PLANET SCHOENBERG 2023-24
"Faced with the stark reality of this situation, Jacaranda’s board unanimously agreed to earmark its remaining financial resources to one final ground-breaking season, entitled Planet Schoenberg. Conceived by Scott, the 2023-24 Season features an unprecedented series of five concerts spotlighting the prolific genius of the largely self-taught Austrian American composer and music theorist Arnold Schoenberg, who created new methods of music composition that have significantly altered the musical landscape. With Late Romantic roots, Schoenberg invented atonal music and developed the method for composing with 12-tones, which evolved into serialism. He was also a generous teacher, gifted writer, fine painter, and accomplished tennis player. Facing Nazi antisemitism, he emigrated to the United States in 1933, living in Boston before settling in Los Angeles the following year. Planet Schoenberg includes five compelling concerts dedicated to facets of Schoenberg’s work, his evolution as a composer, his musical inspirations, and those he has influenced. Scott notes, “This series of concerts may be among the most concentrated explorations of his work and its farreaching impact on the music world.” It will traverse Schoenberg in terrains both familiar and foreign, past and present. “Those who journey to Planet Schoenberg with Jacaranda will realize they have been living there all along,” says Scott, himself twice recognized by BBC Music Magazine for his striking curatorial vision and considered among the most original thinkers about classical music today. “A man before his time, Schoenberg channeled his profound emotional need to express himself musically into novel techniques that revolutionized the field but drew criticism and ostracism along the way. Deeply principled, he staunchly embraced all artists in an era of racism and antisemitism and was genuinely connected to the Hollywood community around him.” Scott adds, “Schoenberg’s music, once thought too daunting by many, has come full circle and today is being embraced by leading musicians who have the passion and technique to perform his demanding work at the highest possible level, offering fresh and engaging interpretations. This season, Jacaranda will showcase his music in a whole new light alongside some of the most beautiful and endearing works in the classical music cannon. Whether you’re a lifelong fan of Schoenberg’s music, new to it, or, even ambivalent, Jacaranda’s deep dive into his legacy will showcase his work in an enthralling light.”
Libby Huebner
FINAL SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
FIERCE BEAUTY PARTS I & II
“Jacaranda — If you have been following this column a long time, you might have thought our groundbreaking local series by Jacaranda had disappeared somewhere. Au contraire, they are celebrating 20 years. I always used to Highly Recommend nearly all their concerts, because after attending dozens I knew the consistency of the quality, and the adventurousness. No one else got so strange, but always so good. No, their absence from Noteworthy was my error(s). I get most of my info from a few places and they weren’t listed there. But no excuses. I proffer a full mea culpa here, to readers who may have missed something wondrous. But enough apology: they have two outstanding programs this Sunday, right here in SM. Their “resident” string quartet, The Lyris Quartet, will be playing, and they are worth the whole price of admission. It’s called Fierce Beauty, Parts I and II, the first at 4 p.m., and Part II at 7. How about Schoenberg, Boulez, Ornstein, and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme at 4? That evening, Strauss, Rosenman, a Schoenberg chamber symphony, Bach, a little more Schoenberg, and ending with a Mahler adagio. Artistic/Executive Director Patrick Scott has still got it.”
Santa Monica Daily Press
Charles Andrews, 2/23/24
"It fell to Jacaranda Music, a twenty-year-old, exuberantly inventive chamber-music series based in Santa Monica, to give Schoenberg proper honors in his final homeland. Under the leadership of Patrick Scott, Jacaranda has presented scores by more than two hundred composers, most of them active after 1900. And, one evening in 2013, Jacaranda persuaded the keepers of the Santa Monica Pier Carousel to entertain riders with an all-twentieth-century playlist, ranging from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony to Gubaidulina’s St. John Passion. Sadly, in the wake of the pandemic, the organization found that it was unable to keep going. Its farewell season, “Planet Schoenberg,” unfolded from September to February, at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica. The title alluded to a line from the German Symbolist poet Stefan George, one that Schoenberg set to music in his Second Quartet: 'I feel air from another planet.”
The New Yorker
Alex Ross, 3/11/24
CAMARADERIE 2022-23
"As usual, Jacaranda's new season shakes things up. 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, 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."
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 8/18/22
SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
VINEYARDS OF MYTH
“Three of the members of [Gloria] Cheng’s ensemble UCLA Flux are violinist Xenia Deviatkina-Loh, violist Lu Walstad, and cellist Niall Taro Ferguson. On April 25 they will make their professional debut as Trio Ukiyo performing Andrew Norman’s The Companion Guide to Rome for Jacaranda Music in Santa Monica. The program, which is titled “Vineyards of Myth,” will also feature the West Coast premiere of Bay Area composer Dylan Mattingly’s Six Choruses From The Bakkhai.”
