Upbeat Live

Concert: Romeo and Juliet with Dudamel

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: Dudamel & Emanuel Ax

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: Gil Shaham Plays Prokofiev

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: Green Umbrella: All-Reich

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: Mehta & Shankar

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: Tchaikovsky & 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:

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.