Born and raised east of Los Angeles, the six-piece band is remixing roots music and telling modern-day stories. They create a vibrant musical fusion with a unique East LA sound and positive message, a mix-and-match of styles and sources that deliver socially conscious lyrics in both English and Spanish. Their wildly vibrant Afro-Mexican beats, rhythms, and rhymes document stories of a community looking for love and fighting for justice in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles.

The group’s UMS debut features mechanical instruments that have had a place in music history: organ (in this case, Hill Auditorium’s Frieze Memorial Organ), harmonium, harpsichord, music boxes, carillons, and electronic instruments. In Plain Air is a composition in four movements for organ, ensemble, electronics, and customized instruments designed to bring the sonic properties of a large organ into a contemporary concert context, with ICE members providing sonic liaisons to the organ and its rich color combinations.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma's career is testament to his enduring belief in culture's power to generate trust and understanding. In this special talk, he will explore the role culture can play in helping us to imagine and build a better future, drawing on examples from his own life as a musician and citizen. Ma's presentation is rooted in the belief that, at a moment when our world is challenged by the pace of change and the divisions it can create, culture's ability to create and share meaning is essential in shaping the next stage of our evolution.

Former music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and now the principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen carefully balances his time between conducting and composing works that know no limits in either technique or imagination. He makes his UMS debut with this year’s orchestral residency, which includes his Cello Concerto, recently premiered by Yo-Yo Ma.
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Thirty years after photographer and visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe’s untimely death, we still cannot turn away from the compelling emotional complexity of his influential body of work. In Triptych: On the Work of Robert Mapplethorpe, music, poetry, and photography come together in a theatrical context, exploring the impact of the work Mapplethorpe had on the lives and careers of composer Bryce Dessner (The National) and librettist Robert O’Hara, both natives of Cincinnati.

Powerhouse bass-baritone Eric Owens was recently named Musical America’s 2017 Vocalist of the Year and called an “American marvel” who “speaks to you even in his silences…and shakes you when he sings” by the Chicago Sun-Times. Alex Ross, in the New Yorker, noted, “With his sweet tone, fastidious pitch, and poetic phrasing, [Lawrence] Brownlee made familiar fare sound intriguingly fresh, banishing, for a moment, the ghosts of Caruso and Pavarotti.” Together, these two artists, friends for over two decades, share an ease and rapport that is evident through every piece on their program. Program will include opera arias and duets, as well as traditional spirituals, American popular song, and Gospel favorites.

Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo play Shakespeare’s famous fated couple in this great tragedy of politics, passion, and power in a slick, stylish, and modern production that includes a stunning revolving set and gorgeous costumes.

Created in 2016 and based on a traditional and fantastical Chinese tale, La Fresque (The Painting on the Wall) is “infused with sensual beauty.” (Le Figaro) The piece tells the story of a painting come to life and a journey into another dimension, where the picture becomes a place of transcendence and a person can become part of the picture. The ballet seeks to explore the mysterious relations between representation and reality, fixed image and movement, immediacy and duration, the live and the inert.

Centered around three of Shakespeare’s most vivid characters — Caesar, Brutus, and the young Mark Antony — the play contrasts a vast historical canvas with the private fears and dreams of men whose words can change the world. In this production, French director Arthur Nauzyciel adopts the look and style of the late 1960s, when the world is in flux and the national psyche is in turmoil after President Kennedy’s assassination.

Now entering its 44th season, this perennial favorite is back after its six-concert exploration of the complete Beethoven quartets in the 2016-17 season. Joined by New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, the Takács Quartet performs Haydn, Shostakovich, and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet. Brahms had retired from composing when he wrote this piece in 1891, but enthusiastically took it up again when he heard Richard Mühlfeld, the clarinetist who premiered the work. Brahms subsequently composed several additional chamber pieces for clarinet, including a clarinet trio and two sonatas.

Handel never wrote anything more sensuous than Semele, and he tells the story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses about the ill-fated love between Semele and Jupiter in brilliant arias of irresistible theatricality and dazzling coloratura. Harry Bicket and The English Concert are lauded for their Handel presentations, including two previous UMS performances (Radamisto in 2013 and Ariodante in 2017). The New York Classical Review called The English Concert’s Ariodante “a performance so stunning it was liable to make even the most jaded of early-music skeptics take note.”

INSTRUMENTATON
Cécile McLorin Salvant, vocals
Bria Skonberg, trumpet
Melissa Aldana, tenor saxophone
Christian Sands, piano, music director
Yasushi Nakamura, bass
Jamison Ross, drums

Murray Perahia’s place in the pantheon of great musicians is indisputable. With 12 UMS appearances since his debut over 40 years ago, he is one of the most treasured artists to appear on our series and consistently delivers performances that audiences remember years, or even decades, later. After his tour cancellation in spring 2018, we are pleased to be able to add this recital to the 2018-19 Choral Union Series.

As the oldest and most celebrated modern dance company in America, the Martha Graham Dance Company exemplifies its founder’s timeless and uniquely American style of dance, one that has influenced generations of artists and continues to captivate audiences worldwide.
Friday: Secular Games (Martha Graham), New Work (Maxime Doyle & Bobbi Jean Smith), Lamentation Variations (Aszure Barton), Chronicle (Graham),
Thursday: Diversion of Angels (Graham), Ekstasis (Graham), Woodland (Pontus Lidberg), Herodiade (Graham), I used to love you (Annie B. Parson)

Alan Bennett’s hilarious new play is a love letter to regional communities and a thought-provoking but stinging comedy on the reality of funding cuts and care for the aged. This production marks the 10th collaboration between Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner. A Bridge Theatre production.