SFCV
Jim Farber, 12/6/19
ARKHIPOV
“…[Knell and Fleischmann] manage to grab the listener’s attention and hold it. Beginning with the ding of mallet percussion, Knell pulls us right into the story, with running trills, tremolos, and col legno percussive effects from the string section effectively stoking the tension and claustrophobia of being aboard a submarine with a broken air conditioner headed from Murmansk to the Sargasso Sea region east of the Bahamas. There were musically literal depictions of the sub submerging into the deep and resurfacing; soft, sustained double bass bowing that seemed to simulate the motor quietly propelling the craft. Edward Parks III delivered the title role in a strong baritone while conveying a poetic, even visionary side of Arkhipov as he contemplated the night sky, always haunted by what happened on the K-19 sub…”
Musical America
Richard S. Ginell, 10/24/22
"The long-awaited concert premiere of ARKHIPOV, an opera by composer Peter Knell and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, is a winner! This significant endeavor is convincing at all levels. The plot is of great historical significance and is told with warmth and intensity. It's glorious showcase for some very talented musicians! The Jacaranda Chamber Orchestra and the entire vocal ensemble demonstrated great technical skill as was required by the complexity of the work. Congratulations to all those involved in this momentous production. Your hard work paid off! We hope this gets a full staging soon!"
Performing Arts Live
Mike Napoli, 10/22/22
“Friday’s performance (the first of two), presented by Jacaranda Music in collaboration with the Wende Museum and Center Theatre Group, took place at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. It featured a cast of 10 singers led by the authoritative baritone of Edward Parks III as Arkhipov. The cast of singer/sailors stood at music stands that were raised and lowered as they sang, like so many periscopes. The ‘stage’ direction, which was limited mostly to hand gestures, body language, and piercing glares, was overseen by Elkhanah Pulitzer. A future full staging is somewhere in the works. It will certainly add historical detail and a much-needed atmosphere of mounting tension and submarine claustrophobia.”
SFCV
Jim Farber, 10/24/22
“…Knell and Fleischmann have superbly captured this story in their ironic juxtaposition of a tragedy barely avoided within a tragic tale of why it came to be so. [The opera] orchestrates human emotions into a musical language, and the cast of Arkhipov succeeds in fully capturing the rage, terror, madness and hope of the event itself.”
TVolution
Ernest Kearney, 10/26/22
“[A] truly specific work, based on an actual historic event - the 1962 Cuban missile crisis - premiered at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It came courtesy of the Santa Monica-based Jacaranda, that ever-adventurous and laudable modern music enterprise - in the form of “Arkhipov,” an opera by Peter Knell and Stephanie Fleischmann. For now, we witnessed it in concert form. But we hope to see this moving piece staged (donors, out there, listen up) - not only for its overall worthiness but because it tells the tale of looming autocratic policy that must haunt us all. The titular hero, of 60 years ago, was a Russian submarine officer who stopped a nuclear torpedo from being fired during that near-disaster, actually preventing World War III. Both the alluring score - with its deft intersecting of winds, strings and percussion revealed by a crack chamber orchestra and led fluently by Daniela Candillari - and the drama, an existential conflict of seamen on crowded together on a submarine, conspire to make a suspenseful mix (with “Billy Budd” in mind). Edward Parks III, as Arkhipov, sang with nuanced fervor, evidence that he had fully integrated the role.”
LA Tempo
Donna Perlmutter, 10/30/22
“The next two hours are spent in the pressure-cooker tension of the submarine cabin as the crew, led by the vocally powerful Edward Parks III as co-captain Arkhipov, sets off toward Cuba. The opera’s story, although somewhat fictionalized, is based upon a combination of [his wife] Olga’s testimony and reports on the incident from the Russian government, as well as some actual letters found at the National Security Archive from a sailor to his wife. This sets up the opera’s framing as the audience watches time jump back and forth between the 1990s and when the incident happened in 1962.”
Ampersand
Charlotte Phillipp, 11/08/22
NEW ALBION
“Jacaranda Artistic/Executive Director Patrick Scott's always-extensive, always-fascinating program notes, which are better absorbed at home than amid the social distractions at the church, painted a detailed, encyclopedic, at times opinionated picture of British music, culture, and politics during Adès's formative years. Though the triple-threat composer/pianist/conductor was not present, the performers sang "Happy Birthday" for him at the preconcert talk anyway. I need not repeat the cliche about delayed good intentions and follow-throughs.
Right from the top, a good deal of time was spent exploring various miniature permutations of the music from Ades's third opera, The Exterminating Angel (2016).”
