The Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Gershon, takes a musical journey to the far East via two quintessential California composers when it pairs seminal composer Lou Harrison’s Eastern-influenced anthem La Koro Sutro, written for choir and American Gamelan, with the world premiere of a work by noted Cambodian-born, San Diego-based composer Chinary Ung on Sunday, November 9, 2008, 7:00 p.m., at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Ung’s piece, entitled "SPIRAL XII: Space Between Heaven and Earth." is written for two sopranos, chorus, chamber ensemble and dancers. It features legendary Cambodian dancer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, director and choreographer of the Khmer Arts Ensemble, with a complement of dancers from her troop, and is the third installment of “LA Is the World,” a multi-year commissioning project that unites immigrant master musician immigrants, composers and the Chorale.

Colorful, exotic and evocative, both pieces are marbled with ritual overtones, dance elements and shades of another era. Gershon notes, “This concert is the kind of experience that can only happen in this city. It’s essentially a collaboration between our audience and the performers – a literal and metaphorical intersection of LA.”

Reflecting the city’s strong Cambodian ties, Ung’s piece, commissioned by the Chorale, was created in collaboration with the Chorale and Sophiline, founder of the Khmer Arts Ensemble, with bases in Long Beach and Phnom Penh, whose mission is to preserve the Khmer classical dance and singing traditions. Sophiline and her dancers provide not only movement but, according to Gershon, “untrained voices that contrast with the polish of the Chorale.” Embodying the spirit of the ancient Cambodian classical tradition, she is one of only a few artists of her generation to survive the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. She is also a member of the first generation to graduate from Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts after the fall of the regime. She currently splits her time between Cambodia and Long Beach, California.

Ung, born in Takeo, Cambodia, in 1942, escaped the Khmer Rouge when he immigrated to America with his family in 1964 after graduating from Cambodia’s national music conservatory. His new work, a deeply personal piece, utilizes Western instruments but incorporates Asian pentatonic scales for an Eastern sound and is loosely based on the ancient Cambodia anthem Sathukar, which was nearly erased from the collective culture of Cambodia during the genocidal upheaval. He is acclaimed for his melodic music, deft balance between Western and Eastern sounds, and extremely challenging writing for the voice – in spite of not hearing a symphony orchestra nor seeing notated music until he was 17 years old.

Lou Harrison (1917 -2003), a native of Portland, Oregon, who resided in Northern California for the majority of his life, has been in the vanguard of American composers for fifty years. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundaries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world. Among the nearly 50 pieces of gamelan music Harrison wrote is the standout La Koro Sutro, which in Esperanto means “the Heart Sutra.” Among the most popular and profound of Buddhist sutras, it refers to the heart of divine wisdom. The San Francisco Chronicle proclaims Harrison’s piece, “Nonpareil, to say the least.”