Sunday, May 31, 2009, 7 p.m., at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and Baritone Daniel Teadt Are Featured Soloists

The Los Angeles Master Chorale wraps its 45th season with the West Coast premiere of Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra’s acclaimed, full-length Missa Latina, considered one of the most important works to enter the choral repertoire in recent decades, on Sunday, May 31, 2009, 7:00 p.m., at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Filled with lively percussion, including marimba, maracas, Cuban timbales and other Caribbean instruments, the exuberant, celebratory piece “dances off the stage.” Music Director Grant Gershon conducts and the featured soloists are soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, who sang the world premiere of Missa Latina, and baritone Daniel Teadt. (Teadt replaces Nathaniel Webster, who cancelled his appearance due to illness.)

The Washington Times described the work’s 2006 debut at Kennedy Center as “the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem... Mr. Sierra's new work is, quite simply, shockingly brilliant." Co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington, the 75-minute, eight-movement piece was written over a two-year period from 2003 to 2005. It is filled with lush, rich textures that mix classical and Latino rhythms, and is based on the texts of the Proper Mass. According to Sierra, Missa Latina “makes a statement that peace is a human issue.”

Sierra, currently based in New York, is a prolific composer whose colorful and rhythmic music has attracted a growing audience both in North America and Europe as well as commissions by virtually every major orchestra in the States and in Europe. Acclaimed as one of Latin America's most active contemporary composers, Sierra came to prominence in 1987 when his first major orchestral composition, Júbilo, premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since then, his works have been performed by the orchestras of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio, and Phoenix, by the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Continuum and England's BBC Symphony, as well as at Wolf Trap, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Festival Casals, France's Festival de Lille, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and Germany's Neue Musik Bonn.

The performance is made possible, in part, by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.

Tickets to the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s concert range from $19 to $124. Student Rush seats are $10 and are available at the box office two hours before the performance. For tickets and information, please call (800) 787-5262 (outside California call 213-972-7282), or visit www.lamc.org. (Tickets can no longer be purchased at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office except on concert days starting 2 hours prior to the performance.) The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue at First Street in downtown Los Angeles.

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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Calendar Listing

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

The Grammy-nominated LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE, currently celebrating its 45th Season, has been cited as a national leader for its innovative and dynamic programming. Los Angeles Times states the Chorale “has become the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon.” Since its founding in 1964, LAMC has presented more than 450 concerts, including choral music from the earliest writings to the most recent contemporary compositions. In 2003 the Chorale became one of two resident companies in Walt Disney Concert Hall, launching a period of incredible artistic and organizational growth. The Chorale has commissioned 21 and premiered 51 new works, and has recorded 6 CD's. The Chorale’s most recent recording with Gershon, Daniel Variations, was released on Nonesuch in spring 2008. LAMC performs a season of eight concerts at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, plus two performances of the Messiah Sing-Along; family-friendly Holiday Wonders concerts in December; and performs regularly with the L.A. Philharmonic. The Los Angeles Master Chorale has more than 1,000 subscribers, serves over 40,000 audience members of all ages, and provides education outreach to approximately 13,000 children each year. In 2008, one of the Chorale’s highly successful outreach programs, “Voices Within,” earned the coveted Chorus America Education Outreach Award.

Los Angeles Master Chorale Music Director GRANT GERSHON is equally at home with symphonic and choral music, opera, and musical theater. He was named Music Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale in 2001, and also serves as LA Opera Associate Conductor/Chorus Master. During his tenure with the Chorale, he has expanded the choir’s repertoire considerably, conducting dozens of world, U.S., West Coast and Los Angeles premieres. His Nonesuch recording with the Chorale of Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations) was honored with the WQXR Gramophone America Award in 2006. The New York Times, Washington Post and Newsday, among others, selected it as one of the top ten classical recordings of 2005. In 2002 he made his first CD with the Master Chorale, featuring the world premiere recording of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s first choral work as well as Philip Glass’s Itaipú (RCM 12004). Gershon has also served as chorus master on two Grammy Award-nominated CD’s, Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical). He recently appeared on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center leading the LA Master Chorale, and on the Making Music Series at Zankel Hall. Gershon conducted the Minnesota Opera’s world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s acclaimed opera The Grapes of Wrath, led subsequent performances of the work with the Utah Symphony and also conducted the cast recording released in 2008 on P.S. Classics. He received his bachelor of music degree cum laude in piano performance from USC, and currently serves on the USC Thornton School of Music Board of Councilors.

A shimmering soprano with enchanting stage presence, HEIDI GRANT MURPHY is one of the outstanding vocal talents of her generation. She began vocal studies while attending Western Washington and Indiana universities. Her graduate studies were interrupted when she was named winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and invited to participate in the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist Development Program. Since then, Murphy has appeared with many of the world's finest opera companies and symphony orchestras, notably the Metropolitan Opera, SaIzburg Festival, Frankfurt Opera, Netherlands Opera, Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, and the Brussels and Santa Fe Operas. She has been engaged as soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta. She has also had the privilege to work with such conductors as Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Seiji Ozawa, Christian Thielemann, Edo de Waart, Robert Shaw, David Zinman, and violinist/ conductor Pinchas Zukerman. Her Metropolitan Opera debut was in 1989. Murphy has since sung numerous roles in that prestigious opera house, including Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (which she also performed in Salzburg), Parnina in Die Zauberflöte, Sister Constance in Dialogues of the Carmelites and Nanetta in Falstaff. She has also sung the role of Celia in Mozart's Lucio Silla, both at the Salzburg Festival and with the Frankfurt Opera. Murphy most recently recorded Augusta Read Thomas's Gathering Paradise with Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic on New World, as well as an XM Satellite Radio compilation of Sondheim classics. For Koch records, Ms. Murphy has recorded Sueños de Amor a disc of Latin love songs; a holiday disc entitled The Gifts of Christmas; Times Like This, for which the Seattle Times noted that the "gleaming purity and warmth of tone make Ms. Murphy's voice the aural equivalent of candlelight;" Dreamscape: Lullabies from around the world; and a recording of Sir John Tavener's To a Child Dancing in the Wind paired with Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Sappho Fragments.

The elegant artistry of DANIEL TEADT has earned the baritone acclaim nationally and internationally. The Pittsburgh City Paper states, “ He can sing: he has a lovely hued voice.” This season Mr. Teadt sang his role debut of Valentin in Faust with the Tacoma Opera. Other recent notable debuts have included the Count in the Aix-en-Provence Festival's 2007 production of Le Nozze di Figaro in Luxembourg, Cyrano with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, performances of Billy Budd (conducted by Daniel Harding) with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Count with the Arizona Opera in a production directed by Sir Thomas Allen. An alumnus of the Pittsburgh Opera Center, his roles there included Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos, the title role in Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Moralès in Carmen, and Curio in Guilio Ceasare. He recently returned to the Pittsburgh Opera for Papageno in Die Zauberflöte and Donald in Billy Budd. Mr. Teadt studied with John Wustman at the University of Illinois, where he also graduated with both his Bachelor and Master of Music Degree. He completed two summers with the San Francisco Opera's Merola Opera Center and was an apprentice artist with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and the Central City Opera. In the summer of 2005, he was a member of the The Académie européenne de musique of Aix-en-Provence and studied at the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival. He received the 2004 William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Award and was also awarded prizes by the McAllister Awards and the Palm Beach Opera Awards. Mr. Teadt was a regional winner in the 2003 Metropolitan National Council Auditions.

Artists, program and ticket prices subject to change.

05/20/09