We talk with Evan Ziporyn of Bang on a Can All Stars about his 25 years with BoaC, Steve Reich's 75th birthday, and his experience with West Coast musicians. They're playing Disney Hall tonight. more ›

This week's classical picks include performances by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich, Nigel Armstrong and Andrew Shulman. more ›

The Coachella Valley Symphony is putting on a program similar to the wildly popular NY Phil "Mostly Mozart" festivals, with an all-Mozart program Monday night at 7 pm. If Coachella is a bit of a trek for you, the LA Phil kicks off their Mahler Project this Friday the 13th. more ›

There are a lot of Christmas-themed concerts scheduled for this week! If you're looking for something tonight, we encourage you to go check out Kirshbaum performing tonight with LACO at Royce Hall. We've split it up into three categories: Messiah, Nutcracker, and Other. more ›

Ralph Kirshbaum is kind of a big deal, and is performing with LACO this weekend. more ›

All this talk about Siri reminds us of good our friend Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. You know what else does? Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, which the Pacific Symphony is performing this Thursday Friday and Saturday at 8 PM. more ›

Would you like some comedy with your classical music? Check out the classical music comic duo violinist Aleksy Igudesman and pianist Hyung-ki Joo. The Los Angeles Master Chorale has its season opener tonight. more ›

The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles in Downtown still has free organ concerts every Thursday noon until July 30th. You can bring your lunch and eat it in the Forecourt before/after the concerts, which last around 50 minutes. Just enough time for a relaxing lunch break. more ›

Remember Gautier Capucon? He's back at the Disney Hall with his cello (and brother) in tow, to finish off Brahms Unbound with a bang. more ›

Cameron Carpenter is probably one of the best (and most controversial) organists to ever take the stage and he's performing this Sunday at the Disney Hall (a fun Mother's Day activity, if you're still looking for something to do) in a program featuring transcriptions of Bach (well Cameron's transcription of a Busoni transcription), Brahms, and Mahler. You can also follow him on Twitter and facebook to learn more. more ›

Pierre Boulez talking about Sur Incises, which you can hear this Tuesday with Boulez himself conducting the LA Phil. The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group is putting on a free concert on Tuesday at 8 PM at what is soon to be named the "Ernest Fleischmann Square". The naming of the square takes place at 1 PM at 1st and Grand, between the Disney Hall and the Music Center. more ›

It's a good week to be in LA. Dudamel returns to conduct Bruckner, eighth blackbird is performing in Fullerton, and Zubin Mehta conducts the Israel Philharmonic this Tuesday at the Disney Hall. more ›

Although we're used to seeing newer and younger artists make their debut with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl, Gautier Capuçon is an exception. Capuçon is already an established musician (well, at least in Europe), and the demand for him has risen considerably stateside as evidenced by his upcoming solo performances with the LA Phil and the SF Symphony (with Charles Dutoit). more ›

If you're not humbugging, you can watch the Nutcracker at any the following twinkling venues across the region. And did you know there are other types of holiday concerts that aren't the Nutcracker!? There are!! We've got that list too. See our picks for the best of the best in classical music this week. more ›

The musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will have their talented hands full tonight at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Conducted by Susanna Malkki of Finland, the program begins with the U.S. premiere of Hammered Out by Turnage and Violin Concerto No.1 in B-flat major, composed by a seventeen-year-old Mozart. more ›

Disney's World of Color is a water show that blends animation, light effects and a water show that dazzle audiences at their California Adventure theme park. This summer they took the show on the road to 4 Californian cities, and this week the stop was right here in Los Angeles, and the venue a very fitting Disney Hall. more ›

This upcoming week is a chance for classical music buffs to celebrate, and to see things in a fresh context. more ›

It was an amazing night for Los Angeles. The Dodgers won, the Angels won and Gustavo Dudamel with the LA Philharmonic dominated Walt Disney Concert Hall, winning over audiences and signaling the start of an amazing season for classical music. more ›

The 6th Annual New Original Works Festival opens this week and runs for three weekends at REDCAT, the theater at the basement of Disney Hall downtown. Programming an assortment of dance, theater, and music events to share a single performance, the festival’s history has been adventurous and the LA Weekly calls it "one of the city's more eclectic and vital performance festivals." The mission of the festival isn’t to get traditional and conventional work onto the LA stage, but to offer an opportunity for local artists to experiment and take some risks, using all the finery of this state of the art facility. more ›

