Chamber music that challenges conventions has been the Jacaranda signature for nearly 20 years. So it’s only natural that the Santa Monica concert series would shake things up this season — while still staying very much in character.
A chamber opera will be the highlight of Jacaranda’s 2022–2023 schedule. Arkhipov, with music by Peter Knell and a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, gets its concert premiere in two performances (Oct. 21 and 22) that stretch the series. Note the different venue, Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre, plus the stellar lineup of guest artists for this event. Daniella Candillari conducts, and Elkhanah Pulitzer is on board as director.
Interestingly, Pulitzer is handling another big premiere this fall, John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra at San Francisco Opera, and certain ideas must be in the air, considering Jacaranda’s other programming throughout the season. Artistic and Executive Director Patrick Scott is rethinking musical depictions of antiquity and the Near East along some of the same lines as Adams.
Scott has curated a season-opener called “Vineyards of Myth” (Sept. 24), and it all starts with Benjamin Britten’s Six Metamorphoses After Ovid. The final concerts of the year — “Za’atar” (May 19, 2023) and “Veranda by the Sea” (May 21, 2023) — take listeners to Egypt, Persia, and places in between, with Inna Faliks soloing in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5 (“The Egyptian”), among other intriguing works. For these performances, and the remainder of 2023, Jacaranda is back at its home base, Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church.
Audiences can expect more traditions with a twist this season. The series’ live-music alternative to Super Bowl Sunday returns, with Raven Chacon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Voiceless Mass featured on the first of two programs (Feb. 12, 2023). Composer Thomas Adès, a mainstay in Jacaranda’s contemporary classical repertoire, gets a birthday concert (March 4, 2023). And the series follows up on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight marathon (scheduled for April 1, 2023) with its own intensive new-music performance (April 15, 2023).
It’s all in the spirit of “Camaraderie,” the title for Jacaranda’s 2022–2023 season. Find tickets and more information on the series’ website.
