Upbeat Live

Concert: Mozart 1791 - Final Piano Concerto

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

Concert: Young Caesar

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Eva Soltes is a prolific performing arts producer, dancer, and documentarian, who has championed the work of gifted artists and underserved art forms for decades.

She is the Founder/ Director of Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology, a residency/performance program based in the late Lou Harrison’s straw bale retreat in Joshua Tree, California. Soltes enjoyed a multi-faceted personal and professional relationship with Lou Harrison that spanned nearly 30 years. During that time she developed a large body of media on the composer, culminating in her featurelength documentary, LOU HARRISON: A World of Music, which has been called “wizardly” (SF Chronicle) and “affecting” (The New Yorker).

Other highlights of Soltes’ career include producing Sound Design in Media, the first national conference on the creative use of sound in media at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Ranch, with John Cage as Keynote Speaker and Academy Award-winning sound designer Randy Thom and Radio Drama producer Erik Bauresfeld as hosts. Previously she was Concert Director of 1750 Arch Concerts in Berkeley, California, where with Music Director Tom Buckner she presented over 800 performances and hosted more than 100 live radio broadcasts with composers and musicians from around the world.

As a dancer Soltes specializes in Bharatanatyam, classical dance of South India, having trained for decades with the late legendary South Indian artist T. Balasaraswati. In 2014/15 Soltes was a visiting teacher at the Balasaraswati Institute of Music and Dance in Chennai, and in 2016 she was invited to dance at the Madras Music Academy in a performance celebrating Bala’s 98th birthday.

Visit louharrisonhouse.org.

Concert: Bartók Cycle with Dudamel and Yuja Wang

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor of the Aspen Music Festival and School, has been with the AMFS since 2003. He has developed the season themes and other artistic initiatives, including the Overtures series and the thematic minifestivals. In his time the AMFS has garnered seven ASCAP Awards for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. Previously artistic director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, he is a member of the recommendation board of the Avery Fisher Career Grants among others and has served on numerous competition jury panels. He is a regular lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was a featured lecturer for its 2012 Mahler Project. From 1991 to 2000 he was the Minnesota Orchestra’s director of artistic planning.

Concert: Organ Recital: Iveta Apkalna

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Born in Mannheim, Germany, Christoph Bull has performed and recorded around the world, including France, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Northern Ireland, Russia, India, Taiwan and El Salvador, at national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists and at venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Lincoln Center in New York City, Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, the Cathedrals of Moscow, Saint-Denis and Salzburg as well as rock clubs like The Viper Room, The Roxy and The Whisky in Los Angeles. He’s collaborated with leading orchestras, conductors, choirs and ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, James Conlon, Carl St.Clair, Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony and Grammy-winning Southwest Chamber Music.

He improvised his first melodies on the piano at the age of five and gave his first organ recitals and rock concerts with a band at the age of twelve.

Following his graduation at Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium Mannheim and organ studies at University of Church Music in Heidelberg and Musikhochschule Freiburg, he earned degrees at Berklee College of Music, University of Southern California and American Conservatory of Music on multiple scholarships.

His organ teachers were Cherry Rhodes, Hermann Schäffer, Ludwig Dörr, Samuel Swartz, Christoph Schöner and Paul Jordan. He won prizes in numerous organ and composition competitions, including “Jugend musiziert”, Michael Masser Competition, Berklee College of Music Songwriting Competition and International Organ Competition Marcello Galanti.

Christoph Bull is the creator of the genre-crossing, collaborative multi-media series organica, combining traditional and contemporary music. His collaborators include DJs, video artists, live painter, instrumentalists and singers. He has also contributed to projects by Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams, Harry Connick Jr., George Clinton and Bootsy Collins (Parliament Funkadelic), Cindy Lauper, Lili Haydn and Nishat Khan and opened the organ series at Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa and Villa Aurora in the Pacific Palisades.

He’s received several awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for creative and innovative concert programs and has released a number of CDs, including License To Chill, Old School, organica 2001, organica 2, and organica 3. His musical Treasure Island, a collaboration with lyricist Tim Mathews, was premiered in both the U.S. and Germany. His solo album First & Grand, the world premiere recording of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ, was celebrated by the international trade press and showcases the stylistic versatility and expressiveness of his playing. His original song “Peace” was featured on the benefit album 2 Unite All together with songs by Peter Gabriel, Stewart Copeland and others.

