As Music Director of the LA Master Chorale, Grant has been identified with his signature programming – illuminating and eclectic juxtapositions of repertoire which have edged us out of our comfort zone and introduced us to many wonderful new works – often without our even realizing. It’s been Haydn & Messiaen, Adams & Mozart, Lauridsen & Gorecki and so on, since his very first concert.

For that first concert on September 29, 2001, he selected repertoire spanning centuries, beginning with the 40-part motet Spem in alium written by Thomas Tallis in the 1500s and closing with Philip Glass’s hypnotic 20th Century masterpiece Itaipu by Philip Glass, which we later recorded for RCM.

For this 10th Anniversary Season, Grant has instead programmed concerts that highlight his decade of success with the Chorale and which focus deeper on themes that have been woven across the past decade of music-making – several of which focus on specific regions across the globe.

French Connections will immerse us in a survey of music from important French composers as Grant shares with us this unique repertoire, much of which he discovered during extended stays in France. Prior concerts have hinted at this great body of works, and he is especially excited to share this all-French concert with you.

As Grant describes it:

It is true that I spent a lot of time in France in the ‘90s. I worked at the Teatre du Châtelet in Paris on several occasions and also spent an incredible summer in Aix-en-Provence, as Assistant Conductor to Claudio Abbado on Don Giovanni at the festival there. Whenever I was in Paris I took advantage of the fantastic wealth of sheet music and full scores that are not readily available in the States. Several of the pieces on the French Connections program came from a legendary music store near the Gare Saint-Lazare called La Flute de Pan. In fact I was so excited about the Josquin Missa Beata Virgine which I found there that I programmed it on my second concert with the Chorale (in November 2001), and I'm very pleased to repeat it this season in Disney Hall!”