Jacaranda Announces Details of 2023-24 Season, 'Planet Schoenberg,' which will be Its Final Season

Jacaranda Music, a Los Angeles cultural treasure long esteemed for presenting classical music adventures that awaken curiosity, passion, and discovery, will permanently close at the conclusion of its 2023-24 20^th Anniversary Season. The organization’s final season, entitled Planet Schoenberg, will feature a landmark celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), considered one of the most influential and groundbreaking composers of the 20^th century. Jacaranda Board Chair Frank Gruber and Co-Founder, Artistic and Executive Director Patrick Scott, who jointly announced the news, said the organization will cease operations due to insurmountable financial challenges after its season finale on February 25, 2024.

“The Board of Directors of Jacaranda Music has made the very difficult decision to permanently cease operations at the end of our 2023-24 season,” said Gruber. “After two decades of producing enlightening genre-mixing music programs, Jacaranda is grappling with a perfect storm of financial challenges, including the impact of reduced attendance and individual support following the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Scott added, “Long before the pandemic hit concerned arts data crunchers warned the nonprofit field about organizational sustainability. Performing arts organizations with budgets under $500,000 and no endowment, such as Jacaranda, were deemed especially vulnerable to change.”

Final Season Announced

Faced with the stark reality of this situation, Jacaranda’s board unanimously agreed to earmark its remaining financial resources to one final ground-breaking season, entitled Planet Schoenberg. Conceived by Scott, the 2023-24 Season features an unprecedented series of five concerts spotlighting the prolific genius of the largely self-taught Austrian American composer and music theorist Arnold Schoenberg, who created new methods of music composition that have significantly altered the musical landscape. With Late Romantic roots, Schoenberg invented atonal music and developed the method for composing with 12-tones, which evolved into serialism. He was also a generous teacher, gifted writer, fine painter, and accomplished tennis player. Facing Nazi antisemitism, he emigrated to the United States in 1933, living in Boston before settling in Los Angeles the following year.

Planet Schoenberg includes five compelling concerts dedicated to facets of Schoenberg’s work, his evolution as a composer, his musical inspirations, and those he has influenced. Scott notes, “This series of concerts may be among the most concentrated explorations of his work and its far-reaching impact on the music world.” It will traverse Schoenberg in terrains both familiar and foreign, past and present.

“Those who journey to Planet Schoenberg with Jacaranda will realize they have been living there all along,” says Scott, himself twice recognized by BBC Music Magazine for his striking curatorial vision and considered among the most original thinkers about classical music today. “A man before his time, Schoenberg channeled his profound emotional need to express himself musically into novel techniques that revolutionized the field but drew criticism and ostracism along the way. Deeply principled, he staunchly embraced all artists in an era of racism and antisemitism and was genuinely connected to the Hollywood community around him.”

Scott adds, “Schoenberg’s music, once thought too daunting by many, has come full circle and today is being embraced by leading musicians who have the passion and technique to perform his demanding work at the highest possible level, offering fresh and engaging interpretations. This season, Jacaranda will showcase his music in a whole new light alongside some of the most beautiful and endearing works in the classical music cannon. Whether you’re a lifelong fan of Schoenberg’s music, new to it, or, even ambivalent, Jacaranda’s deep dive into his legacy will showcase his work in an enthralling light.”

Programming Summarized

A total of seven Schoenberg works will be contextualized by the music of sixteen other composers over the course of five concerts at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica.

Highlights include such seminal Schoenberg works as Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9; Three Piano Pieces Op. 11; Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15; Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23; and Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41.

They will be performed alongside the music of some of the composers from the great Germanic tradition that helped him formulate his musical perspective, including J.S. Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor; Franz Schubert’s Quartetsatz in C minor, D703; Richard Wagner’s Elegy; and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 arranged by Schoenberg disciple Erwin Stein in 1920.

Also featured are works by several of Schoenberg’s contemporaries whose musical language coexisted with his. They include Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel, einmal anders!, arranged by Franz Hasenöhrl; Leo Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane; Ernst Krenek’s George Washington Variations, Op. 120; and Eric Zeisl’s Pieces for Barbara. The latter two composers were both Los Angeles-based contemporaries of Schoenberg.