His music has been broadcast on TV and radio, including on NPR’s flagship station in Southern California, KCRW, on Classical KUSC and the Minnesota Public Radio program “Pipedreams”.

Christoph Bull is based in Los Angeles. In addition to his activities as a concert organist, composer, singer-songwriter, speaker, university organist and organ professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he is organist-in-residence at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, playing the largest church pipe organ in the world.

Concert: Schubert Symphonies / Mahler Songs 8 & 9

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Lorraine Byrne Bodley is Senior Lecturer in Musicology and Director of Research at Maynooth University. She holds a PhD in both Music and German from University College Dublin (2000). Dr Byrne Bodley is the first woman in Ireland to be conferred with a DMUS in Musicology, a higher doctorate on published work (NUI, 2012) and the second woman in Ireland to be awarded a DMUS (the first was Annie Patterson in 1889). Recent awards and fellowships include two DAAD Senior Academic Awards (2010 and 2014); a Gerda-Henkel Foundation Scholarship (2014); two Visiting Professorships at the University of Leipzig (2010) and at the Schubert-Archiv, University of Tübingen (2014). In 2015 she was elected President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and Member of The Royal Irish Academy.

Dr Byrne Bodley is known internationally for her work on Schubert, on Goethe and Music, and on German Song, on all of which she has published prolifically and lectured internationally (in German and in English) in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia, Tokyo, Canada, USA, UK and Ireland. She has chaired and organised seven international conferences including Schubert and Concepts of Late Style (2011) at Maynooth University, which opened up a world-wide discussion on the topic.

That Dr Byrne Bodley has published 14 books in 14 years is rich confirmation of her ability to pursue vigorously a highly-focused interdisciplinary research program while being a committed and innovative teacher. She has published 3 monographs and edited 11 volumes (6 volumes of essays and 5 music scores for performance which have received world premieres). She has also written 40 book article and book chapters for essay collections with Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and such scholarly journals as Music and Letters; Publications of the English Goethe Society; Schubert-Jahrbuch; Goethe-Yearbook; Oxford German Studies; German Quarterly; 19th Century Music Review; Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Her monographs include Schubert’s Goethe Settings (2003) and Goethe and Zelter: Musical Dialogues (Ashgate, 2009) which was named an Outstanding Academic Book of 2010 by Choice and has been widely acclaimed as an ‘excellent translation’ and ‘a major contribution’ to musicology and Goethean studies (Music and Letters, The Schubertian, Choice, Modern Language Review). Her most recent books are Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Rethinking Schubert (Oxford University Press, 2016), both co-edited with Julian Horton; a special Schubert edition of Nineteenth Century Music Review published by Cambridge University Press and co-edited with James William Sobaskie, and a volume of essays on Music in Goethe’s Faust: Goethe’s Faust in Music (Boydell and Brewer, 2017). She is currently writing a new biography of Schubert commissioned by Yale University Press.

