Los Angeles Master Chorale Wraps Season with "Missa Latina" May 31, 2009

Los Angeles Master Chorale Wraps Season with
West Coast Premiere of Roberto Sierra's “Missa Latina”
Conducted by Music Director Grant Gershon

Sunday, May 31, 2009, 7 p.m., at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and Baritone Nathaniel Webster Are Featured Soloists

The Los Angeles Master Chorale wraps its 45th season with the West Coast premiere of Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra's acclaimed, full-length Missa Latina, considered one of the most important works to enter the choral repertoire in recent decades, on Sunday, May 31, 2009, 7:00 p.m., at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Filled with lively percussion, including marimba, maracas, Cuban timbales and other Caribbean instruments, the exuberant, celebratory piece “dances off the stage.” Music Director Grant Gershon conducts and the featured soloists are soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and baritone Nathaniel Webster, both of whom sang the world premiere of Missa Latina.

The Washington Times described the work's 2006 debut at Kennedy Center as “the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem... Mr. Sierra's new work is, quite simply, shockingly brilliant." Co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington, the 75-minute, eight-movement piece was written over a two-year period from 2003 to 2005. It is filled with lush, rich textures that mix classical and Latino rhythms, and is based on the texts of the Proper Mass. According to Sierra, Missa Latina “makes a statement that peace is a human issue.”

Sierra, currently based in New York, is a prolific composer whose colorful and rhythmic music has attracted a growing audience both in North America and Europe as well as commissions by virtually every major orchestra in the States and in Europe. Acclaimed as one of Latin America's most active contemporary composers, Sierra came to prominence in 1987 when his first major orchestral composition, Júbilo, premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since then, his works have been performed by the orchestras of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio, and Phoenix, by the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Continuum and England's BBC Symphony, as well as at Wolf Trap, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Festival Casals, France's Festival de Lille, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and Germany's Neue Musik Bonn.

The performance is made possible, in part, by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.

Tickets to the concert range from $19 to $124. Student Rush seats are $10 and are available at the box office two hours before the performance. For tickets and information, please call (800) 787-5262 (outside California call 213-972-7282), or visit www.lamc.org. ; (Tickets can no longer be purchased at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office except on concert days starting 2 hours prior to the performance.) The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue at First Street in downtown Los Angeles.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Calendar Listing

Event:
Los Angeles Master Chorale - West Coast Premiere of Roberto Sierra's Missa Latina
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon, Conductor
Heidi Grant Murphy, Soprano
Nathaniel Webster, Baritone

Performance Date:
Sunday, May 31, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
(Listen Up! pre-concert talk with Grant Gershon, KUSC's Alan Chapman, 6 p.m.)

Program:
ROBERTO SIERRA Missa Latina

Venue:
Walt Disney Concert Hall
111 S. Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Ticket Prices:
$19 - $124; Student Rush seats available at box office two hours before the performance

Ticket Information:
800-787-5262
outside California call 213-972-7282
www.lamc.org ;

(Tickets can no longer be purchased at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office except
on concert days starting 2 hours prior to the performance.)

Official Website: http://www.lamc.org