Insight Past Festivals and Projects
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
Green Umbrella Echoes
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2024/25
The Green Umbrella Echoes project invited visual artists Mtendere “Teebs” Mandowa, Nora Berman, Lily Stockman, Pearl C. Hsiung, and Eamon Ore-Giron to respond to the LA Phil’s new music programming. The subsequent work was then put on display prior to all Green Umbrella concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Seoul Festival
GYOPO, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2024/25
Curated by the contemporary arts collective GYOPO, Insight’s Seoul Festival programing included audio-video installations by Heecheon Kim and siren eun young jung; a day-long symposium curated by popular artist Sasami and featuring a performance by NoSo; and a performance art showcase featuring Sharon Chohi Kim, Young Sun Han, Hwa Records, and Ariel Osterweis.
Night at the Library: Distance Duet
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2024/25
Insight tapped multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Pennypacker-Riggs and her Community Chorus for a surprising pop-up performance at the Los Angeles Central Library as part of the sold-out Night at the Library event. The piece Distance Duet brought the natural world into the library’s escalator atrium.
Noon to Midnight: Installations and Conversations
Ellen Reid, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2024/25
Insight brought a combination of installations and conversations to Noon to Midnight, including the In Sheep's Clothing listening lounge, conversations between scientists and composers, and site-specific work by Alexey Seliverstov, Ka Baird, Chris Kallmyer, Mercedes Dorame, Lachlan Turczan, and Lily Clark.
Schoenberg 150
Arnold Schönberg Center, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2024/25
Insight recognized the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg with an exhibition exploring the storied composer’s time in Los Angeles and a printed map of his area haunts with original artwork by Juan Manuel Nares.
The Natural World of Studio Ghibli
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.
Modeling Sound, Sculpting Harmony
Getty Research Institute, curators
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2023/24
To commemorate Walt Disney Concert Hall’s twentieth anniversary, Getty, in collaboration with LA Phil Insight and Frank Gehry, present two exhibitions, Modeling Sound and Sculpting Harmony. Drawn from the extensive Frank O. Gehry Papers at Getty, the exhibitions celebrate the realization of this important Los Angeles landmark. Visit the digital exhibition Sculpting Harmony at gehry.getty.edu.
The Motherboard Suite
The Ford • 2024
Actor and slam-poet-turned-musician Saul Williams paired tracks from his albums MartyrLoserKing and Encrypted & Vulnerable with a choreographic collective overseen by MacArthur Fellow Bill T. Jones. The evening touched on the intersection of technology and race, exploitation, and "mystical anarchy," where hackers are artists and activists.
Rock My Soul
Ava DuVernay and ARRAY, curators
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.
Heart of Brick
serpentwithfeet, artist and Kumi James and Harmony Holiday, curators
The Ford • 2024
LA Phil Insight co-commissioned Heart of Brick, experimental musician serpentwithfeet's theatrical collaboration with director Wu Tsang and choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. In addition to the performances, the show's themes of the creation of Black queer love and community on the dancefloor were explored in talks and club nights featuring such artists as Shaun J. Wright, Sevyn, Colored Craig, and Justen LeRoy.
Jazz Is Dead
The Ford • 2024
The Jazz is Dead collective brought their magic to The Ford with a trio of concerts showcasing their trademark, deep explorations of soulful music culture ranging from an evening dedicated to the jazz-funk masterpieces of the Mizell Brothers, to Brazilian Samba Soul with Marcos Valle and Azymuth, and exuberant highlife with Ghanian legends Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas.
Vibe Check
The Ford • 2024
The weekly podcast Vibe Check, hosted by audio-journalist Sam Sanders, poet Saeed Jones, and theater producer Zach Stafford, closed out its first live tour at The Ford to talk about what’s going on in news and culture—and how it all feels. The trio describes their show as a culmination of years of friendship that invites listeners into their “supportive sister circle.”
Michelle Dorrance & Friends
The Ford • 2024
Legendary tap dancer, choreographer, composer, historian, and educator Michelle Dorrance brought her famed company Dorrance Dance to The Ford, along with members of LA's electric tap community, including Josette Wiggan, Jillian Meyers, and Chloe Arnold's Syncopated Ladies.
The Just and the Blind
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.
Song Exploder
The Ford • 2024
The celebrated podcast Song Exploder came to The Ford for a one-of-a-kind evening of music and conversation featuring Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. Merritt joined host Hrishikesh Hirway to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band's opus, 69 Love Songs, by deconstructing some of its iconic tracks.
Last Days
Matt Copson, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2023/24
Curated by Matt Copson, co-director of Oliver Leith’s opera Last Days based on the film by Gus Van Sant, LA Phil Insight offered an opportunity for audiences to view the original film, hear from Van Sant, and experience a combined visual and social art installation by Copson and Leith prior to the opera’s performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The creative team also contributed to an original print piece designed by artist Collin Fletcher.
Canto en resistencia
Rita Gonzalez, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2023/24
Curated by LACMA’s Head of Contemporary Art Rita Gonzalez, LA Phil Insight offered a series of video installations and talks focused on the voices of Latina artists finding creative expression and political power in art and music. Artists included National Book Award finalist Cristina Rivera Garza, multidisciplinary artists Tania Candiana and Guadalupe Rosales, punk legend Alice Bag, and the Chulita Vinyl Club DJ collective.
Rachmaninoff Was Here
Ben Johnson, curator
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2022/23
In February 2023, the LA Phil teamed up with Beverly Hills historians to explore the cultural communities that existed during the brief, but important time Rachmaninoff lived in Beverly Hills. Exploring everything from the composer’s impact on classical music and popular culture, the American songbook being written next door, and the surrealist artists who had taken up residence in Hollywood, Rachmaninoff Was Here offered an expansive vision of a period of incredible artistic and intellectual activity.
Weimar Variations
Stephane Barron and Nana Bahlmann, co-curators
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2020/21
In February 2020, Weimar Variations presented exhibitions, performances, film screenings, commissioned installations, and a cabaret investigating the themes of the groundbreaking Weimar period and its contemporary resonances. Presenting iconic historical works alongside restaged, reinterpreted, and newly conceived examples, Weimar Variations emphasized how the ideas of the 1920s and 30s still reverberate today, revealing striking parallels to our own time.
Gen X
Karen Tongson and Wynter Mitchell-Rohrbaugh, co-curators
Walt Disney Concert Hall • 2021/22
In April and May 2022, the Gen X festival explored the forgotten generation through a distinctly LA lens, while amplifying the voices of artists, activists, and communities whose points of view were often pushed to the periphery. Events ranged from 80s horror marathons to food tastings to an exploration of the “queer utopias” of the dance floor.
Power to the People!
Tyree Boyd-Pates, curator
California African American Museum (CAAM) • 2020/21
In March 2020, the first iteration of the LA Phil's Power to the People! festival was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic but not before several events organized by Humanities curator Tyree Boyd-Pates and hosted by the California African American Museum (CAAM) took place, including Rakim, Chuck D, and Talib Kweli in conversation about the poetics and politics of hip-hop and composer Imani Uzuri’s participatory freedom song workshops.