The Colburn School has not one but two anniversaries to celebrate during the 2023–2024 season. Its Conservatory of Music will turn 20, and Zipper Hall, the acoustically superb 415-seat concert venue on the school’s downtown Los Angeles campus, will turn 25.
But the programming for the coming year points forward as often as it looks backward. And when the season explores music of previous generations, it often does so in an innovative way.
“The 2023–2024 season embodies the Colburn School’s values of creativity and community,” President and CEO Sel Kardan said in announcing the lineup. Participating artists will include conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen and Lionel Bringuier, pianist Orion Weiss, trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, and composer Kris Bowers. Concerts will be held on campus and at locations around Southern California, including The Soraya in Northridge and Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.
The school will present no fewer than four programs as part of the statewide new-music-oriented California Festival in November. The first, Nov. 4 at The Soraya, features Salonen leading the Colburn Orchestra in the Southern California premiere of Elizabeth Ogonek’s Moondog, which was given its world premiere by the San Francisco Symphony this past January.
Flutist Jennifer Grim, a member of the award-winning Zéphyros Winds, will join conservatory students for a program of contemporary music for winds on Nov. 12. The Colburn Contemporary Ensemble will perform music by John Cage, Sam Adams, Missy Mazzoli, and others on Nov. 16.
Finally, the Emmy Award-winning Bowers will present a program of his own works on Nov. 19. He composed the scores for the films Green Book and King Richard, as well as the television series Bridgerton.
The Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, an ongoing series of programs featuring music by composers whose careers and/or lives were cut short by the Nazi regime and the horrors of World War II, continues with three concerts. The first of them, “Exiles in Hollywood,” will include music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklós Rózsa. There will be three performances: Oct. 15 at the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles, Oct. 25 at USC, and Oct. 26 on the Colburn campus. Admission will be free.
That series will continue with two performances in Thayer Hall on campus: one, on Dec. 10, featuring the great World War II-era piano quintets of Dmitri Shostakovich and his friend and colleague Mieczysław Weinberg and another, March 15, 2024, featuring the music of Walter Arlen and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Besides the Salonen-led concert, the Colburn Orchestra will give five more major performances in various venues. Its season starts on Oct. 7 at Ambassador Auditorium with a Brahms and Igor Stravinsky program led by Roderick Cox, winner of the 2018 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award. Peter Oundjian leads the orchestra in a program of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Béla Bartók on Dec. 3, also at Ambassador Auditorium. Music Director Yehuda Gilad conducts Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony on Jan. 28, 2024, at The Soraya.
The orchestra’s final two major concerts of the season will take place downtown. Jeannette Sorrell, artistic director of the Baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire, conducts Mozart and Handel on March 2, 2024, in Zipper Hall, and Lionel Bringuier conducts music of Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev on March 24, 2024, at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The dance schedule includes an intriguing program titled “See the Music, Hear the Dance,” on Oct. 28 in Zipper Hall. Guest dancers from The Joffrey Ballet will perform with conservatory musicians. On Jan. 17, 2024, dancer and choreographer Michael Montgomery of Alonzo King LINES Ballet will present a free master class in Zipper Hall.
Among the world-class musicians conducting free master classes throughout the season are Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Stephen Kovacevich, and Christian Tetzlaff. For the complete schedule, visit the events page on Colburn’s website.
