Poster Classical Live: LA Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2011.
Mathew Imaging

Los Angeles Philharmonic rises to become 'America's most important orchestra'

NPR's All Things Considered: Rise of the LA Philharmonic

The Los Angeles Philharmonic's centennial celebration kicked off with a daylong street festival that spanned 8 miles across the city. Angelenos started at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and ended with a free nighttime concert at the Hollywood Bowl, complete with fireworks. After pop star Katy Perry sang with the orchestra, composer John Williams conducted the finale, his famous theme from Star Wars.

The LA Phil is actually celebrating a little early. It made its debut on Oct. 24, 1919. It was created by William Andrews Clark Jr., the son of a copper baron and U.S. senator. Clark Jr. was also an amateur musician.

"There are some people that say, 'Oh, this was a rich man's toy at first,'" says Julia Ward, who edited the new book Past/Forward: The LA Phil At 100.

Ward says the city already had an orchestra.

"But it wasn't so great. And he wanted to bring in New York players. He wanted to get students of Mahler to come and conduct. And mostly, also, he just wanted to sit in himself."

Clark Jr. was also an eccentric nudist who, Ward says, often frightened his music directors.

But, Ward adds, "One of the first things he said is, 'I'm going to make this the very best orchestra in the world.' And nobody would think that an orchestra would come out of this cultural backwater of Los Angeles."

LA was still a bit of a pioneer town back then, much of it orange groves and oil wells. The film industry was just getting started. Three years after the orchestra debuted, the Hollywood Bowl opened and became its summer home. Audiences paid 25 cents a ticket for symphonies under the stars.

In their first recording made in 1928, conductor Eugene Goossens rehearses for the West Coast premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring,.

Walt Disney Concert Hall
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Provided

The LA Phil claims to be the first orchestra to broadcast a full concert. It was one of the first to invite a woman to conduct in 1925. And it was the first U.S. orchestra to hire an African-American musician in 1948. The LA Phil started to gain international recognition under the leadership of CEO Ernest Fleischmann and conductor Zubin Mehta in the 1960s.

By the early 1990s, Los Angeles had become a huge multicultural metropolis. In 1992, much of the city was on fire after the acquittal of police officers who beat black motorist Rodney King. That's also the year composer Esa-Pekka Salonen began conducting the LA Phil.

"I credit him with really crafting the orchestra into the finely tuned machine that we are now," says first violinist Camille Avellano. He adds that the orchestra's current music director, Gustavo Dudamel, continues to champion new music. And he started a youth orchestra similar to the one he came through in Venezuela.

"It used to be that we were just sort of this unknown guardian of old dead white guys' music," says Avellano. "And now I think we are seen as being cutting edge."

Over the years, the orchestra became known for its mix of classical favorites and music by contemporary composers, including John Adams and the late Frank Zappa.

"You do breathe a little bit of a different air here in California," says Simon Woods, the LA Phil's new CEO. "We can play the most avant-garde, most dissonant, most difficult, most complex music in the world. And people still come and lap it up."

Woods says the orchestra is committed to taking risks — so committed it inspired The New York Times to make a remarkable declaration.

"The Los Angeles Philharmonic is the most important orchestra in America — period," claims Zachary Woolfe, a classical music editor for the Times.

"Just in terms of what an orchestra can mean in its community and what they can do in terms of blending the artistic and the social justice, educational, etc., LA's in a league of its own. No one else is commissioning new music and performing new and recent music like the LA Phil," says Woolfe.

Conductor and music director Gustavo Dudamel began at the LA Phil 10 years ago. Now he's planning a permanent home in south LA for his youth orchestra. And he's optimistic about the Philharmonic's future in the global hub that Los Angeles has become.

"I don't see borders in the art," says Dudamel. "If we can be an example in these chaotic moments that we are living in the world, art will open this new path that we need. It's a beautiful journey. It's an amazing and unique journey."

That journey this season includes premiering 50 commissions from as many composers and performing during the Oscars.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit npr.org.

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