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 3/8/23
TURNING POINTS 2021-22
"Jacaranda Music Artistic and Executive Director Patrick Scott connected some of the dots in his always-absorbing program notes for another of the organization’s habitually enterprising programs Saturday night in Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church, “Italian Modern.” The concert focused most of its attention on two important iconoclastic composers of the 20th century, Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), and Luciano Berio (1925-2003), both of whom made their biggest impressions as cosmopolitans yet without losing sight of their native roots. Add to that duo Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) and one of the Russian travelers, Igor Stravinsky, as bookends to the program. All of them were inveterate transcribers and transformers of music of the past, as well as trailblazers into the future."
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 5/24/22
ITALIAN MODERN
"Jacaranda Music took the main concert stage at 2:00 PM to perform The Illusion of Permanence, by Rajna Swaminathan, a world premiere and LA Phil commission. The ensemble arrived, consisting of double bass, cello, viola and violin along with a flute, oboe, trumpet, marimba and piano. The composer played the tabla and provided vocals. All were led by conductor David Bloom. The sound from this smallish ensemble filled the big hall nicely with a languid, tranquil feeling. The tabla kept up a steady, reassuring pulse that also added an exotic feeling – this was clearly inspired by the Indian Classical tradition. The familiar Western acoustic instruments mixed easily with the mystical sensibility of the music, resulting in very accessible sound. As the piece proceeded, solos from each instrument floated in and out of the texture, adding to the peaceful feeling. At the finish the musicians left their chairs and moved about the stage while singing in lovely harmony. As the last sounds of The Illusion of Permanence faded away, there was a long, thoughtful silence as the audience processed this quietly beautiful piece."
Sequenza 21
Paul Muller, 4/18/22
NOON TO MIDNIGHT
TWIN TOWERS
“Anthony Parnther, the music director of the San Bernardino Symphony and of the Southeast Symphony and Chorus in L.A., led a superb performance, featuring the choral group Tonality and some of L.A.’s finest young instrumentalists — exactly the performance “Restless Mourning” needs. I hope Jacaranda can release this as a recording.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 9/13/21
“Powered by a strong assembly of players, with the nine-piece vocal group Tonality and a smartly equipped instrumental group dubbed the “Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble,” with conductor Anthony Parnther keeping the connections taut, Restless Mourning made a bold, memorable impact in Santa Monica.”
SFCV
Josef Woodard, 9/13/21
“Lyris Quartet, which consists of violinists Alyssa Park and Shalini Vijayan, violist Luke Maurer and cellist Timothy Loo, began with a performance of Joan Tower's "In Memory," written in 2002. [...] the piece begins with the voice of one violin, melancholy and alone, then soon after is joined by the second violin. Park and Vijayan immediately won me over with the immediacy of their musical voices. Maurer and Loo joined in, and just as I was marveling at the beauty of their sound-blend, the music took a turn, erupting in fast triplets. As Tower describes it "the pain and anger get quite wild," and she's not kidding. [...] Next was Steve Reich's 2011 piece, "WTC 9/11," [...] Reich's unique language went straight to the emotions of this horrible day and its aftermath without any need for translation, and the musicians of the Lyris Quartet, with live-sound mixer Scott Fraser, met the challenge of synchronizing with a pre-recorded track in a way that brought experience alive. [...] [Lyris] followed Reich's extremely intense piece with Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," [...] the Barber worked well to mark the sorrow following so much anxiety. Played by just four musicians, the piece took on a welcome simplicity, with less full-bodied emotion and more vulnerability than when played by a larger string ensemble. It featured beautiful playing by all, but especially by cellist Loo.”
Violinist
Laurie Niles, 9/13/21
"This is also the year in which Black conductors and musicians have rightfully been more prominent in classical music lineups. […] San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra music director Anthony Parnther made impressive appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and on the Jacaranda new-music series […]”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 12/17/21
JACARANDA LIVE RECORDINGS
“[Eastman] toured Europe to stamping, cheering crowds with a work, “Stay on It” that gave the formalist minimalism of the moment an irreverent jazz-pop-improvisation kick in the behind. “Stay on It”…has a gripping recent recording from…Jacaranda. He aggressively pummels a melodic figure with a ferocity that intimates a session of unbearable irritation. Instead, though, he breaks down your defenses with glorious effusions of new material, opening you up to a new kind of musical spirituality.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 6/23/21
“One of the first releases to surface from the Jacaranda archive of concert recordings is Rebellious, a valuable contribution to the revival of the ill-fated, now posthumously recognized early minimalist composer Julius Eastman. […] In the Jacaranda performance [of Stay On It], singer Zanaida Robles holds out her words in contrast to the clipped diction on the other performances, a cooler strain of jazz comes from alto saxophonist David Brennan, and there is a more relaxed ambience reverberating in Jacaranda’s home base, Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church.”
