West Coast Premieres Conducted by Jeffrey Kahane at L.A. Chamber Orchestra Season Opening Concerts October 6, 2012

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's 2012-13 season launches with a dynamic program of works both familiar and new when Music Director Jeffrey Kahane conducts and performs as soloist. It features two highly anticipated West Coast premieres, including LACO Composer-in-Residence and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Andrew Norman’s The Great Swiftness, commissioned and premiered by the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2010. Inspired by the city’s signature Alexander Calder sculpture, La Grande Vitesse, the piece prompted the Grand Rapids Press to describe it as “sliding down the giant sculpture's graceful arms.” The other West Coast premiere, True South by James Matheson – recipient of the prestigious $200,000 Charles Ives Living Award and heralded by The New Yorker as “an early thirty-something American composer who is ignoring style labels and writing synthetic, satisfying music that avoids the glib theatricality of postmodernism” – was commissioned and premiered in 2010 by the New York Philharmonic with influences ranging from Judas Priest to Nietzsche. Kahane himself is the featured soloist in Ravel’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto in G major. The program concludes with the LACO debut of 28-year-old German violinist Augustin Hadelich performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, the composer’s only violin concerto and one of the most venerated works in the violin repertoire. Kahane calls Hadelich, winner of the 2009 Avery Fisher Grant, “one of the great violinists performing today,” and The New York Times states, “(he) stands out amid gifted young violinists for his prodigious technique, gorgeous tone and ability
to deliver.”

Both Norman and Matheson are participating in LACO’s Concert Preludes, pre-concert talks providing insights into the music and artists, which are held one hour prior to curtain and are free to ticket holders.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra is considered one of the nation’s premier orchestras as well as a leader in presenting wide-ranging repertoire and adventurous commissions. Its 2012-13 season, the orchestra's 44th, features a compelling mix of beloved masterpieces and genre-defying premieres from firmly established and notable up-and-coming composers programmed by Jeffrey Kahane, one of the world’s foremost conductors and pianists, who marks his 16th season as LACO’s music director.

Tickets ($25 – $110) are on sale now and may be purchased online at laco.org, by calling LACO at 213 622 7001, or at the venue box office on the night of the concert, if tickets remain. Discounted tickets are also available by phone for seniors 65 years of age and older and groups of 12 or more. College students may purchase rush tickets one hour before curtain; also available for college students is the $25 “Campus to Concert Hall All Access Pass” – good for all seven of LACO’s Orchestral Series concerts at either the Alex Theatre or UCLA, LACO’s Discover Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 at Ambassador Auditorium and for all three Westside Connections concerts at The Broad Stage, plus other benefits.