The Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society begins its 2001/2002 season at the Skirball Cultural Center’s new Ahmanson Hall with a concert by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing works by South American composers Heitor Villa-Lobos and On Location composer Osvaldo Golijov, along with a Beethoven string quartet, November 5 at 8 p.m. Ahmanson Hall is located off the 405 Freeway at the Mulholland/Skirball Center Drive exit, near the Getty Center. The address is 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., in West Los Angeles.

Single tickets ($25) are available at the Philharmonic’s Music Center box office, all Ticketmaster outlets (Robinsons-May, Tower Records, Ritmo Latino, Tu Música, and selected Wherehouse locations), and by credit card phone order at 213/365-3500. Tickets are also available on-line at laphil.org. or are available at Ahmanson Hall on the day of performance, two hours prior to the concert. For further information, please call 323/850-2000.

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 for Flute and Bassoon in 1938. Having returned to Brazil after living in Paris, Villa-Lobos was deeply involved in musical education; this cycle of nine pieces in total, written from 1930-1945, display a new aesthetic for the composer, more nationalistic and less revolutionary. Each has a Romantic spirit, mixing Brazilian folk music and Bach’s composition techniques of counterpoint.

Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, composed by Osvaldo Golijov, a Music Alive Composer-in-Residence, had its premiere in 1994. The piece is an epic history of Judaism in three parts, mirroring the three languages the Jewish people have spoken: Aramaic, Yiddish and Hebrew. The movements require the string quartet to sound like an accordion, a klezmer band and a shepherd’s flute. Yiddishbuk had its premiere in 1992 at Tanglewood Music Festival. The piece takes it’s title from a collection of apocryphal psalms and the three movements commemorate three children who were interned by the Nazis at Terezin and whose drawings and poems have been published as the book, “I never saw another butterfly.” The evening closes with Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 18, No. 1, which was written in preliminary form and given as a gift to a friend at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Chamber Music Society concerts are presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in association with The Norman and Sadie Lee Foundation as a community service.

This residency by Osvaldo Golijov is made possible through Music Alive, a residency program of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet The Composer. This national program is designed to provide orchestras with resources and tools to support their presentation of new music to the public and build support for new music within their institutions. Funding for Music Alive is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Composer OSVALDO GOLIJOV was born in 1960 in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, just outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied music with Gerardo Gandini, who had studied with Alberto Ginastera, Argentina’s most famous composer. Ginastera had established a nationalist classical music idiom with European avant-garde elements, that Gandini furthered by establishing The Grupo de Experimentación Musical, which introduced avant-garde music. Golijov was exposed to this relatively new classical music tradition and was influenced by other Argentine musical currents, such as the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. In 1983, he moved to Israel and studied with musicologist and composer Mark Kopytman. In 1986, he came to the United States and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb. In 1990, he was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. There he began an artistic relationship with the Kronos Quartet. They later recorded his works, K’vakarat (which he wrote for them) and The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. He continues to compose and arrange for Kronos. It is through the quartet that he met director Sally Potter who enlisted him to compose music for her film, The Man Who Cried. His Pasión Según San Marcos received widespread critical acclaim after its debut in Stuttgart, Germany in 2000. He has received numerous commissions from many sources including the composer Hans Werner Henze on behalf of the city of Munich, The Spoleto Festival in South Carolina, Lincoln Center, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Golijov is currently an Associate Professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and is on the faculty at the Boston Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center.

EDITORS - PLEASE NOTE:

Chamber Music Concert

Monday, November 5, 2001 at 8 p.m.

Ahmanson Hall, Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles

Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

VILLA-LOBOS: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 for Flute and Bassoon

OSVALDO GOLIJOV: Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

OSVALDO GOLIJOV: Yiddishbuk for String Quartet

BEETHOVEN: String Quartet Op. 18, No. 1

Single tickets ($25) are available at the Philharmonic’s Music Center box office, all Ticketmaster outlets (Robinsons-May, Tower Records, Ritmo Latino, Tu Música, and selected Wherehouse locations), and by credit card phone order at 213/365-3500. Tickets are also available on-line at laphil.org or are available at Ahmanson Hall on the day of performance, two hours prior to the concert. For further information, please call 323/850-2000.