SFCV,
Richard S. Ginell, 5/12/20
REBELLIOUS
REMEMBER THE FUTURE 2019-20
“Hashtags from my Soviet Childhood,” by Inna Faliks, (LA Times, 3/1/2020)
“We now live in a realm of buzzwords, hashtags, slogans that can seduce us with the neatness of tidily packaged concepts in our desire for change. But “equality,” ”revolution” and “proletariat” are rendered meaningless in environments where they are overused. We’ve entered an age of Newspeak — though, unlike in “1984,” this is not part of government indoctrination but our own doing.”
- Inna Faliks, appeared on Agony & Ecstasy, 3/14/20
AGONY & ECSTASY
“As in Lang’s 2008 masterwork, The Little Match Girl Passion, Sleeper’s Prayer is the essence of delicacy and seeming simplicity built on subtle variations and repetitions of the melodic theme. Walker and Robles made the performance a moving experience.”
SFCV
Jim Farber, 12/17/19
ORGANIC II
“Pianist David Kaplan’s account of Mozart’s Fantasie and Fugue in C Minor was the standout performance. His playing had a dazzling range of dynamics and emotional weight. Mozart is often played too subtly for the real dynamic contrasts to shine through, but Kaplan hammered away, bringing out the piece’s turbulent emotional underbelly. For all the bombast of his performance, he retained the sense of control that is integral to Mozart.”
SFCV
Ben Kutner, 12/10/19
GIDEON’S SUITCASE
“It was a revelatory experience that offered a color-filled, dramatically executed exploration of Partch’s creation. It also served as a cogent reminder of current hard times and how an epidemic of homelessness is plaguing our cities […] It’s Whitman’s lure of the open road fragmented and filtered through the caustic lens of the Depression. It’s Kerouac before Kerouac. It’s Steve Reich before Different Trains.”
SFCV
Jim Farber, 11/12/19
THE WAYWARD
“The players wore lively hobo outfits, played cards, and thumbed their noses when not otherwise occupied by the demanding text. They took turns intoning the texts with Schneider as the main Woody Guthrie-esque hitchhiking compser. Mainly though, they played gloriously.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 11/12/19
“PARTCH, the ensemble devoted to building Harry Partch’s fantastical instruments and reviving the neglected scores of the most eccentric of the great American maverick composers, will give the first complete performance of Partch’s hobo epic, ‘The Wayward,’ on this Jacaranda Music program, along with other essential Partch works you can’t hear anywhere else […]”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 9/11/19
…DREAM IN COLOR 2018-19
THREE CALIFORNIA MILLENNIALS — NOON TO MIDNIGHT
“It started with the ruckus of crowd noises rising and falling in volume throughout the hall […] and ended with the bright, cheery, surprisingly inventive variations on a single minimalist vamp in Dylan Mattingly’s Gravity and Grace (a world premiere, courtesy of Jacaranda) ’round about midnight.”
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 6/6/19
“Noon to Midnight culminated in a strong fashion inside Disney Hall when Jacaranda Music closed the evening […] Dylan Mattingly’s Gravity and Grace might have been the most gorgeous work of the day, and it was an exhilarating finale.”
LA Weekly
6/5/19
“The night ended with Dylan Mattingly’s “Gravity and Grace,” a commission for Jacaranda Music, played by pianists Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray and organist Joanne Pearce Martin. (The latter two were back on the Disney stage 14 hours later for the Mahler.) This was a Minimalist chugging, chiming as brightly as Saint-Saëns — a kind of “Carnival of the Glassworks,” a sugar rush as enjoyable as the cake that followed.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 6/3/19
VIVID REVERIES
“The second movement like “a remembrance of things past” hints at Kagel’s influences, as diverse as Debussy and Schoenberg. There’s a goofy-footed dance, with the piano making plodding footfalls against drunken lurches from the violin and cello. It all leads to that hammer-of-fate crescendo/diminuendo. Then, like a wink at fate, Kagel adds a tiny goodbye note for punctuation. This was one of those ear-opening experiences, so expertly played that it left you wanting to go back to the beginning and hear it again.”
SFCV
Jim Farber, 5/28/19
“Jacaranda’s overview [of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo] culminated with a performance of Eastman’s Stay on It from 1973 — an energetic, idiosyncratic take on minimalism that overlaid traditional ideas of pulse and rhythmic repetition with an Afro/Cuban influence and a high-flying vocal part (originally sung by Eastman) which was given a wonderful rendition by Zanaida Robles.”
SFCV
Jim Farber. 4/16/19
STAY ON IT!
FLYING DREAM
“Jacaranda Artistic and Executive Director Patrick Scott cooked up a progression through the 20th century, giving the impression of black composers making their ways from Romantic echoes of European origin toward a music that increasingly absorbed indigenous influences from black America. The full story of black music isn’t as straight-forward as that, but it was a canny way of organizing such diverse material.”
