Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Presents “Kahane Plays Kahane,” Featuring LACO Conductor Laureate Jeffrey Kahane Performing the California Premiere of his Son Gabriel Kahane’s LACO Co-Commissioned Heirloom Piano Concerto

Saturday, March 11, 2023, 8 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall

Sunday, March 12, 2023, 7 pm, at Glendale’s Alex Theatre

(Los Angeles, CA – February 17, 2023) Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra continues its season with “Kahane Plays Kahane,” a program in which family legacy runs deep, on Saturday, March 11, 8 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, and Sunday, March 12, 2023, 7 pm, at Glendale’s Alex Theatre. LACO Conductor Laureate Jeffrey Kahane, “a celebrated pianist, and a precise and demanding presence on the podium” (Orange County Register), returns to LACO’s stage to perform the California premiere of his son Gabriel Kahane’s Heirloom Piano Concerto, a LACO co-commission. Guest Conductor Christopher Rountree leads the work, which Gabriel composed for his father and describes as “an aural family scrapbook.” Jeffrey Kahane then takes the podium himself to conduct Haydn’s final symphony, Symphony No.104 in D Major, “London.” The program also includes selections from Rameau’s operas Zaïs, Les Boréades, and Dardanus.

Gabriel Kahane’s Heirloom Piano Concerto was co-commissioned by Kansas City Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Brooklyn-based group, The Knights, in addition to LACO. According to Gabriel, his three-movement concerto for piano and chamber orchestra explores “a series of inheritances. In this piece, I ask, how does a complex set of emotions get transmitted across generations? What do we inherit, more broadly, from our forebears? And as a musician caught between two traditions, how do I bring my craft as a songwriter into the more formal setting of the concert hall?”

In a review of Heirloom’s world premiere by the Kansas City Symphony, KC Studio Magazine describes the work as “an homage to the intergenerational connections and musical influences that shape Kahane’s life: his parents’ love of folk music, his grandmother’s relationship with Germanic classical music, having escaped Germany in 1938, and his own daughter’s energy and innocence.” The magazine declares Heirloom a “successful fusion of different musical styles and backgrounds, a captivating, contemporary work… that both captures the sounds of today and pushes forward the evolution of orchestral music.”

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