Carmina Burana to Open LA Master Chorale's New Season 9/23 & 9/24

Performances of Carl Orff's perennially popular choral showpiece Carmina Burana and Leonard Bernstein's hope-filled plea for brotherhood, Chichester Psalms, will open the Los Angeles Master Chorale's 54th concert season on Saturday, September 23 at 2 PM and Sunday, September 24 at 7 PM in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Tickets start at $29 and are available online from lamasterchorale.org, by calling the Box Office at 213.972.7283, or in person from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion box office, Monday - Friday, 10 AM to 6 PM.

The concerts will feature the full roster of 100 singers and a full orchestra and will be conducted by Kiki and David Gindler Artistic Director Grant Gershon, launching his 17th season with the Master Chorale. Guest soloists in Carmina Burana are So Young Park (soprano), Nicholas Phan (tenor), and Stephen Powell (baritone) who will be joined by members of the Los Angeles Children's Chorus. The concerts will open with Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Pslams, presented as part of the worldwide "Bernstein at 100" celebrations.

One of the world's most popular choral masterworks, Carmina Burana was last performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Gershon in 2013. Most recently, the Master Chorale performed the work with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2015. The work's use of full chorus heralds the Master Chorale's move this season to becoming a fully professional ensemble.

"I can think of no better music to showcase our phenomenal singers than Carmina Burana," said Gershon. "Carmina is a piece you want to save for special occasions. The start of an exciting new season and the beginning of this new artistic chapter in the Master Chorale's history felt like a great time to bring it back to Disney Hall!"

Stellar Soloists

In addition to being a showcase for the full vocal force of the Master Chorale, Carmina Burana provides an opportunity to spotlight exceptional vocalists. These performances will see soprano So Young Park and tenor Nicholas Phan make their Los Angeles Master Chorale debuts alongside baritone Stephen Powell, who performed Brahms' Requiem with the Master Chorale in 2007.

This summer So Young Park was a soloist for the Metropolitan Opera's Concerts in the Parks series and she was a finalist in Plácido Domingo's prestigious international Operalia competition. Last season she won hearts in LA Opera productions of The Tales of Hoffmann, as the scene-stealing automaton Olympia, and in The Abduction from the Seraglio, as the maid Blondechen. Park, a native of South Korea, is an alumnus of the LA Opera Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist program. This season she will join the roster of the Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Le Fée in Massenet's Cendrillon, and she returns to the LA Philharmonic as the soprano soloist for Esa-Pekka Salonen's Wing on Wing with Salonen conducting.

In June Nicholas Phan was the tenor soloist in acclaimed performances of Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet with San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas of which the San Francisco Chronicle said: "The soloists were so fine as to seem like luxury casting ..." In July he performed Carmina Burana with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap, capping a season that included singing the title role in Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with London's Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen for CalPerformances. This season he will serve as artistic director of two festivals: Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago's sixth annual Collaborative Works Festival, and as the first singer to be guest Artistic Director of the Laguna Beach Music Festival.

This past season baritone Stephen Powell made his Seattle Opera debut as Germont in La Traviata, as well as with the San Diego Opera, for which Opera Today wrote, "Powell's large, resonant voice enchanted the San Diego operagoers, and they greeted his aria 'Di Provenza il mar, il suol' with momentous applause." He also sang the role of Oliver Jordan in the world premiere of William Bolcom's Dinner at Eight with Minnesota Opera and made his role debut as Prus in The Makropulos Case with San Francisco Opera. As concert soloist, Mr. Powell joined Kansas City Symphony and North Carolina Symphony in Britten's War Requiem, and Philadelphia Orchestra in Carmina Burana.

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