Family is the theme that ties together Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s upcoming season. In part, this refers to the sense of community behind any ensemble — musicians with a shared history, working toward the same goal. But for LACO, in a couple special performances next year, family will literally mean generations meeting on the program.
Both definitions hold true for Jeffrey Kahane’s return to the podium. The orchestra’s conductor laureate leads Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in performances March 11–12, 2023, but the deeper connection on the program is his solo turn in Heirloom, the piano concerto his son Gabriel Kahane composed for him.
It’s not the only family concerto of the season. Anoushka Shankar is the sitar soloist in her father Ravi Shankar’s Concerto No. 3, just one highlight of a wide-ranging program May 20–21, 2023, that also has LACO spotlighting a musician from its own cohort.
Marc Lowenstein, the ensemble’s incoming Sound Investment composer, will get a premiere with those May concerts. He follows Shelley Washington, whose LACO-commissioned work, Both, opens the entire 2022–2023 season, in concerts ending with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Oct. 15–16). A third piece under the Sound Investment banner, though delayed by the pandemic — Juan Pablo Contreras’s Lucha Libre! — finally makes it to the hall too, part of an evening whose big draw is Gil Shaham playing the Dvořák Violin Concerto (Dec. 11).
LACO goes mostly traditional with its other soloists this season. Sheku Kanneh-Mason returns with Haydn’s D Major Cello Concerto (Jan. 14–15, 2023), and pianist Hye-Jin Kim takes the solo part in the original 24–player arrangement of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (April 1–2, 2023). Masumi Per Rostad bucks the trend though, soloing in Jessie Montgomery’s new viola concerto, L.E.S. Characters (April 22–23, 2023).
Who better to keep the season tight knit than LACO’s music director? Jaime Martín, now in his fourth year with the orchestra, conducts every concert except Kahane’s — all at UCLA’s Royce Hall and Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium for the usual Saturday/Sunday performances.
For more information and subscription tickets on sale now, visit Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s website, or call (213) 622-7001 x1.