Concert: Schubert Symphonies / Mahler Songs 3 & 4

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

James William Sobaskie earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Minnesota, as well as a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin.  Today he is an associate professor at Mississippi State University, where he teaches music theory and composition.  Dr. Sobaskie serves on the Editorial Board of Nineteenth-Century Music Review, a musicological journal published by Cambridge University Press, and he has been its Book Reviews Editor since 2008.  His research focuses on Franz Schubert and Gabriel Fauré, and he has given presentations on their music in Belgium, Canada, England, France, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Scotland, as well as America.  Dr. Sobaskie also is a member of the Comité Scientifique of Œuvres complètes de Gabriel Fauré, a thirty-volume collected works project being published in Germany by Bärenreiter with the support of the French government’s cultural agency Musica Gallica.  His critical edition of Fauré’s last two compositions, the Trio pour violon, violoncelle et piano (1923) and the Quatuor pour cordes (1924), inaugurated the monument in 2010.  His essay, “Contextual Processes in Schubert’s Late Sacred Music,” appears in the book Rethinking Schubert, edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton, which was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.  With Lorraine Byrne Bodley, he guest-edited the June 2016 issue of Nineteenth-Century Music Review devoted to Schubert, a sequel to the journal’s 2008 Schubert issue that he guest-edited with Susan Youens.  At present Dr. Sobaskie is editing Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert, an anthology of invited essays whose contributors represent nine countries, which will be published by Boydell & Brewer.  He also is completing a book, The Music of Gabriel Fauré: Style, Structure and the Art of Allusion, which will be published by Routledge.  While similarities and connections between Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) may not seem immediately obvious – beyond their enormous and extraordinary legacies of vocal, piano, and chamber music – the early-Romantic Austrian composer and the late-Romantic/early Modern French composer actually have much in common.  For instance, both have been overshadowed by prominent peers, the richness of their repertoires has been overlooked, and each master’s artistic influence has been underestimated.  Such challenging circumstances cannot help but inspire the energetic advocacy that is shared by so many musicians, and so amply demonstrated by the Schubert Festival of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

Concert: The Best of Wagner’s Ring

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Thomas Neenan is Lecturer in Music History and Music Theory at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena where he teaches a full range of courses devoted to history, theory, music appreciation, jazz history, opera, and special topics.

Neenan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organ Performance from Cal-State Northridge and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Organ Performance Practices and Conducting from UCLA where he was named an Outstanding Graduate Student. He studied organ with David Britton and Thomas Harmon in the U.S. and Ernst-Ulrich von Kameke and Jean Langlais in Europe.

As a recital organist, he has performed in the United States, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland. In 2004 he performed a solo recital on the newly restored 1746 Hilldebrandt “Bach Organ” in Naumburg, Germany.

As a conductor, he has led a variety of instrumental and choral ensembles throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He was a conducting fellow under Helmut Rilling at the Oregon Bach Festival where he conducted baritone Thomas Quasthoff and the Festival Chorus in portions of Haydn’s “Creation” and he has led performances by the Choir of St. Matthew’s Parish (Pacific Palisades) in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany and throughout the British Isles.

Neenan has contributed scholarly essays to a variety of professional journals on topics ranging from Gregorian chant to the organ music of Gyorgy Ligeti. He has received research grants to study and write on performance practices in the organ music of Dietrich Buxtehude, music and culture in the Dutch communities of colonial New York, and music in the monastic community of Taizé, France.

In 2017 he retired after 36 years as Music Director at The Parish of St. Matthew (Episcopal), Pacific Palisades, and 33 years as Music Director and Conductor of The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s. He currently serves as President of St. Matthew’s Music Guild which presents a concert series by the chamber orchestra and guest artists and ensembles (MusicGuildOnline.org) and offers multi-faceted music outreach activities in area schools and retirement communities.

Concert: From the New World

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Alan Chapman is heard weekdays on Classical KUSC (91.5 FM). He also produces and hosts “Modern Times” on Saturday nights and “A Musical Offering,” a program of Baroque music Sunday mornings. He was a longtime Professor of Music at Occidental College and served as a Visiting Professor at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. In recent years he has been a member of the music theory faculty of the Colburn Conservatory. Well known as a pre-concert lecturer, he has been a regular speaker on the Upbeat Live series since its inception in 1984. He also works closely with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Pacific Symphony, and has been heard globally as programmer and host of the inflight classical channels on United and Delta Airlines.

After receiving his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he earned a Ph.D. in music theory from Yale University. His analytical work has appeared in The Journal of Music Theory, and he is a contributor to A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill (Yale University Press, 1986), winner of the 1987 Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing on music.

Dr. Chapman is also active as a composer-lyricist and pianist. His songs, which have been performed and recorded by Andrea Marcovicci, Amanda McBroom, and many other artists throughout the United States and in England, have been honored by ASCAP, the Johnny Mercer Foundation, and the Manhattan Association of Cabarets. His children’s opera Les Moose: The Operatic Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, commissioned by Los Angeles Opera, was premiered in 15 public schools in 1997. Peter and Mr. Wolf, a work chronicling the tribulations of an eighth-grader in search of a science project, was commissioned by Chamber Music Palisades and premiered in 2008 with Chapman as narrator.

