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(Canceled) Benavides’ Neruda Songs

Tue / Jan 14, 2025 - 8:00PM

LA Phil musicians perform Nicolás Lell Benavides’ new work for oboe, string quartet, and tenor Joshua Blue.

Canceled

About this Performance

Please note: Due to the impact that the wildfires have had on our musicians and staff, this concert has been canceled. Any tickets purchased will be automatically refunded to the original method of payment.   Please allow 5–7 business days for your refund to be processed. For further assistance, please contact Audience Services at information@laphil.org or 323 850 2000. 

Our hearts are with all the members of our community affected by the fires, and we are grateful for the tireless work by firefighters and first responders during this emergency. Please stay safe, and we hope to welcome you back to Walt Disney Concert Hall soon. 

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The Washington Post praises Nicolás Lell Benavides’ music for finding “a way to sketch complete characters in swift sure lines.” In his new work based on poems by Nobel Prize-winner Pablo Neruda, tenor Joshua Blue becomes the piece’s protagonist, singing from beyond the grave about his undying affection for his lover and their closeness despite physical separation.

When composing Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, Gabriela Lena Frank also leaned on South American literature. Peruvian novelist José María Arguedas’ belief that cultures can coexist without conflict inspired Frank’s bold, festive, and momentarily mournful vision of Andean folklore.  

The program is bookended by two valedictory string quintets. It begins with LA Phil violist John Hayhurst’s Adagio—inspired by the final words of Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, and Michael Lando—and concludes with the piece Brahms described as his “farewell to my music.” While 57-year-old Brahms believed his time in the limelight was over, his biographer Walter Niemann disagreed, calling the quintet “the most passionate, the freshest, and the most deeply inspired by nature” of Brahms’ entire catalog.

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