Providing additional context are early works by Schoenberg’s first generation of students who embraced his techniques. They include Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata Op. 1 and Anton Webern’s Five Pieces of String Quartet. Offering more perspectives on Schoenberg’s vast musical influence are Pierre Boulez’s fascinating 12 Notations, in which he uses the number 12 as a self-imposed structure with a 12-note row forming the basis of 12 solo piano pieces, each just 12 bars long, and John Coltrane’s masterwork  A Love Supreme, which is rooted in the jazz innovator’s embrace of Schoenberg’s distinctive techniques instilled in him by his teacher Dennis Sandole, himself a of Schoenberg student. In addition, Jacaranda presents the world premiere of Peter Knell’s Arkhipov Synthesis, from his “riveting” (Musical America) opera-in-progress premiered by Jacaranda last season that uses Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique as an organizing principle for the four key characters and the surprising incursion of jazz in the last scene.

Jacaranda brings this music to life with an array of esteemed featured artists, among them the Lyris Quartet, a Jacaranda resident ensemble since 2011; Chicago-based Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, led by Kahil El’Zabar; pianists Gloria Cheng, David Kaplan, Inna Faliks, and Steven Vanhauwaert; violinists James Sanders, and Movses Pogossian; soprano Julia Metzler; mezzo-soprano Katarzyna Sadej; baritone Luc Kleiner; and saxophonist David Murray.

Conductors David Bloom, Scott Dunn, also featured on piano, and Mark Alan Hilt will lead the Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, which includes some of the finest musicians on the LA scene.

Two significant special events presented by Jacaranda as part of Planet Schoenberg are designed to provide compelling insights into the composer’s life and career, including From the City of Music to the City of Angels, a screening of a pair of documentary films by Emmy-nominated writer/director Hilan Warshaw at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, named after the composer, who taught at the university beginning in 1936. The films are Through the Darkness (2021), which chronicles the extremely fraught relationship between Schoenberg and Austrian painter Richard Gerstl in Vienna, and Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood (2008), a portrayal of the creative and vibrant German-speaking exile community in Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s of which Schoenberg was a central figure.

Additionally, at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, once a gathering place of exiles, Jacaranda hosts Schoenberg: Why He Matters, a compelling discussion about Arnold Schoenberg’s legacy with the composer’s son Larry Schoenberg and Harvey Sachs, author of the critically acclaimed 2023 biography “Schoenberg: Why He Matters.”

Perspective Provided

Scott states, “Jacaranda has designed a truly grand finale, embracing the type of ground-breaking curation that put the organization on the map when we first launched our series in 2003.” At that time, Jacaranda was applauded by LA Weekly as “the right music in the right place at the right time.”

Critic Alex Ross proclaimed in his highly respected blog The Rest Is Noise, “Season after season the twentieth century comes to life in Jacaranda’s programs.” Los Angeles Times has commended Jacaranda for championing premieres with “national significance.” 

“Jacaranda has been a trendsetter for two decades,” explains Scott. “I’m extremely proud of the dynamic cutting-edge work we’ve presented, as well as the many important and surprising LA premieres, such as Bach’s Easter Oratorio in 2022. The 2023-24 season is our crowning achievement as we present what is likely this country’s most in-depth dive into the legend that is Schoenberg.”

PROGRAMS DETAILED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

HANGING GARDENS

Saturday, September 23, 2023, 8 pm, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica

Mark Alan Hilt, conductor
Julia Metzler, soprano

Katarzyna Sadej, mezzo-soprano

Steven Vanhauwaert, piano

Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble

SCHOENBERG Hanging Gardens, Op. 15

MAHLER Symphony No. 4 (chamber version, arr. Erwin Stein 1920)   

