Series Includes Video Artwork and Installations from Tal Rosner, Ars Electronica Futurelab, the Quay Brothers and Bill Viola

Los Angeles, October 22, 2015 – in/SIGHT, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s multidisciplinary series featuring works by prominent video artists in tandem with orchestral selections, returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall for the 2015/16 season after a successful debut last year. This season’s in/SIGHT series will include four Friday night concerts enhanced with video installations and, in some cases, additional artistic elements created to engage both the auditory and visual senses of LA Phil audiences. 

The series opens with conductor Ludovic Morlot leading the orchestra in Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes, accompanied by an LA Phil co-commissioned video installation from filmmaker Tal Rosner. The following concert in the series features LA Phil Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Ravel’s Mother Goose surrounded by a newly co-commissioned installation from Ars Electronica Futurelab. Next on the schedule is the world premiere of Louis Andriessen’s LA Phil commissioned Theatre of the World, an ambitious multi-media vocal/instrumental work conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw. The production incorporates new video artwork from renowned stop-motion animators the Quay Brothers. The series concludes with the first Los Angeles presentation of acclaimed video artist Bill Viola’s recent video/sound installation, Inverted Birth. The evening will also include LA Phil Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel leading the orchestra in a performance of music by Arvo Pärt and Mozart.

Video designer Tal Rosner has spent the last ten years working closely with musicians, combining multiple layers of sound and visuals to create a new language of classical/contemporary music videos. Most recently, Rosner was commissioned to create a new video interpretation of Britten's Four Sea Interludes by four leading American orchestras: the New World Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. In summer 2015, he added Britten’s Passacaglia to the piece in a premiere by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Rosner’s recent work with orchestras includes In Seven Days (Piano Concerto with Moving Image),  a collaboration with world-renowned British composer Thomas Adès, commissioned by the Southbank Centre in London and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2008 and later performed with the New York Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zürich and Cologne Philharmonie; and Chronograph, a site-specific digital art mural Rosner created in collaboration with American artist Casey Reas, which was commissioned for the opening of the same Gehry-designed building and has been screened daily on its 7,000-square-foot exterior projection wall ever since. Outside of the orchestral realm, Rosner created the video design and animation for Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s 21^st century adaptation of the classic medieval play, “Everyman,” at the Royal National Theatre. Directed by Rufus Norris, the show starred Chiwetel Ejiofor and ran from April to August 2015 on the Olivier stage. In 2008, Rosner won the BAFTA for Best Title Sequence for the Channel 4 television series Skins.

Ars Electronica is an art, education and research organization based in Austria which has been accompanying the Digital Revolution for the past three decades. With its annual festival for media art, Ars Electronica has developed a unique and internationally renowned position within the intersection of art, technology and society. The Ars Electronica Futurelab was established in 1996 and is the think tank and R&D Division of Ars Electronica. Gaining a deep understanding of new technologies and shaping their cultural impact with creative and often radical ideas and artistic concepts is the foremost goal of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. It is a place where a network of artists, designers, engineers and computer scientists from all over the world work on groundbreaking new art projects, as well as challenging research projects for the industry.

The Quay Brothers, identical twins, were born in Norristown, near Philadelphia, in 1947. After graduating in 1969 from the Philadelphia College of Art, they studied illustration and graphics at the Royal College of Art, London. The Quays have maintained a steady output of surreal and fastidious puppet animation films and two feature length films, supplemented by design work for opera, theatre and ballet. They are renowned for their craftsmanlike methods and their unusual sources of inspiration. Apart from their puppets, which typically look like old dolls abused by many generations of children, they construct their own sets, arrange the lighting, and operate the cameras. The films draw heavily on twentieth-century European visual and literary culture, especially the surrealist and expressionist traditions.

A seminal figure in the field of video art, Bill Viola has been creating installations, video/films, sound environments, flat panel video pieces and works for concerts, opera and sacred spaces for over four decades. Viola’s video pieces masterfully utilize sophisticated media technologies, while exploring the spiritual and perceptual side of human experience, focusing on universal human themes – birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness – and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as the spiritual traditions of Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism and Christian mysticism. Viola represented the US at the Venice Biennale in 1995. Other key solo exhibitions include Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (1997); The Passions at the J.Paul Getty Museum (2003); Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2006; Bill Viola, visioni interiori at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 2008; and Bill Viola, Grand Palais, Paris 2014. In 2004, Viola created a four-hour-long video for Peter Sellars’ production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that has had many performances in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.

in/SIGHT:
http://www.laphil.com/insight

Friday, November 13, 2015
Britten & Beethoven
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Ludovic Morlot, conductor
Sergey Khachatryan, violin
Tal Rosner, video artist

BRITTEN                Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes (with video) (Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra co-commission)
BEETHOVEN          Violin Concerto

Friday, February 12, 2016
City of Light: Mother Goose, With Installation
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Vincent Dubois, organ
Camilla Tilling, soprano
Ars Electronica Futurelab, installation artists

TANGUY                 Affettuoso
POULENC              Organ Concerto
DUTILLEUX            Correspondances
RAVEL                   Mother Goose, with installation (LA Phil & Abu Dhabi Festival co-commission)

Friday, May 6, 2016
Andriessen Premiere: Theatre of the World
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor
Pierre Audi, stage director
Quay Brothers, décor and video
Florence von Gerkan, costumes
Jean Kalman, lighting design
Klaus Bertisch, dramaturgy
Frans Willem de Haas, assistant director
Wijnand van der Horst, assistant lighting design
Leigh Melrose, Athanasius Kircher
Lindsay Kesselman, A boy
Marcel Beekman, Papa Innozenzo XI
Cristina Zavalloni, Sor Juana Inės de la Cruz
Mattijs van de Woerd, the Carnifex
Nora Fischer, Martijn Cornet, He and She (A couple of secret lovers)

ANDRIESSEN         Theatre of the World (world premiere, LA Phil commission)

Thursday, May 26, 2016
Mozart & Pärt: The Angels
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Bill Viola, video/sound installation
Inon Barnatan, piano

PÄRT                    Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
VIOLA                   Inverted Birth
MOZART                Piano Concerto No. 17, K. 453
PÄRT                     Symphony No. 4, “Los Angeles”

Subscriptions and single tickets for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2015/16 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall are currently available. To purchase, please visit LAPhil.com, the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office or any Ticketmaster outlet. To order by phone with credit card, please call the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office at 323.850.2000, or Ticketmaster at 800.745.3000. For more information, please call 323.850.2000.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under the vibrant leadership of Music Director & Artistic Gustavo Dudamel, presents an inspiring array of music from all genres – orchestral, chamber and Baroque music, organ and celebrity recitals, new music, jazz, world music and pop – at two of L.A.’s iconic venues, Walt Disney Concert Hall (www.laphil.com) and the Hollywood Bowl (http://www.hollywoodbowl.com). The LA Phil’s season extends from September through May at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and throughout the summer at the Hollywood Bowl. With the preeminent Los Angeles Philharmonic at the foundation of its offerings, the LA Phil aims to enrich and transform lives through music, with a robust mix of artistic, education and community programs.

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