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 3/26/19
“The Future of Classical Music Is Chinese,” by Inna Faliks (The Washington Post, 3/22/19)
“I found the passion, drive and work ethic of Chinese music students staggering. And the dedication from the audiences was evident, as every seat — regardless of the city — was always taken. Reverence for Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Schumann seems to have no connection to any economic or political agenda. Living Chinese composers such as Gao Ping and Liu Sola combine the most current trends in new music with Chinese tradition.”
- Inna Faliks, appeared on “Premonition 2” 2/3/19
PREMONITION I & II
“Jacaranda Music in Santa Monica gave a rare opportunity for listeners to examine that perfection for itself Sunday night. Pianists Inna Faliks and Daniel Schlosberg presented Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in a piano four-hands arrangement prepared by his friend (and jilted ex-lover of his notoriously mercurial wife, Alma) Alexander von Zemlinsky. Augmented by the inclusion of some choice selections from the work’s percussion parts, it was a performance that stripped the music down to black and white, laying bare not only its formidable architectural unity, but also its teeth-clenching harmonies.”
Culture Spot LA
2/6/19
“Jörg Widmann’s “Hunt Quartet,” a next-generation German composer, now 45, makes its intentions more clearly known. The quartet, from 2003, begins with a quote from the Schumann piano piece “Papillons.” What follows is a little something for everyone in this premonition circuit. Schumann gets jazzed up and beaten up (whip claps included). Mahlerian foreboding is ever present. The players scream as if in pain and shout as if in anger. It ends in violence, the cowering cellist attacked by three screaming players brandishing their bows in the air like sticks. Lyris made this downright unnerving.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 2/5/19
TIME FOLDER
“Jacaranda, the Santa Monica new music series, opens its season at First Presbyterian Church with his two-hour piano extravaganza, “Achilles Dreams of Ebbets Field,” which evokes Achilles, Hector, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, and will be played by Kathleen Supové.”
LA Times,
09/14/18
AWAKE 2017-18
“Unusual, welcome, needed, and often enlightening.”
SFCV
Richard S. Ginell, 05/22/2018
"Jacaranda is known for imaginative programs of challenging contemporary music."
LA Weekly
6/5/19
REGIONAL ACCENTS
"Vanhauwaert revealed and reveled in all those facets, allowing his hands, which the composer had tasked to their utmost, to reveal the humanity and vulnerability at the heart of this score…[his] fingers setting the fuse for phosphorescent explosions that shimmered against a the backdrop of a tropical night. No less impressive was the performance…surprisingly primal and urgent. This near visceral quality was superbly realized by percussionist Jonathan Hepfer, whose performance had an elemental power that could very well have brought down the walls of the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica where the concert took place."
Crescenta Valley Weekly
Néstor Castiglione, 03/22/2018
MENTAL ENERGY
"This is a great series of unusual music, unusual instrumentation, every one so far very worthwhile."
Santa Monica Daily Press
Charles Andrews, 03/15/2018
"The Barraqué Piano Sonata has been a challenge which few pianists have accepted. But this Saturday night pianist Steven Vanhauwaert will meet the score head-on, bringing it to life for the first time in Southern California in nearly 20 years.”
Medium
Néstor Castiglione, 03/14/2018
EXTRASENSORY
"...As soon as the familiar opening notes of the piece were played, it was apparent that this compact gang of polished musicians were creating a worthy rendition of 'Faun'. The 'string section' had only two violins along with a single viola, cello and bass. But combined with piano and harmonium...the sound ripened at moments into something powerful. Hilt’s finesse and control of his musicians, Jennifer Cullinan’s rich oboe, Donald Foster’s effective clarinet and the ensemble’s teamwork helped make this performance memorable.”
Times Quotidian
03/14/2018
"To actually curate a concert is an art. It is one of the qualities that sets apart the Los Angeles music series Jacaranda. For more than 10 years, under the leadership of Artistic Director Patrick Scott and Music Director Mark Alan Hilt, Jacaranda’s concerts have been conceived as musical journeys of discovery..."
SFCV
Jim Farber, 02/27/18
INDIVISIBLE
"On January 20, new music series Jacaranda was the first of three area ensembles to present work by Eastman this year. Jacaranda combined The People United Will Never Be Defeated by Frederic Rzewski, and the LA premiere of Gay Guerilla by Eastman to observe Inauguration Day. [Eastman biographer, Renee] Levine-Packer was the featured speaker at a pre-concert event."