Jacaranda launches Planet Schoenberg: The Final Season, celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), with Hanging Gardens, a program of works by Schoenberg and Mahler, who were close friends and colleagues. The program begins with Schoenberg’s ripe Book of the Hanging Gardens, composed in 1908-1909, featuring mezzo-soprano Katarzyna Sadej, “who is nothing short of enthralling” (Fanfare Magazine), and pianist Steven Vanhauwaert, noted for his “monster technique” (Los Angeles Times). Set to 15 bittersweet poems about love that is destined to end by German poet Stefan George, it is Schoenberg’s first experimentation with atonality. Although the work’s 1910 premiere received a lukewarm reception, the tides turned after a subsequent performance in Paris in 1920 when critics took note of Schoenberg’s musical genius. Jacaranda Artistic Director Patrick Scott says, “While there is tonality in this work, you can sense that Schoenberg is leaving it behind, a shift that was destined to transform music in the century ahead.” Providing a poignant pairing with Book of the Hanging Gardens is the chamber version of Mahler’s beloved Symphony No. 4, composed in 1900 and arranged by Erwin Stein in 1920 for 12 instruments and soprano at the behest of the pragmatic Schoenberg, who believed that music for reduced forces offered clarity and an affordable way to hear unknown music. Soprano Julia Metzler, her tone “warm, rounded…buoyant” (San Francisco Classical Voice), is the featured soloist. Scott adds, “Mahler, until his untimely death in 1911, remained a close friend of Schoenberg’s. While he recognized the new direction of Schoenberg’s music, he didn’t fully understand it. This program highlights the fin de siècle ferment in Vienna.”

TRANSATLANTIC
Sunday, October 22, 2023, 4 pm, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica

Lyris Quartet

Luc Kleiner, reciter

Gloria Cheng, piano

Scott Dunn, piano

David Kaplan, piano

SCHOENBERG Presto in C Major for string quartet

SCHUBERT Quartetsatz in C minor

SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4

ELDON RATHBURN Schoenberg vs. Gershwin: A Tennis Match

ERICH ZEISL Pieces for Barbara

ERNST KRENEK George Washington Variations, Op. 120

SCHOENBERG Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41

Jacaranda’s second Planet Schoenberg program, Transatlantic, is a double portrait of the composer in Vienna and Los Angeles. The concert opens with Schoenberg’s delightfully fast-paced Presto in C Major for string quartet (1895) juxtaposed with Schubert’s masterful Quartetsatz in C minor (1820), written as a single movement. Schubert bridged the Classical and Romantic eras, and Quartetsatz achieved a mature style that balanced the impetuous with the ineffable. Throughout his life, Schoenberg was inspired by the music of Schubert, which is reflected in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). The second half of the program features three works for solo piano that illustrate the impact Schoenberg’s boundary-pushing musical techniques had on other composers. They include celebrated Canadian film composer Eldon Rathburn’s rollicking Schoenberg vs. Gershwin: A Tennis Match, performed by Scott Dunn, a gifted pianist and the Associate Conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The piece combines themes from works by the two disparate composers, who were neighbors in Beverly Hills, famously becoming close friends and tennis partners. Schoenberg served as a mentor for Rathburn when the rising Canadian composer traveled to Los Angeles after winning the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Young Artist Award for composition in 1945 for which Schoenberg served as a judge. Additionally, pianist Gloria Cheng, who shows “just how surprising, eclectic and emotionally engaging the contemporary piano repertory can be” (The Washington Post), is featured on Erich Zeisl’s Pieces for Barbara (3), a set of 17 piano pieces composed in honor of his daughter Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg, who married Arnold Schoenberg’s son Ronald. Pianist David Kaplan plays George Washington Variations, Op. 120, a witty but heartfelt piece by Austrian-born composer Ernst Krenek, who was deeply influenced by Schoenberg’s atonal techniques and became an ardent American patriot after emigrating to the United States in 1938. The program’s final work, Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41, composed during World War II for string quartet, piano, and reciter, is set to Lord Byron’s poem Ode to Napoleon, a protest against tyranny that extols George Washington. It features as reciter baritone Luc Kleiner, whose voice can be heard on the film scores for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Disney’s Jungle Cruise, among others.

