(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Asher Tobin Chodos’ adventurous arrangement of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman places a quartet of jazz soloists within a symphonic context. Just as innovator Coleman sought to reframe jazz conventions in an idiosyncratic style, so Chodos’ arrangement seeks to reposition this 1959 work in a modern idiom, one that embraces and even expands upon the challenges of a composition that, in Chodos’ words, “occupies a middle ground between specificity and discrepancy.” Most importantly, this new take on a classic preserves the beauty and immediacy of Coleman’s original. Recorded on 06/10/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [7/2018] [Show ID: 33857]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) The requiem has long been a popular form among composers, and celebrated practitioners of the genre include Mozart, Verdi, Brahms, Berlioz, and Britten. Unlike those of his fellow composers, Fauré’s Requiem contains no Sturm und Drang, no thundering crescendos or rallying cries to the deceased. Rather, it’s a gentle, contemplative work, more of a meditation on transience than an exhortation. It contains most of the form’s familiar elements, including mixed chorus and soloists (in this instance baritone Jonathan Nussman and soprano Priti Gandhi), but they are employed in service of an effect that is uniquely Fauré’s own. This piece has steadily gained in popularity and the final section, “In Paradisum,” is familiar to many from its use in several films, television programs, and commercials. Recorded on 06/10/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33858]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv) Courtney Bryan’s remarkable As Yet Unheard, a work for orchestra and chorus, commemorates Sandra Bland’s tragic death in police custody in 2013. Using the text of Sharan Strange’s poem, soprano Helga Davis speaks to us in Bland’s voice, prodding us to relive the circumstances of her death and to seek answers to painful questions too long unasked. Recorded on 06/10/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [7/2018] [Show ID: 33856]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) The title "Un Sourire" translates as "A smile." Olivier Messiaen, who composed the piece to mark the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death in 1991, did not attempt to imitate Mozart's style. Rather, he based his piece on the knowledge that Mozart's music was not necessarily a direct expression of his emotional life. Messiaen fashioned his gentle homage to reflect that aspect of Mozart's music combined with his own love of birdsong. Recorded on 05/06/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33851]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) "When I sat down to write "Eating Flowers" I felt in many ways that I was responding to the energies of orchestral music whose colors I find irresistible: music of Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, and Messiaen particularly. My piece does not quote or even explicitly refer to this older music, but the energy and the color was certainly an influence. I titled my piece "Eating Flowers" to capture the sense of having tasted the delicious and delicate colors of my favorite orchestral music, which nourished my own creative spirit after having been digested." --- Hannah Lash Recorded on 05/06/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33852]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) Toru Takemitsu's "A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden" grew of out several influences. One inspiration was the composer's dreams, including a vision of a flock of white birds led by a single black bird. Another was his love of traditional Japanese gardens. A spark was provided by the American avant-garde composer John Cage, whose concept of indeterminate music - in which passages are left to chance or improvisation by the performers - was tremendously appealing to Takemitsu. The image of a five-sided garden also informs the piece's structure: five brief sections are built on five-note themes based on the pentatonic scale. Recorded on 05/06/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33853]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) A critic once commented that Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra" requires "an orchestra of soloists," Schoenberg himself said that his aim was the development of "the emancipation of dissonance," in which no single note or key would be dominant over others. To this end melodies are fragmentary while the emphasis is on ever-shifting instrumental colors.; thus each of the five brief movements acquires a distinctive atmosphere. Recorded on 05/06/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33850]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv) Franz Liszt composed twelve “symphonic poems,” of which “Les Préludes” has proven to be the most popular. Its structure is deceptively simple, based loosely on sonata form but differing from the classical sonata in its development of a few basic themes, rather than contrasting very different thematic material in distinct movements. The attractiveness of the piece lies in Liszt’s ingenious transitions and transformations as the music moves from episode to episode, by turns turbulent and serene, until the various strands finally come together in the dramatic finale. Explaining the title “Les Préludes,” Liszt posed the question, “What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?” Recorded on 03/16/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [Show ID: 33849]

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0:23 - Rand Steiger - Template for Improvising Trumpeter & Orchestra
15:03 - Courtney Bryan - As Yet Unheard
31:52 - Ornette Coleman - Lonely Woman
46:09 - Gabriel Fauré - Requiem, Opus 48

The key theme of A LINE BROKEN is the recognition that eventually all lines break, and that this is certainly true of human lives. While acknowledging the darkness implicit in that statement and reflected in several of the concert selections - for example, Courtney Bryan's remarkable "As Yet Unheard" and Ornette Coleman's discomfiting jazz tone poem "Lonely Woman" - there are also offerings of light. Rand Steiger's "Template for Improvising Trumpeter & Orchestra" and Gabriel Fauré's "Requiem" (so uncharacteristically gentle an example of that form) both celebrate music as an expression of the life-force and a means to transcend the darkness. Recorded on 06/10/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [7/2018] [Show ID: 33165]

(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/)
0:19 - 01 Arnold Schoenberg, “Five Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16”
18:33 - 02 Olivier Messiaen, “Un sourire”
27:55 - 03 Hannah Lash, "Eating Flowers"
39:14 - 04 Toru Takemitsu, "A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden"
52:05 - 05 Igor Stravinsky, “Symphony in Three Movements”

In "Facing Off Across Sunset Boulevard" La Jolla Symphony & Chorus celebrate mavericks and visionaries. The concert's title refers to the giants of 20th-century music whose work bookends the program, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. The two men lived scant miles apart in Los Angeles after fleeing Nazism yet never interacted, separated less by distance than by sharp differences in compositional method, aesthetic direction, and personality. Whatever their differences, their work inspired the other three composers represented on the program - Olivier Messiaen, Hannah Lash, and Toru Takemitsu - to continue their exploration of sonority, classical form, and movement. Recorded on 05/06/2018. Series: "La Jolla Symphony & Chorus" [6/2018] [Show ID: 33164]