He frequently appears with his wife, soprano Karen Benjamin, in evenings of his original songs as well as concerts dedicated to preserving the American Songbook. They have performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, New York’s Town Hall, the Los Angeles Music Center, Pepperdine University, Ford Amphitheatre, Broad Stage, Dallas Museum of Art, and many other venues across the United States. Their CD, Que Será, Será: The Songs of Livingston and Evans, features the late Ray Evans telling the stories behind such beloved songs as “Mona Lisa” and “Silver Bells.”

Concert: Reykjavík Festival: Jóhann Jóhannsson

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is Iceland’s leading musicologist and a renowned pianist, choral conductor, and music educator. Born in Reykjavík, he majored in piano performance and music history at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and received his PhD in musicology from Harvard University. He is currently Associate/Visiting Professor of Musicology at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, as well as being Artistic Advisor for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Ingólfsson has devoted much of his career to researching Icelandic music history. He has published widely in Icelandic and English, including an article published by Harvard University Press in the 2013 volume City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music. His biography of the Icelandic composer Jón Leifs was nominated for the Icelandic Book Award and an English version will be published in 2018 by Indiana University Press. His most recent book, published in 2016, is the first comprehensive history of classical music to be written in the Icelandic language. Ingólfsson has given lectures at conferences in Europe and the United States, been Visiting Erasmus Lecturer at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and has held visiting fellowships in musicology at Oxford University, Boston University, and Harvard.

As a musician, Ingólfsson is primarily active as a collaborative pianist and choral conductor. He is the founder and artistic director of the Carmina Chamber Choir, which has appeared in various concerts in Iceland, England, Germany, France, and Sweden, as well as at the Reykjavik Arts Festival. On the Icelandic label Smekkleysa, he has produced three CDs with music from medieval Icelandic manuscripts, two of which won the Icelandic Music Awards for Best Classical CD of the Year. One of these CDs, Melodia, was also Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Ingólfsson has worked with a wide range of prominent musicians including composer Nico Muhly and singer-composer Björk, arranging several tracks for her 2011 Grammy-nominated album Biophilia.

Concert: Reykjavík Festival: Sigur Rós & LA Phil Night 3

Upbeat Live provides historical and cultural context for many concerts, featuring engaging speakers, audio examples, and special guests. These events are free to ticket holders and are held in BP Hall, on the second floor, accessible after your ticket is scanned. For more information: laphil.com/upbeatlive

About the Speaker:

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is Iceland’s leading musicologist and a renowned pianist, choral conductor, and music educator. Born in Reykjavík, he majored in piano performance and music history at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and received his PhD in musicology from Harvard University. He is currently Associate/Visiting Professor of Musicology at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, as well as being Artistic Advisor for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Ingólfsson has devoted much of his career to researching Icelandic music history. He has published widely in Icelandic and English, including an article published by Harvard University Press in the 2013 volume City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music. His biography of the Icelandic composer Jón Leifs was nominated for the Icelandic Book Award and an English version will be published in 2018 by Indiana University Press. His most recent book, published in 2016, is the first comprehensive history of classical music to be written in the Icelandic language. Ingólfsson has given lectures at conferences in Europe and the United States, been Visiting Erasmus Lecturer at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and has held visiting fellowships in musicology at Oxford University, Boston University, and Harvard.

As a musician, Ingólfsson is primarily active as a collaborative pianist and choral conductor. He is the founder and artistic director of the Carmina Chamber Choir, which has appeared in various concerts in Iceland, England, Germany, France, and Sweden, as well as at the Reykjavik Arts Festival. On the Icelandic label Smekkleysa, he has produced three CDs with music from medieval Icelandic manuscripts, two of which won the Icelandic Music Awards for Best Classical CD of the Year. One of these CDs, Melodia, was also Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Ingólfsson has worked with a wide range of prominent musicians including composer Nico Muhly and singer-composer Björk, arranging several tracks for her 2011 Grammy-nominated album Biophilia.