Plans for a streetcar in downtown moved ahead today when conceptual routes were released by Los Angeles Streetcar, Inc. (LASI), the nonprofit charged with giving Los Angeles a streetcar by 2014. The routes all serve three distinct areas. more ›

This CNN excerpt shows the visually stunning organ at the Disney hall but the sound is not something easily duplicated. Check it out tonight at the Disney Hall at 7:30 for the full experience. Also, Christopher Eschenbach returns to the Disney Hall for a set of concerts showcasing his abilities as a conductor and pianist. Eschenbach has been conducting all weekend long, with a concert at 2 of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. If the 2 PM concert is too late for you, check out the organ concert tonight at 7:30 PM. If you haven't heard it, the Disney Hall organ provides one of the most exciting and intense sounds that you'll ever hear from any instrument. Naji Hakim is the soloist, of music by Hakim, Franck, and Couperin. more ›

The blogger at urban hippie sounds off: more ›

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Since Los Angeles isn't much of a Winter wonderland, one way we try to get into the Christmas spirit is by watching some wonderful concerts by our local artists and establishments. First off is Handel's , a three hour long masterpiece (luckily they have an intermission) with the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Disney Hall. Luckily if you can't make it tonight, there is a repeat of the program on the 15th. The exciting thing about this concert though, is it's a sing-along! After this, you can mention on your resume or biography that you performed at the Disney Hall! Now isn't that something. more ›

Efforts by mainstream media and Hollywood to use a Saint Bernard to replace Beethoven in our hearts and minds have failed, despite numerous attempts. As part of the Colburn Celebrity Series, Andras Schiff is halfway complete on his journey to perform all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. 16 were performed last year in four concerts and he starts again this Wednesday for our classical pick of the week. This week includes some of Beethoven's greatest works, including the "Tempest" and the "Waldstein." These works are often performed, but rarely done well (recommended performances include Alfred Brendel, if you can overlook a mistake here and there). Andras Schiff is considered one of the consummate performers of Beethoven and Mozart. You will be hard pressed to find anyone with the same level of musicality and technical precision for these sonatas. Having attended several of his previous performances (and performances of just about every pianist the last few years), LAist has noticed that he gets some of the loudest and most enthusiastic responses from the crowd with his flawless performances. If you happen to be in New York, he has been performing the same cycle at Carnegie Hall. There are many tickets left for this show between 40 and 100 dollars. If you buy his CD (at the gift store there), he usually does a CD signing right after the show. more ›

The LA Times just published a story on Esa-Pekka Salonen. An interesting anecdote from the article revealed that People had selected him to be on their 50 sexiest people list, and that he had declined(!). This is all tied together somehow because this is Salonen's 17th and last year as Music director for the LA Phil. After this year, he begins his tenure at the London Philharmonia and Gustavo Dudamel takes over as the next young hotshot from out of town. For fans of Salonen he will still be around occasionally, since he has a home in Brentwood, so you don't have to go to London to see him. The best advice LAist can give is to see him as many times this year and the dates are more flexible now than they would be in upcoming seasons. more ›

LAist was able to check out a couple of concerts last weekend, in two completely different venues. The program included some very patriotic affair, with the California Phil providing all of the fireworks. These concerts were mentioned as last week's classical pick, and did not disappoint. Although the program was exactly the same, the orchestra was able to adjust accordingly to the acoustics at each venue and offered a different interpretation but the same unbridled enthusiasm at each performance. The founder-conductor Victor Vener (who sounds like Jeff Bridges) engaged the orchestra and enthralled the audience throughout the concerts, with interesting anecdotes to make the pieces more personal to the audience, including a touching story involving his brother. more ›

part 1 of "Rhapsody in Blue" from Fantasia 2000 more ›

As the seasons for many reputable music groups come to an end, there are fewer options to choose from every week, so feel free to spare yourself of any extra stress and check LAist for any news on upcoming concerts. Hope you are all managing to keep yourselves busy and not counting down the days until the Hollywood Bowl season begins. more ›

the Kronos Quartet performing "Lux Aeterna" more ›