Art · Ideas · Perspectives
The LA Phil Insight initiative takes the work on our stages as a starting point for exploration.
Bringing together a diverse range of guest curators, artists, and partner organizations with intellectually curious audiences, our Insight efforts dig into festival and project themes, uncovering their many meanings with a sense of thoughtfulness and play.
Insight activities are typically offered in conjunction with festivals, special projects, and The Ford summer season. They take a variety of forms, including commissioned installations, panel discussions, print publications, live podcast recordings, artist residencies, multidisciplinary performances, film screenings, and participatory activities in historic sites, nightclubs, and even roller rinks.
LA Phil Insight is generously supported by Linda and David Shaheen.
Check back for more events to be announced soon!
Visual artists, including Eamon Ore-Giron, Lily Stockman, and Pearl Hsiung, display work inspired by past LA Phil New Music Group performances at this season’s Green Umbrella concerts.
LA Phil Insight and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs bring an elemental dance opera to the LA Central Library.
Inspired by Mahler Society listening sessions, this collective listening experience welcomes special guests to share their favorite Mahler recordings at the Paramour Estate.
Wild Up, Insight, and REDCAT team up for a closer look at the legacies of maverick artists Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell
The legendary guitarist, composer, and producer Ebo Taylor is responsible for some of the greatest music in Ghana’s history—and in history, period. With a career spanning over half a century, his influence on African music is undeniable, from his early days playing ticklish highlife with bands like The Stargazers to collaborating with Afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti.
The Ford • 2024
The Natural World of Studio Ghibli celebrated the legendary animation studios’ thematic explorations of natural environments, how humans relate to nature, and the spiritual aspect of the natural world. Three class Miyazaki’s films, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, were screened in the beautiful natural setting of The Ford.
The Ford • 2024
The Just and the Blind brought a multimedia performance to The Ford stage, illuminating the unseen and under-heard experiences of incarcerated youth and the realities their families face. Spoken-word artist and arts activist Marc Bamuthi Joseph was joined by his longtime collaborator, composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, to explore themes of racial profiling, sentencing, and the prison-industrial complex.
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2023/24
Building on the work of LA Phil and Deaf West Theatre and the historic collaboration Fidelio, See / Feel / Hear Music invited audiences to engage with Deaf artists whose work explores the creation and reception of music, the innate music of sign language, and the politics of sound. Curated by Deaf West Theatre in collaboration with the LA Phil’s Insight program, the symposium offered a combination of conversations, presentations, film, and lobby activations featuring such acclaimed artists as DJ Kurs, Christine Sun Kim, and Evelyn Glennie.
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2023/24
In celebration of the release of Philip Glass Piano Etudes: The Complete Folios 1-20 & Essays from 20 Fellow Artists, LA Phil Insight partnered with Pomegranate Arts to produce an evening-length program of the complete etudes performed by such celebrated soloists as Lara Downes, Timo Andres, and Anton Batagov; a pre-concert conversation; and GlassSkates, a West Coast, roller-skating version of the composer’s historic 85th birthday party at The Rink at Rockefeller Center. Listen to the GlassSkates playlist.
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2022/23
In November 2022, Ava DuVernay and her team at ARRAY curated a series of events exploring the themes of Black women artists working in collaboration through the lens of film and television music. From an intimate evening with Meshell Ndegeocello to a screening of the iconic Carmen Jones with a live performance by J'Nai Bridges, Rock My Soul celebrated the excellence, artistry, and diversity of work created by Black women.
In conjunction with its festival programming, multidisciplinary presentations, and print publications, the LA Phil has made investments in the work of visual, sound, and installation artists, including Ragnar Kjartansson, Bill Viola, Shoplifter / Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, Susan Philipsz, Nicole Miller, Christine Sun Kim, Charles Gaines, Lucky Dragons, Elias Simé, and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller among others. By bringing artists into dialogue with its concert programming, the LA Phil aims to offer audiences varied points of view and points of entry into its work, while also expanding concepts of orchestral presentation, contextualization, and audience experience.
Published on the occasion of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s centennial, Past/Forward: The LA Phil at 100 revisits the history of the LA Phil and contemplates its future. The award-winning publication offers an unconventional approach to institutional storytelling and includes more than 100 firsthand accounts, interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim Page, 150 rarely seen archival photos, and artwork from Lucky Dragons, Charles Gaines, and Christine Sun Kim.
In conjunction with the Hollywood Bowl's centennial celebration in 2022, the LA Phil will publish The Hollywood Bowl: The First 100 Years written by Derek Traub with a foreword by Gustavo Dudamel and designed by the award-winning Content/Object studio. Traub uses many lens, from the musical to the political, to reveal the history of the Bowl, while positioning those who love the venue as a continuation of the story.
As part of the California Festival, LA Phil Insight has created editorial offerings, ranging from playlists and audio interviews to in-depth articles and graphic scores, from such artists and scholars as Geeta Dayal, Josh Kun, and Nadia Sirota among others.
Guest poets and essayists, including Armando Iannucci, Sarah Ruhl, Ishmael Reed, Pico Iyer, and Rian Johnson, have brought their perspectives to musical programs captured for the Sound/Stage streaming series.
Animation is one of the many visual forms of expression used by the LA Phil to illuminate aspects of orchestral performance. Contributors have ranged from the folktale-inspired artwork of Ghost Animation to the experimental offerings of Lilli Carré and Jordan Wong.
Captured as part of LA Phil Media productions, artist dialogues and roundtables invite audiences to delve deeper into an artist’s work and the issues that are important to them, including voices like Dianne Reeves and Terri Lyne Carrington on Jazz and Gender Equity and Ellen Reid and Gabriela Ortiz on Women’s Voices in Classical Music.
The LA Phil Archives invites scholars into its holdings to discover not only the history of the organization but of Los Angeles itself.
Pre-concert lectures and artist discussions provide audiences with context, insights, and opportunities to engage with artists and thinkers before the evening's main event.
A compendium of artist interviews, insightful articles, podcasts, and other media offerings, Watch & Listen is the LA Phil’s one-stop shop for music lovers and learners.
Audiences can enhance their listening and appreciation of classical music through Music 101 classes led by KUSC's Alan Chapman.
