired by downtown LA’s historic Bradbury Building.
Tickets, beginning at $50, are available online at laco.org, by calling LACO at 213.622.7001, or at the venue box office on the night of the concert, if tickets remain. Subscriptions to all three Westside Connections concerts are available for $135.
The Moss Theater at New Roads School is located at 3131 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica.
For further information about the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 2013-14 season, call 213.622.7001 ext. 1. or visit www.laco.org.