Arts Meme
Sheila Tepper, co-written by Kelsey McConnell, 01/21/2018
OPPOSING NATURES — NOON TO MIDNIGHT
"Some of the finest orchestral musicianship of the entire event was turned in by the players of Jacaranda Music. The two-part program began with the world premiere of Mark Grey’s Fantasmagoriana, a three-movement piece (conducted by Donald Crockett) that blends deep, classically oriented roots with a more post-minimalist style. It’s a piece that deserves more hearings."
SFCV
Jim Farber, 11/21/2017
"A snappy new chamber symphony premiered by Jacaranda proved playful and inventive, its twists and turns a pleasure."
LA Times,
Mark Swed. 11/20/2017
MICRO CLIMATES
"In [Lou Harrison's] alluring Varied Quintet, for violin, harp, harpsichord and percussion, Harrison let bells ring the way bells like to ring in all their sonic complexity. Harp and harpsichord had Baroque-era tunings and provided extra perfume to his most delicious melodies, such as the one for violin sensuously played by Shalini Vijayan in a movement honoring Fragonard."
LA Times
Mark Swed, 10/26/2017
"To actually curate a concert is an art. It is one of the qualities that sets apart the Los Angeles music series Jacaranda. For more than 10 years, under the leadership of Artistic Director Patrick Scott and Music Director Mark Alan Hilt, Jacaranda’s concerts have been conceived as musical journeys of discovery..."
Arts Meme
10/11/2017
SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT
EXPANSIVE 2016-17
"Released in 2016, the Paris based Diotima Quartet, has recorded the definitive unabridged works for string quartet works of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. [T]he audience experienced not just programming expertise..., but the perseverance of the Jacaranda duet [Patrick Scott & Mark Alan Hilt] to bring the just the right performers to proffer this extraordinary presentation.”
Times Quotidian
03/20/2017
DIOTIMA: VIENNA
The first half...was devoted to the 150 years of American piano music that paved the way to Grand Pianola Music performed by the superbly skilled pianist Christopher Taylor. It all built up to the performance...with Taylor and Gloria Cheng seated at the twin keyboards, accentuated by members of the Jacaranda Chamber Orchestra and a trio of vocalists conducted by Jacaranda’s music director, Mark Alan Hilt. It felt like we had finally gotten to the feature film after a succession of previews of coming attractions. ... it stood out in all its grandeur."
Daily News
Jim Farber, 01/18/2017
AMERICAN BERSERK
"If only all proponents of contemporary classical music could channel P.T. Barnum the way Patrick Scott did... at the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge. The LSD-triggered 1982 maximalist assault on good taste shows [John] Adams channeling his inner ringmaster. No elephants or tigers were on hand, but Adams' bold Grand Pianola Music, which concluded the concert in high vulgar style, did just fine. [T]he company's musicians sounded clear and full-bodied at VPAC venue. They should get out more often."
LA Times
Rick Schultz, 01/15/2017
TRAJECTORY 2015-16
BBC Music Magazine “North America Live” Pick, 05/2016
"The voluminous program notes...can be so absorbing that you don’t want to pry your eyes away from the pages... plenty of context for an alert, adventuresome concertgoer. This time Scott wrote about the Margaret Thatcher era in Britain and the reaction to it from pop culture that was already bubbling away beforehand via the 1970s punk movement. To some degree, this rebelliousness had a counterpart in so-called classical music – at least in the selection played here.”
Classical Voice North America
Richard S. Ginell, 2/3/2016
EXPECTANCY
INHALE
"David Lang's darker, a slow and quiet piece for a dozen strings in which very little changes and during which the emotional temperature remains tepid, lasted an hour and seven minutes...The lights in the sanctuary gradually and effectively darkened throughout the performance... The point is to be expressive, but not too expressive, to find a middle way. But that middle way is oddly intense. The result, especially given an absorbing performance and sensitive amplification that produced a gleamingly energizing sound, can be one of well being. Jacaranda's music director, Mark Alan Hilt, conducted."
LA Times
Mark Swed, 10/18/2015
SEASON OF STORIES 2014-15
BBC Music Magazine “North America Live” Pick, 4/2015
"This inventive, intricately-laced program [had] an absorbing unity in mood — high seriousness…stretches of meditation, and often a willingness to experiment.”
Classical Voice North America
Richard S. Ginell, 04/29/2015
SATELLITE STATES
"The audience went wild. What else? This was riveting music that crept into every crevice of human perception — be it lulling waters or rugged mountains or a wildly macabre club scene.”
LA Observed
02/15/2015
"Peter Maxwell Davies’ iconic multimedia fusion of imagery, dance and music, Vesalii Icones was stunning, simply overloading the senses with macabre dances, theatrical gestures and gruesome images, all portrayed with an iconoclastic irreverence from incongruous musical references."
