Los Angeles Master Chorale | MEMETERIA by Thomas May

May 6, 2023 • 12:28 pm 0

LA Master Chorale’s Lagrime

The Meany Center at University of Washington presents the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s production of Lagrime di San Pietro by Orlando di Lasso on Saturday evening, with Peter Sellars directing and Grant Gershon conducting. My program essay for the performance can be found here.

What’s the correct way to refer to one of the most extraordinary musical minds in history: Orlande/Orlando/Roland de Lassus/di Lasso? There’s a Franco-Flemish form and an Italianized one; sometimes the two get mixed together. There’s even a Latin option intended to standardize the situation. The very profusion of variants points to the internationalism and cross-pollination across borders that marked the era of the High Renaissance in Europe….

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Filed under: early music, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Peter Sellars

July 21, 2018 • 8:13 am Comments Off on LA Master Chorale in Big Sing California

LA Master Chorale in Big Sing California

Billed as “the biggest choral event in California history,” Big Sing California will link up 10,000 singers from around the world with the LA Master Chorale this afternoon at 2pm PST. The program will include music by Morten Lauridsen, Moira Smiley, Eric Whitacre, Rollo Dilworth, Shawn Kirchner, and other favorites. Complete program, artist bios, list of those participating, videos, and more here.

And it’s being livestreamed, but there will be no repeat screenings.

Tune in to Big Sing California

Filed under: choral music, Los Angeles Master Chorale

April 12, 2016 • 12:42 am Comments Off on Alexander’s Feast: A Handelian Ode to the Power of Music

Alexander’s Feast: A Handelian Ode to the Power of Music

2016-04-16-alexanders-feast My essay on Handel’s magnificent ode Alexander’s Feast has been posted on the LA Master Chorale Site:

It sounds strange to refer to George Frideric Handel as a neglected composer. Messiah is such a fixture that the holiday season would feel bereft were it suddenly to disappear from the scene. (Never mind that its association with Christmas postdates the practice during the composer’s lifetime.)

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Filed under: choral music, Handel, Los Angeles Master Chorale

March 21, 2016 • 7:18 am Comments Off on Hidden Handel

Hidden Handel

Director Trevore Ross on staging Handel’s oratorios for the LA Master Chorale. First in their five-season-long project is Alexander’s Feast.

Filed under: choral music, directors, Handel, Los Angeles Master Chorale

March 3, 2016 • 12:11 am Comments Off on Americans at Work

Americans at Work

2016-03-06-music-of-the-coal-miner Here’s my program essay for the upcoming West Coast premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, a remarkable oratorio:

“The thing I love about music is, it’s beyond words. But somehow the words crept back in — big time,” remarked Julia Wolfe in an interview on NPR’s Studio360 following the announcement that she had won last year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music for Anthracite Fields. Wolfe’s moving and innovative new oratorio fuses music with words to tell a story deeply rooted in American history — and one inextricably connected to how we live today.

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Filed under: choral music, Julia Wolfe, Los Angeles Master Chorale

April 3, 2015 • 8:53 pm Comments Off on Sounds of Water, Rituals of Rebirth: Tan Dun’s Water Passion

Sounds of Water, Rituals of Rebirth: Tan Dun’s Water Passion

My essay on Tan Dun’s Water Passion, which is being performed next weekend by Grant Gershon and the LA Master Chorale, is now live:

In 2013 the peripatetic Tan Dun traveled to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig to conduct his Water Passion in the very space in which J.S. Bach had introduced the St. Matthew Passion nearly three centuries ago (most likely in 1727). The gesture underlined the kind of cross-cultural counterpoint that lies at the heart of the Chinese composer’s oratorio.

The full title reads Water Passion after St. Matthew, yet Tan also models his work on his reading of Bach’s monumental precedent. It might even be titled Water Passion after St. Matthew after Bach — the second “after” being taken in its double sense of “according to” and “postdating” (for a contemporary world).

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Filed under: choral music, essay, Los Angeles Master Chorale, new music