Fully-Staged SUNDAY IN THE PARK and More Lead LA Phil's 2019/20 Season

Los Angeles Philharmonic Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel and CEO Simon Woods today announced the 2019/20 Walt Disney Concert Hall season.

Gustavo Dudamel will conduct 17 different programs throughout the 2019/20 season, in a musical spectrum that ranges from Mozart, Adams, and Ginastera to Schoenberg's vast, late-Romantic Gurrelieder, and a fully staged version of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.

In honor of the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim, Dudamel and the LA Phil will present a fully staged new production of one of the greatest musicals of all time, Sunday in the Park with George. The production, directed by Zak Winokur, will be performed May 7-10 and 14-15.

John Adams, the LA Phil's Creative Chair, will once again organize the bold, forward-looking Green Umbrella series, including the annual Noon to Midnight new-music marathon, culminating this season with a collaboration between composer Steve Reich and visual artist Gerhard Richter. Principal Guest Conductor Susanna Mälkki will return with performances of LA Phil commissions paired with historic repertoire and collaborations with star violinist Leila Josefowicz.

A once-in-a-lifetime Gala on October 24 will mark the turning of the century, as Dudamel, Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Conductor Emeritus Zubin Mehta take turns leading the LA Phil in repertoire closely identified with each, then join forces on the podium for the world premiere of a Daníel Bjarnason composition for orchestra with three conductors. And then, as part of the grand finale to the Centennial, and launch of the second century, all three Music Directors will perform their own individual concerts with signature programs: Mehta with Mahler, Salonen with Sibelius, and Dudamel with a program of Beethoven's Ninth paired with the world premiere of an LA Phil commission by Gabriela Ortiz for chorus and orchestra.

Carrying forward the LA Phil's commitment to contemporary music, the 2019/20 season will include premieres of 22 LA Phil commissions. Six LA Phil commissions from past seasons will also return, solidifying their place in today's orchestral repertoire. These highlights will run throughout 2019/20 and will include a season-spanning focus on the music of Andrew Norman.

Many of today's most exciting instrumentalists will take the stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall during the season, including Yuja Wang, Seong-Jin Cho, Emanuel Ax, Lang Lang, Sergio Tiempo, Ray Chen, Daniil Trifonov, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Hélène Grimaud, Brad Mehldau, Esperanza Spalding, Claire Chase, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell, Nicola Benedetti, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

The LA Phil will continue to expand into the many communities of Los Angeles, including a series of three pre-season concerts conducted by LA Phil Assistant Conductor Paolo Bortolameolli. An extraordinary Power to the People! festival, co-curated by Dudamel and William Powers & Carolyn Powers Creative Chair for Jazz Herbie Hancock, will explore the concern for humanitarian issues that animates so much great music. Reaching further, the LA Phil will tour in 2019/20, traveling to Mexico, Boston, New York, and London, where it will celebrate the first of its three years as the International Orchestral Partner for the Barbican Centre.

The LA Phil will start an ongoing commitment to bringing to the surface the relevant contemporary ideas and issues that run through its programming with a new strand of humanities work intended to convene civil discourse about the sociocultural, political and community-related themes of the works performed on stage. The 2019/20 season will include two weeks of panels, film screenings, exhibits, and cabaret performance examining the Weimar era and its contemporary resonances organized by LACMA senior curator and department head of Modern Art Stephanie Barron and independent curator Nana Bahlmann. Further programming will include a series of Power to the People!conversations and workshops focused on building community through music.

Deutsche Grammophon and the LA Phil have entered a major new recording contract that will capture more than 28 concerts with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil. As a capstone to the Centennial and a companion to Past/Forward: The LA Phil at 100 - a two-volume, slip-cased coffee-table book addressing the history and future of the LA Phil - Deutsche Grammophon will also release a 32-CD / 3 DVD box set of LA Phil recordings, including concerts from 1928 through the present. Also scheduled for release in the 2018/19 season is a new 2-CD set of the music of John Williams, conducted by Dudamel in celebration of his friend and colleague. Later releases will include Dudamel conducting Schumann Symphonies Nos. 1-4 recorded in May 2018, and Andrew Norman's Sustain, premiered to rave reviews by the LA Phil last season. The new recordings feature audiophile sonics by Grammy-Award®-winning producer and engineer Dmitriy Lipay.

Gustavo Dudamel said: "As the LA Phil begins its second century, and me, my second decade, you can see that we have reaffirmed our commitment to recognizing and respecting the past and redefining the future of classical music. I couldn't be prouder of this season, which is as beautiful, diverse, inclusive, and eclectic as Los Angeles itself. "

Simon Woods said: "This season, we bring together the extraordinary, multifaceted artistic personality of Gustavo Dudamel, the superb quality of our orchestra, and the unsurpassed brilliance of the artists we gather around us week after week, into a thrilling landscape of the familiar, the new, and the familiar looked at in new ways. And beyond all this, the LA Phil continues to step boldly into the future with intensely thought-provoking programming that brings people together not only around music, but also around ideas and issues of deep human relevance. We take very seriously the role we can play in contemporary life and our commitment to being an integral part of the communities in which we perform."

Additional details can be found at the LA Phil's website.