Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concludes its critically acclaimed CLOSE QUARTERS interdisciplinary digital series melding musical and visual arts with a joyous and optimistic episode featuring Tchaikovsky’s enduring masterpiece Serenade for Strings laced with a poignant visual tone poem that reflects the diverse artistic family that LACO built through the series and chronicles Los Angeles’ emergence from the global pandemic. Guest Conductor Grant Gershon leads the Orchestra and LACO Creative Director of Digital Content James Darrah provides visual curation. Thanks to the generosity of individual donors, the new episode is available to the public at no cost and can be streamed on demand following its premiere on Friday, June 4, 2021, at 6:30 pm (PT), at https://www.laco.org/close-quarters/, LACO’s YouTube channel.
In addition to Music Director Jaime Martín and LACO’s stellar musicians, among the numerous artists who have been involved in the LACO Close Quarters series are: Conductor Laureate Jeffrey Kahane; soprano Nicole Cabell; piano duo HOCKET (Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff); pianist Alin Melik-Adamyan; violinist Gil Shaham; composers Juan Pablo Contreras, Jessie Montgomery, Ellen Reid, Peter S. Shin and Derrick Spiva Jr.; guest conductors Grant Gershon and Christopher Rountree; actress Olivia Cristina Delgado; Robey Theatre Company actors Ben Guillory, Julio Hanson and William Warren; visual artists Ken Honjo, Yuki Izumihara, Jian Lee, Will Kim, Yee Eun Nam, Ardeshir Tabrizi and HuiMeng Wang; choreographers Chris Emile and Rebecca Steinberg; dancers Joe Davis, Shauna Davis, Rosalynde LeBlanc and Layne Paradis Willis; television and stage writer christopher oscar peña [cq]; actor/filmmaker/poet Zackary Drucker; directors Isabel Leonard and George Miller; audio producers Nadia Sirota and Robert Wolff; videographers Nathaniel Beaver and Jerome Harris; costume designer Molly Irelan; cinematographer Michael Elias Thomas; lighting designer Pablo Santiago; and editor Frank Mohler.
CLOSE QUARTERS’ “digitally native” programs, created specifically for streaming and hailed as “musically and artistically compelling” (Los Angeles Times), have drawn nearly two million views to date since debuting in November 2020. Between 30 and 40 minutes in length, they are safely filmed at either FOX studios or The Colburn School’s Olive Rehearsal Hall. Additionally, Darrah has established a creative hub for developing artistic media content with L.A.-based artists and filmmakers at a first-of-its-kind LACO digital studio at Wilhardt & Naud: a film studio and multidisciplinary arts campus located in Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles. The artists, inspired by the Orchestra’s musical programming, create new visual works in a variety of mediums that will factor into the broadcasts and endure long after the season concludes. CLOSE QUARTERS builds upon the highly successful LACO SummerFest series, the Orchestra’s first foray into streaming that concluded in September and featured five digital chamber music concerts that have attracted more than 1.8 million views to date