Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts will be Orange County’s Broadway ticket in the 2022–2023 season. The presenter, which actually strives to do a variety of things, is touting the new season, which will bring touring companies of Hamilton, Chicago, and The Book of Mormon in for return engagements, among a total of nine Broadway musicals hitting the Segerstrom. The season is one of spectacle, in the literal sense of the word.
But classical-music fans are not going to be left out, in a chamber music series that leads off on Oct. 9 with the Polish Apollon Musagète Quartet, named after the neoclassical Stravinsky score. No surprise that they’ll play Kristof Penderecki’s Quartet No. 3 (“Leaves from an Unwritten Diary”), a lovely, Romantic-sounding work from 2008, far from the exuberant and scouring earlier quartets. And after that, the fantastic pianist Garrick Ohlsson joins them for Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor. It sounds unmissable.
That concert leads off a parade of famous quartets: the Calidore (Nov. 2), bringing a new work by Hannah Lash, the Takács (Jan. 27, 2023), the Quartetto di Cremona (Feb. 22), and the Emerson (April 15) making their farewell tour after four decades. And that’s not to forget the Camerata RCO, formed from members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam (March 22); and the intriguing Dream House Quartet, which is not what it sounds like.
Without a doubt, this April 28, 2023, concert is the most unexpected thing on the Segerstrom schedule in the coming season. French duo pianists Katia & Marielle Labèque present a new version of their 2013 Minimalist Dream House double album, featuring them and two rock guitarists: Bryce Dessner (from The National) and David Chalmin (La Terre Invisible). This ensemble is set to play music by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, his first compositions for classical music artists and concert halls.
On the jazz front, the good news includes the Vijay Iyer Trio (Nov. 5), Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Mavis Staples (Dec. 9), Dee Dee Bridgewater and Kurt Elling headlining the Monterey Jazz Festival on tour (Jan. 25, 2023), Jazz at Lincoln Center (Feb. 4), The Cookers (March 25), George Benson (April 7), and vocalist Veronica Swift (June 24).
Of the other offerings of cabaret and Broadway stars, I would consider a special trip to see Chris Mann (Oct. 20, 22) a gifted parodist whose work shot to fame during the pandemic, and whose darkly comic take on Adele’s “Hello” has an almost ridiculous 14,680,000 views on YouTube. There’s a family series as well, rounding out a very active season whose intent seems to be to put the pandemic blues in the rearview mirror.