Culture Spot LA
02/09/2015
ICONO-GRAPHIC
SEASON OF JOURNEYS 2013-14
"It’s hard to imagine the Southern California music scene without Jacaranda shaping and defining it."
Huffington Post,
Rodney Punt, 06/06/2014
ABANDON
"After sailing serenely on… [Mad Rush by Philip Glass] erupts into a swirling vortex of sound full of drama and energy...hearing this piece performed live affirms the raw power of this music when heard in its intended venue.”
Sequenza 21
Paul Muller, 04/07/2014
CIVIL WARS
"The most surprising revelation of the evening was the spoken text, which I had never heard in English (the piece is meant to be performed in a venue's local language). The eroticism of these poems was a complete surprise... I had only heard the piece in German, and had no idea what the words meant.”
Auscultations.net
03/13/2014
MID-CENTURY MODERN
"This is the kind of accessibility that eludes most new music. The Cage and Messiaen were landmark pieces at their premieres, and are still considered avant-garde by the piano establishment, yet by no means do they alienate listeners. Instead their newness is evolutionary and inclusive, much to the musical world’s pleasure."
Stage and Cinema
Daniel S.G. Wood, 02/26/2014
"Call it an enclave of enthusiasts… And not for the first time at this outpost of modernism, was there a packed house (or should I say church?) even though no vestige of mainstream music showed up on the program.... No matter. It was the big names from the past [Debussy & Enesco]...who drew the hordes: oldsters with backpacks, elegant arty types, college students and even some unlikely middlebrow greyheads."
LA Observed
02/06/2014
HALLUCINATION
"The VOXNOVA Stimmung was unusual — stunningly beautiful, utterly serene, full of charm and doing everything it could to avoid embarrassment. There has been a lot of foolish talk in new music circles lately about the dryness of the '60s avant-garde. Jacaranda on Saturday night revived the era's wow factor.
LA Times
Mark Swed, 01/27/2014
"Tendler revealed new corners of the piece by holding it up to a softer, more diffused light.”
Auscultations.net
02/7/2014
"Stimmung has to be seen and heard in person to experience the full effect of Stockhausen’s extraordinarily beautiful writing. It certainly helps that the founder of VOXNOVA Italia, Nicholas Isherwood, worked with Stockhausen for the last seven years of the composer’s life.”
Times Quotidian
02/04/2014
SEASON OF CONTRASTS 2012-13
"Britten's most original inspiration proved making the Madwoman a mad tenor. Assuming you can find a tenor who can pull it off. Jacaranda found him. In a richly nuanced, boldly expressive, Steven Tharp, who has a broad operatic repertory, displayed the visionary quality of madness. The work has only once before been presented in Los Angeles (the Little Orchestra Society of New York brought it to Occidental College in 1968). The church was full with a devout new music audience, and a rare communal spirit was achieved. It was a moving, important occasion.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 04/29/2013
CURLEW RIVER
“Since 2003, the music series Jacaranda has provided the Los Angeles music scene with a much-needed boost of contemporary music programming, specializing in chamber music with an emphasis on West Coast composers. After centenary tributes to Messiaen and John Cage, they now have Benjamin Britten's centenary in 2013.”
LAist
3/31/13
"If you're in search of salon splendor...look no further than Jacaranda, the new-music enterprise in Santa Monica that incorporates the bold and the beautiful — with informed taste, imagination and a polish now brought to a peak of excellence… The source of all this wonderment is Patrick Scott... Together with conductor Mark Alan Hilt he sees to every detail of their small, smart operation here. It's located in one of the premier spots for acoustics and ambience...it's spare but warm and light, with a pleasing balance of scale and suggesting a kind of architectural humanity."
LA Observed
03/13/2013
THRESHOLDS
"Jacaranda’s lively program of the two Hungarian masters was…emotionally direct even when at its most melodically and harmonically abstract. This was music serving as hardcore workout for your brain: rigorous; requiring a serious investment in time, energy, and concentration; ...but ultimately, a positive and rewarding experience that makes you feel invigorated when it’s all said and done.”
All Is Yar
CK Dexter Haven, 01/18/2013
"Fierce Beauty, the Jacaranda concert in Santa Monica, was important. And it was important in several ways. The performances were powerful, and Eötvös was on hand to conduct the U.S. premiere of a recent work, for which Jacaranda was a co-commissioner. The evening was also an important model for collegiality [with the LA Phil] among arts institutions, something startlingly rare in other places. But most important of all, the concert mattered because it was serious. It dealt with adult issues. With this concert, Jacaranda grew up, moving beyond local to national significance.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 01/14/2013
FIERCE BEAUTY
"A sell-out throng of glitter, beauty and brains in all sorts and varieties responded warmly to the totally decadent musical menu... Jacaranda confounded everyone with George Enescu's Octet played by two stupendous young quartets, Calder and Lyris. [It was] full of energy and themes of unimaginable beauty and size, and yet constantly beset by waves of dark emotion. Classical music investment value: very high."
