Pianist Jose Menor’s radiant ‘Goyescas’ to shimmer at Spain-on-the-Pacific party

Music
A toast of sparkling cava will cap off a sensual event when Jacaranda hosts a Spanish-themed “Goyescas by the Sea” benefit concert Sunday, May 20. The youthful Barcelona-based superstar-pianist, Jose Menor, will grace the program, delivering the complete Goyescas by Enrique Granados, an hour-long solo piano suite inspired by that most Spanish of painters, Francisco ...

Awake to the world, with Jacaranda

Music
The onslaught of bad, breaking news has us numbed. Howling winds, gushing waters, marauding mass murderers, predators of pretty movie stars, all pummel our sensitive souls.  That’s where the artistic director of Jacaranda music has stepped into the breach. In launching AWAKE, Jacaranda’s 15th season, Patrick Scott is pushing back against the bad noise, and replacing ...

Lauridsen’s ‘Lux Aeterna’ centerpiece of rich Master Chorale program

Music · Reviews
Editor’s note: A guest author on the blog today, Patrick Scott, who shares his observations of Thursday’s performance of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. ♣          ♣          ♣          ♣ Twenty years ago Morten Lauridsen‘s “Lux Aeterna” became an enormous game changer for American choral music. Last night the Los Angeles Master Chorale, hosting the annual Chorus ...

To higher musical spaces and places, with Jacaranda

Music
Chamber music, a relatively portable art form (relative to, say, a symphony orchestra), in May climbed our city’s peaks in celebration of The Big Vista, the annual summer party of our top-favorite contemporary-classical music series, Jacaranda. Bundling repertoire culled from the edgy, the new, and the yet-to-be-imagined into stimulating, curated concerts for receptive audiences in ...

Jacaranda’s summer party supreme 2

Architecture & Design · Music
The architectural space of Rachlin Partners in Culver City provided the backdrop for the annual summer party of contemporary classical music society, Jacaranda, on a splendid Sunday afternoon in June. Filling the airspace was the music of Prokofiev and Philip Glass delivered in a blazing mini-concert by string ensemble, Lyris Quartet. Following the concert, the ...

Classical music meets Burmese art courtesy of Jacaranda

Architecture & Design · Music · Visual arts
A beautiful fundraiser had an unusual focus when Jacaranda, the decade-old Los Angeles contemporary classical music series, hosted an exquisite program of chamber music in a super-cool private home on a recent autumnal Sunday. Rarely viewed works of contemporary Burmese art lent visual, cultural, even political, impact to the event. Jacaranda board chairman Thomas Aujero ...

‘Round and ’round with Jacaranda

Music
Santa Monica’s Glow, the all-night cultural experience, will include classical music with “The Rest Is Noise: A Carousel Ride Through 20th Century Music,” produced by Jacaranda, the classical music series known for rarely heard, new and modern music. The project, conceived by Jacaranda’s artistic director, Patrick Scott, will take place in the historic Santa Monica carousel building ...

Bliss revisited: Jacaranda’s summer garden party @ Villa Aurora

Music
It’s summer in southern California and that translates, for music lovers, to the annual afternoon garden party of Jacaranda — celebrating ten years of adventurous chamber music performance. The smart music series commissions works by top living composers, and mixes that repertoire with challenging bits of the historic classical canon. To apply the group’s own ...

Eötvös’s noir quartet, “Korrespondenz” (1993), by Calder Quartet @ Jacaranda

Music · Reviews
What a strange and intricate moment when composer Peter Eötvös’s Korrespondenz, Scenes for String Quartet opened Jacaranda’s “Fierce Beauty” program Saturday night in Santa Monica. The Calder Quartet played the 1993 work with Eötvös in the room, making the occasion extra special. The global music luminary is visiting Los Angeles from Hungary for a week of ...

Esa-Pekka, Especially-Pleasurable, at HEAR NOW benefit 3

Music · Reviews
Posing with The Lyris Quartet (Alyssa Park, Shalini Yijayan, violins, Timothy Loo, cello, Luke Maurer, viola) is our marvelous and much-missed Los Angeles Philharmonic Conductor-Laureate, Esa-Pekka Salonen, on a return visit to our town. Salonen’s now London-based where he’s principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra. His presence at a house party in Culver City proved ...