Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra,

Led by Music Director Jaime Martín,

Presents West Coast Premiere of

Jessie Montgomery’s L.E.S. Characters,
a LACO Co-Commissioned Viola Concerto
Written for and Featuring
Grammy Award-Winning Violist Masumi Per Rostad,

 
Saturday, April 22 2023, 8 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall
Sunday, April 23, 2023, 7 pm, at Glendale’s Alex Theatre

 

Program, Celebrating Earth Day, also Includes Ives’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting,” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, “Pastoral”

(Los Angeles, CA – April 3, 2023) Music Director Jaime Martín leads Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the West Coast Premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s L.E.S. Characters, a LACO co-commissioned viola concerto written for and featuring her childhood friend, Grammy Award-winning violist Masumi Per Rostad, who has been praised for his “burnished sound” (The New York Times), on Saturday, April 22, 8 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, and Sunday April 23, 2023, 7 pm, at Glendale’s Alex Theatre. The program, embracing Earth Day and the great outdoors, is bookended by Ives’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting,” and Beethoven’s joyful Symphony No. 6 in F major, “Pastoral.”

 

L.E.S. Characters, described as “exploding with life” (The Washington Post), offers a different perspective on what it means to be outside, vividly recreating the gritty East Village of 1980s New York City, where Montgomery and Rostad both grew up and studied music together. “Conceived as a series of vignettes,” explains Montgomery, “each of the 5-movements depicts a different real-life street performance artist or character from the Lower East Side, recalled as a childhood memory shared between myself and Masumi Per Rostad. I thought a series of character pieces would be a fun frame in which to place the viola at the center as subject and storyteller, recounting the images and memories of these artist souls and their impact on our creativity. This piece is dedicated to the memory of Chris Pors, Mary Lou Francis, our violin teacher and Executive Director of the Third Street Music School Settlement when Masumi and I were studying there; and Robbie McCauley, my mom…all of whom we lost during the time of COVID Pandemic 2020-2021.” L.E.S. Characters  was co-commissioned by the Grant Park Music Festival, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and LACO

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IVES, MONTGOMERY + BEETHOVEN Press Release