Upbeat Live

Concert: Green Umbrella: Contemporary Iceland

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: Salonen & Sibelius

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:

Of Lithuanian heritage, composer Veronika Krausas was born in Australia raised in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. She has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics and video. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) writes “her works, whose organic, lyrical sense of storytelling are supported by a rigid formal elegance, give her audiences a sense that nature’s frozen objects are springing to life.”

She was one of 6 composers involved in the acclaimed mobile opera Hopscotch. Alex Ross of the New Yorker called Hopscotch, “a remarkable experimental opera.” Her first opera, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was premiered at the New York City Opera’s VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold-out audiences. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of her chamber opera, “Something novel this way comes.”

Her newest opera Ghost Opera, a dramma giocoso with libretto by André Alexis and The Old Trout Puppet Company, will première with Calgary Opera at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in May 2019.

Commissions and performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry, New York City Opera, Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Ensemble musikFabrik, Chicago Architecture Biennial (2016), Piano Spheres for Gloria Cheng, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Esprit Orchestra, Fort Worth Opera, Jacaranda Music, Motion Music, and the Penderecki String Quartet.

Krausas has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at USC in Los Angeles, where she is a faculty member in the Composition Department.  She serves on the advisory boards of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics.

Concert: Organ Recital: Felix Hell

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: Mirga Conducts Mozart & Haydn

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:

Of Lithuanian heritage, composer Veronika Krausas was born in Australia raised in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. She has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics and video. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) writes “her works, whose organic, lyrical sense of storytelling are supported by a rigid formal elegance, give her audiences a sense that nature’s frozen objects are springing to life.”

She was one of 6 composers involved in the acclaimed mobile opera Hopscotch. Alex Ross of the New Yorker called Hopscotch, “a remarkable experimental opera.” Her first opera, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was premiered at the New York City Opera’s VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold-out audiences. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of her chamber opera, “Something novel this way comes.”

Her newest opera Ghost Opera, a dramma giocoso with libretto by André Alexis and The Old Trout Puppet Company, will première with Calgary Opera at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in May 2019.

Commissions and performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry, New York City Opera, Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Ensemble musikFabrik, Chicago Architecture Biennial (2016), Piano Spheres for Gloria Cheng, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Esprit Orchestra, Fort Worth Opera, Jacaranda Music, Motion Music, and the Penderecki String Quartet.

Krausas has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at USC in Los Angeles, where she is a faculty member in the Composition Department.  She serves on the advisory boards of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics.

Concert: Tetzlaff Plays Dvořák

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:

Los Angeles native Christian Campos is managing artistic director of the Horizon Music Group. Under Campos’ stewardship, the ensemble has collaborated with the Cincinnati Boychoir (Bach cantatas), Long Beach Camerata Singers (Handel’s Messiah), Pacific Chorale (Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna), and Bach Collegium San Diego (Bach’s St. John Passion). Campos has performed at the Oregon, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Whittier College Bach Festivals. His conducting style has been described as “expressive, varied and tuned perfectly with the music” (Long Beach Grunion Gazette).

Campos graduated from DePauw University where he studied music and economics while participating in honors programs in business management and information technology. A champion of world music, he received a grant from the ASIANetwork to study Indian Carnatic Music, the result of which was the first ever online database of ragas, composers, and compositions.

Since returning to California, he has worked as a guest conductor and contractor of choirs and orchestras, regularly performing with musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Los Angeles Master Chorale. He has contracted for the American Choral Directors Association, Chorus America, Broad Stage, Santa Monica College, CalState Long Beach, Fullerton, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino, and a host of area performing organizations. Christian has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Upbeat Live pre-concert series; in previous seasons he worked as a score reader at the Hollywood Bowl and lecturer as part of the Student Insiders pre-concert series. Campos has served on the faculty at Pomona College and the USC Thornton School of Music, where he recently completed his coursework towards a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Concert: Thibaudet Plays "The Mysteries of Light"

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:

Composer, conductor, performer, and lecturer Russell Steinberg received a Ph.D. in Music from Harvard University, an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, and a B.A. from UCLA. He studied composition most notably with Leon Kirchner, Arthur Berger, Elaine Barkin, and Kenneth Klauss. His works range from solo to chamber to orchestra and have been performed worldwide. His orchestra tone poem Cosmic Dust, commissioned by a tri-consortium of orchestras—the New West Symphony, the Bay Atlantic Symphony, and the Hopkins Symphony—was featured in a Science News Magazine article on the Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th anniversary and has had a dozen performances worldwide. The Los Angeles Jewish Symphony recently premiered Canopy of Peace with mezzo soprano Diana Tash, based on meditations by noted scholar and philosopher Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis. Available recordings of Steinberg’s music include Sacred Transitions: A Song Cycle Based On Meditations by Harold M. Schulweis (sung by mezzo soprano Diana Tash), Stories From My Favorite Planet: A Musical Tribute to Journalist Daniel Pearl (performed by Los Angeles Philharmonic violinist Mitchell Newman) produced by the Daniel Pearl Foundation (available at www.danielpearl.org), Flute Sonata recorded by Michelle Stanley and produced by Centaur Records, Desert Stars, a recording of Steinberg’s solo music for piano and classical guitar, and Fantasy for Flute and Piano on the album Ascend featuring flutist Elizabeth Erenberg.