Huffington Post
12/03/2012
SEDUCTION
“Fans of contemporary classical music in the Los Angeles area have watched as a local gem – Jacaranda – has evolved into the must-see destination for engaging, challenging, and provocative 20th- and 21st-century music. From John Cage to Esa-Pekka Salonen to Steve Reich and other modern masters, this collective of top-flight local performers and producers seeks to show what it calls ‘music at the edge.’”
Christian Science Monitor
11/20/12
CAGE 100
"Mark Alan Hilt gave a different personality to each repetition, making a drama of the work. Vexations [for piano] has the capacity to create the sensation of well-being, the awareness of continuity of time as a physical flowing substance. The main event was... the first performance of Cage's The Ten Thousand Things. The performers — pianists Vicki Ray and Kallay, bassist Tom Peters, percussionist William Winant and reciter John Schneider were exquisite. Every sound sounded considered, alive, worthy of our wonder."
LA Times
Mark Swed, 09/11/2012
SEASON OF DISCOVERY 2011-12
A VAST CLEARING
“[Eastman] toured Europe to stamping, cheering crowds with a work, “Stay on It” that gave“A chorus of 28 beautifully blended voices was backed by a reverberant church organ. The singers stood under a large, scarf-draped cross. Scott Dunn conducted almost as if he were in the trance of sacred Bruckner. The final, ecstatic section was pure rapture. Performing a block from the beach, Jacaranda calls its series ‘music at the edge.’ The hard Glass edge was here gone, replaced by sonic succulence and at times the slow tempos provoked a near erotic moaning from the chorus.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 10/17/11
“Season after season the twentieth century comes to life in Jacaranda’s programs.”
The New Yorker
SEASON OF POETRY 2010-11
"[David] Lang's 2007 Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning [Little Match Girl Passion] was moving and splendidly done. Lang draws contrast in his music between the dark cold world of the little girl and the colorful light of her visions in the flame. The music can be halting and there are abundant silent pauses, but when the vocal harmonics burst into existence, they are marvelous, if still like the match flame, short-lived. The crowd sat in appreciative silence afterward before giving Lang, who was present for the performance, and the vocalists a standing ovation. And while those can be a dime a dozen here in L.A., this one was well deserved and it was another feather in Jacaranda's newer music cap."
Out West Arts
01/31/2011
PERILOUS BALANCE
"Americans may... still agree upon a common heritage of old hymns, popular songs and spirituals. American composers – populist or classical, conventional or avant-garde – have long used these natural musical resources… Charles Ives showed the way... Jacaranda turned to this first great American original in 12 short numbers, written between 1897 and 1934. Songs, solo piano pieces and strange ensemble works were given illuminating performances by soprano Elissa Johnston, pianist Scott Dunn and a chamber orchestra conducted by Jacaranda music director Mark Alan Hilt."
LA Times
Mark Swed, 10/25/2010
ROCKING
“Though not all winter themed, four diverse contemporary works (two American, two from Russia) were meant as a cross-country ski through an icy landscape. Lang’s job, then, was to warm a frostbitten night. In a 35-minute missive from heaven, four solo singers in transfixed harmony, accompanying themselves with gentle percussion, transcended worldly misery. [T]he audience sat transfixed in pews. The performance of this four-voice version – sung by soprano Elissa Johnston, alto Adrianna Manfredi, tenor Grant Gershon and bass Cedric Berry – was a stunner. Free-flowing voices floated as if unmoored by acoustics."
LA Times
Mark Swed, 01/23/2011
SEASON OF ADVENTURES 2009-10
“Jacaranda’s season finale was homage to Richard Wagner, its contribution to the two-month Ring Festival LA that explores the works and influence of the dominant European musical voice from the mid 19th Century until the end of World War I. Like a Cubist painting, each of the pieces in the program – by Schubert, Mahler, Hindemith, and Wagner himself – angled a different perspective on the composer, from antecedents to personal reflections, and finally to later developments. Conductor Hilt and his committed voices and strings gave it their all in riveting performances... that explored every tortured byway to its final, relieving cadence.”
LA Times
Mark Swed, 10/17/11
PRUSSIAN BLUES
2003-09 REVIEWS
2008-2009 THE O. M. CENTURY, PART 2
“I cannot remember a better-imagined, better-played program supercharged with the pleasure of discovery…”
So I’ve Heard
2007-2008 THE O. M. CENTURY, PART 1
”There are times when you sit transfixed and pray that it never ends.”
LA Weekly
“The right music in the right place at the right time.”
LA Weekly