About Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. The orchestra holds a regular concert season from October until June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July until September. Gustavo Dudamel is the current Musical Director, while Esa-Pekka Salonen serves as Conductor Laureate, Zubin Mehta as Conductor Emeritus, and Susanna Mälkki as Principal Guest Conductor. John Adams is the orchestra’s current Composer-in-Residence.
Music critics have described the orchestra as "contemporary minded", "forward thinking", "talked about and innovative", and "venturesome and admired". "We are interested in the future", Salonen said, "We are not trying to re-create the glories of the past, like so many other symphony orchestras".
The orchestra's former chief executive officer, Deborah Borda, said, "Especially since we moved into the new hall, our intention has been to integrate 21st-century music into the orchestra's everyday activity".
Since the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall on October 23, 2003, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has presented 57 world premieres, one North American premiere, and 26 U.S. premieres, and has commissioned or co-commissioned 63 new works.
The orchestra was founded and single-handedly financed in 1919 by William Andrews Clark, Jr., a copper baron, arts enthusiast, and part-time violinist. He originally asked Sergei Rachmaninoff to be the Philharmonic's first music director; however, Rachmaninoff had only recently moved to New York, and he did not wish to move again. Clark then selected Walter Henry Rothwell, former assistant to Gustav Mahler, as music director, and hired away several principal musicians from East Coast orchestras and others from the competing and soon-to-be defunct Los Angeles Symphony. The orchestra played its first concert in the Trinity Auditorium in the same year, eleven days after its first rehearsal. Clark himself would sometimes sit and play with the second violin section.
After Rothwell's death in 1927, subsequent Music Directors in the decade of the 1920s included Georg Schnéevoigt and Artur Rodziński.
Map & Directions To Venue