Steinberg is Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra, a widely praised group that includes 120 students from over 60 schools in the LA area and performs at UCLA and the Colburn School. This past summer (2015) the orchestra traveled on its first international tour, collaborating with high school musicians from the Johann Sebastian Bach Music School in Vienna, and performing concerts in Vienna and Prague to full houses and enthusiastic acclaim. Steinberg is also a popular speaker for pre-concert events with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and annually offers a Winter Evening Lecture Series on a wide range of topics. This year’s series titled The Classical Guitar—An Intimate Mystery begins Wednesday evening January 13. For information about signing up for this series, or information about Steinberg’s current performances, recordings, and pre-concert lectures, please visit www.russellsteinberg.com.

Concert: Beethoven & Shostakovich

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:

Eric Bromberger received his Ph.D. in American Literature from UCLA and taught literature and writing courses at Bates College (Lewiston, ME) and San Diego State University.  A violinist, he joined the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra in 1980 and began writing the orchestra’s program notes the following year.  Those notes drew the attention of presenters and performers, and soon he was able to quit his day job and devote himself to his first love, music.  He is presently program annotator for the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, 92nd Street Y in New York City, San Francisco Performances, University of Chicago Presents, La Jolla Music Society, and others.  He wrote the liner notes for the Alexander String Quartet’s recent recordings of the quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Bartók.

Concert: Hélène Grimaud Plays Brahms

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:

Composer-flutist-conductor Daniel Kessner received his Ph.D. with Distinction at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1971, studying with Henri Lazarof. His more than 140 compositions have received over 800 performances worldwide, and 28 works are recorded commercially. Most of his scores are available from Theodore Front Musical Literature at tfront.com.

Kessner’s most important awards include the Queen Marie-José International Composition Prize in Geneva (1972), a 2003 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to lecture and perform at the Musikhochschule in Trossingen, Germany, a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grant to perform and lecture in Trondheim, Norway in 2007, and similar residency at the Universidade do Minho in Portugal in 2011.

He is now Professor Emeritus at California State University, Northridge, retired after a career of 36 years teaching composition and music theory and directing various ensembles from 1970 through 2006.

As a flutist, he has given flute-piano recitals with his wife, Dolly Eugenio Kessner, in France, Italy, Holland, Germany, El Salvador, England, Portugal, Norway, and the Czech Republic, and has performed in numerous chamber music concerts. He has appeared as a guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, the Black Sea Philharmonic of Romania, the Moorpark Symphony Orchestra, and more recently the Trondheim Sinfonietta, among others. He has been an Upbeat Live lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1983.

In the spring semester of 2006 he joined the faculty of the University of Hawaii on a one-semester appointment. In the fall of 2006 he accepted a similar position at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California. He enjoys an active career as a composer, conductor and flutist.

Concert: Dances of Death

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:

Of Lithuanian heritage, composer Veronika Krausas was born in Australia raised in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. She has directed, composed for, and produced multi-media events that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics and video. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) writes “her works, whose organic, lyrical sense of storytelling are supported by a rigid formal elegance, give her audiences a sense that nature’s frozen objects are springing to life.”

She was one of 6 composers involved in the acclaimed mobile opera Hopscotch. Alex Ross of the New Yorker called Hopscotch, “a remarkable experimental opera.” Her first opera, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was premiered at the New York City Opera’s VOX 2008 festival. A full production was mounted in Los Angeles in August 2010 to sold-out audiences. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of her chamber opera, “Something novel this way comes.”

Her newest opera Ghost Opera, a dramma giocoso with libretto by André Alexis and The Old Trout Puppet Company, will première with Calgary Opera at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in May 2019.

Commissions and performances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry, New York City Opera, Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, Ensemble musikFabrik, Chicago Architecture Biennial (2016), Piano Spheres for Gloria Cheng, The Vancouver Symphony, ERGO Projects, Esprit Orchestra, Fort Worth Opera, Jacaranda Music, Motion Music, and the Penderecki String Quartet.

Krausas has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the Thornton School of Music at USC in Los Angeles, where she is a faculty member in the Composition Department.  She serves on the advisory boards of Jacaranda Music and People Inside Electronics.

Concert: Organ Recital: James McVinnie and Guests

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.