PJ Morton, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra & More Set for September at The Wallis

September 2023 offerings at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts include a superb season-opening performance by PJ Morton, a multi-GRAMMY®-Award winning R&B and soul singer, songwriter, performer, and producer; Dean & Britta’s 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, featuring the husband and wife duo’s original scores composed to complement Andy Warhol's mesmerizing short silent film portraits; and the dazzling Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which opens its Chamber Series with Lineage: Coleridge-Taylor + Chausson, a program showcasing the familial and musical lineage of Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his only daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor. (Details below in chronological order.)

Thursday, September 21, 2023, 7:30 PM 

Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Wallis Presents

PJ MORTON

The Wallis presents a stellar season-opening performance by PJ Morton, the multi Grammy Award-winning R&B and soul singer, songwriter, performer, and producer whose latest project, Gospel According to PJ, earned the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Gospel Album. Since the breakthrough of his 2017 LP Gumbo he's led a creative and critically-acclaimed streak of six self-released and self-produced albums, ten Grammy nominations and back-to-back-to-back wins, his first-ever NAACP Image Award and Soul Train nominations, BET Award nominations, appearances on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” “The Daily Show,” “The Tonight Show,” “TODAY Show,” MSNBC, CNN, Inside the NBA, “NPR's Tiny Desk,” COLORS, The “Super Bowl Halftime Show,” “Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve,” and more. On top of his remarkable resume, which includes running his own record label and collaborating with the likes of Erykah Badu, JoJo, Kirk Franklin, Lil Wayne, Rapsody, Stevie Wonder, Tyler Perry, Yebba and dozens of others, Morton is a staunch community advocate in New Orleans. He is currently backing initiatives for local Black-owned banks, leading a campaign to restore the home of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, and serving as Dillard University's first-ever artist-in-residence. In 2020, he launched his own weekly, live-streamed trivia show “The Culture,” celebrating Black art and entertainment with contestants like Angela Rye, Bakari Sellers, Jill Scott, Lalah Hathaway, Miguel, Omari Hardwick and Questlove. "(PJ Morton) runs the influences of Allen Toussaint and Stevie Wonder through a bevy ideas from R&B's more recent decades." - The New York Times 

Visit TheWallis.org/Morton to learn more.

Tickets: $10-$99 (prices subject to change)

Saturday, September 23, 2023, 7:00 PM 

Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Wallis Presents

DEAN & BRITTA'S 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL...SONGS FOR Andy Warhol’S SCREEN TESTS

Featuring Live Music by Songwriters Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips

Husband and wife Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, beloved as members of the iconic indie band Luna, perform original scores to Andy Warhol's rarely seen short silent film portraits, which captured Factory superstars, celebrities, and anonymous teenagers—among them Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper—in mesmerizing four-minute shots. Part rock concert, part film screening, part archeological dig unearthing NYC’s 1960s art scene, 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests is an unforgettable night in the theater. “The music unabashedly translates the ominous drone of early Velvet Underground songs like ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ and ‘Venus in Furs’ into a more modern electronic mode reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder’s chic torture-chamber disco.” -  The New York Times

13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests is a project jointly commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts 2008.

Visit TheWallis.org/Warhol to learn more.

Tickets: $10-$99 (prices subject to change)

Saturday, September 30, 2023, 7:30 PM 

Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Wallis Presents

LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: Lineage Coleridge-Taylor + Chausson  

PRELUDES @ THE WALLIS, 6:30 PM, a conversation with the artists moderated by Classical KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 2023/24 Season launches with the first of two intimate programs at The Wallis in the Orchestra’s Chamber Series curated by Concertmaster and Director of Chamber Music Margaret Batjer. Celebrated pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, who “plays with both technical virtuosity and evident joy” (The New York Times), joins LACO artists to trace the familial and musical lineage of Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his only daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor, a pianist/composer who followed in her father’s musical footsteps. 

PROGRAM

AVRIL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Idylle for Flute and Pianoforte, Op. 21

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10

ERNEST CHAUSSON Concerto for Violin Piano and String Quartet  

Visit TheWallis.org/lineage to learn more.

Tickets: $10-$69 (prices subject to change)

About Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts:  

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, located in the heart of Beverly Hills, CA, is a dynamic cultural hub and community resource where local, national, and International Artists share their artistry with ever-expanding audiences. Distinguished by its eclectic programming that mirrors the diverse landscape of Los Angeles and its location in the entertainment capital of the world, The Wallis has produced and presented more than 400 theater, dance, music, film, cabaret, comedy, performance arts, and family entertainment programs, boasting nominations for 79 Ovation Awards and nine L.A. Drama Critic's Circle Awards as well as six architectural awards. Since its doors opened in October 2013, The Wallis has been committed to robust and distinctive presentations and education programs curated with both creativity and social impact in mind. Hailed as “au courant” (LaLa Magazine), The Wallis was lauded by Culture Vulture, which proclaimed, “If you love expecting the unexpected in the performing arts, you have to love The Wallis.” Broadway legend Patti LuPone, who was The Wallis’ 2015/2016 Season Artistic Advisor, described the venue as “one of the best in the country, allowing for an unparalleled intimacy between [the artist] and the audience.” A recent patron survey produced audience comments about The Wallis ranging from "amazing, engaging, inspiring!" to "fun. entertaining. educational." The breathtaking 70,000-square-foot facility, celebrating the classic and the modern, was named after philanthropist Wallis Annenberg, whose original $25-million dollar donation was instrumental in transforming the former Beverly Hills post office building into an arts complex. Designed by acclaimed architect Zoltan E. Pali (SPF:architects), the restored building features the original 1934 Beverly Hills Post Office (on the National Register of Historic Places), whose eight towering fresco murals are one of two sets of WPA frescos remaining in the entire California Federal Building system. The Wallis’ lobby, now known as Jim and Eleanor Randall Grand Hall, serves as the theater's dramatic yet welcoming entryway to the contemporary 500-seat, state-of-the-art Bram Goldsmith Theater; the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater; an inviting open-air plaza for family, community and other performances; and GRoW @ The Wallis: A Space for Arts Education, where learning opportunities for all ages and backgrounds abound. Together, these elements embrace the city's history and its future, creating a performing arts destination for L.A.-area visitors and residents alike. Michael Nemeroff is Chairman of The Wallis’ Board of Directors and Robert van Leer is Executive Director and CEO.

For more information about The Wallis, please visit: TheWallis.org. 

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