PERILOUS BALANCE*

Saturday, November 11, 2023, 8 pm, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica

Inna Faliks, piano

Lyris Quartet

Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, David Bloom, conductor

WAGNER Elegy in A flat major

SCHOENBERG Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11

BERG Piano Sonata Op. 1       

WEBERN Five Pieces of String Quartet

PETER KNELL Arkhipov Synthesis (World Premiere)
*Program is part of California Festival: A Celebration of New Music  

With Perilous Balance, Jacaranda weaves together a compelling aural portrait of Schoenberg’s musical ties to Wagner, a predecessor he greatly admired for his use of chromaticism, and two of his own gifted students – Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Inna Faliks, a “sublime soloist” (San Francisco Classical Voice), illustrates several of these connections with three solo piano works, including Wagner’s distilled Elegy in A flat major written at the time of Tristan und Isolde. Faliks also plays Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 (1909), considered Schoenberg’s first important work for piano and the root of atonal piano music, and Berg’s Piano Sonata Op. 1, composed as a single movement ripe with chromaticism. Two works for chamber ensemble round out the program with Lyris Quartet performing Webern’s ethereal Five Pieces of String Quartet and the Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, led by conductor David Bloom, “ferocious and focused” (New York Times), presenting the world premiere of Peter Knell’s Arkhipov Synthesis, based on his “riveting… absorbing” (Musical America) opera in progress premiered by Jacaranda last fall that uses Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique as an organizing principal.

The program is part of the state-wide California Festival: A Celebration of New Music, a two-week event November 3-19, 2023, showcasing forward-looking voices from around the world in performances of new works written within the past five years. The initiative is a collaboration among more than 90 music institutions from across California with outreach support from the Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ASCO).   

SPECIAL EVENT

FROM THE CITY OF MUSIC TO THE CITY OF ANGELS

A Screening of Two Documentaries by Hilan Warshaw: Through the Darkness (2021) and Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood (2008)
Saturday, January 13, 2024, 8 pm, UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall

Providing an enthralling personal look at Arnold Schoenberg and some of the key factors that helped shape him, Jacaranda, in conjunction with UCLA, is screening two documentary films by Emmy-nominated director and writer Hilan Warshaw that focus on different aspects of the legendary composer’s private life and career. Through the Darkness (2021) tells the true story of two artistic geniuses – Schoenberg and painter Richard Gerstl – whose passion for their art and the same woman drew them together and ultimately drove one of them to take his life and changed the course of artistic history. The second documentary, Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood (2008), chronicles the exile of tens of thousands of German intellectuals and radicals, including many of the most brilliant minds of the 20^th century, among them Schoenberg, to the United States and Los Angeles, which was transformed by the exodus into one of the cultural centers of the world.

SPECIAL EVENT
SCHOENBERG: WHY HE MATTERS
A conversation about Schoenberg’s Legacy with His Son Larry Schoenberg and Author Harvey Sachs
Thursday, February 8, 2024, 7:30 pm, Villa Aurora, Shuttle Service provided
Jacaranda presents the second of two special events this season, a compelling discussion about Arnold Schoenberg’s legacy with his son Larry Schoenberg, owner of Belmont Music Publishers, and Harvey Sachs, author of the critically acclaimed biography “Schoenberg: Why He Matters,” at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades.

Fierce Beauty I
Sunday, February 25, 2024, 4 pm, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Kahil El'Zabar, director
Lyris Quartet with James Sanders, jazz violin
David Murray, saxophone
SCHOENBERG Five Piano Pieces, Op.23
BOULEZ 12 Notations
LEO ORNSTEIN Suicide in an Airplane
COLTRANE A Love Supreme

Jacaranda concludes its Planet Schoenberg venture and 20-year run with two back-to-back programs (sold as a package or separately). The launchpad of Fierce Beauty Part I is Schoenberg’s Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, which marks the crystallization of his twelve-tone technique in his piano repertoire. Such groundbreaking methods are echoed in Leo Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane, distinctive for its tone clusters, and Pierre Boulez’s fascinating 12 Notations, in which he uses the number 12 as a self-imposed structure with a 12-note row forming the basis of 12 solo piano pieces, each just 12 bars long, which features pianist Steven Vanhauwaert. The indirect passing of the Schoenberg baton is heard in A Love Supreme, a progressive jazz masterpiece by the famed innovator John Coltrane, whose groundbreaking style is rooted in Schoenberg’s techniques, gleaned from his teacher Dennis Sandole, a Schoenberg student. Coltrane also studied with Ornstein as a teenager in Philadelphia. David Murray, “the master saxophonist” (The New York Times), joins the Chicago-based Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, under the direction of “living legend” Kahil El'Zabar (Washington Post) on A Love Supreme.

Fierce Beauty II
Sunday, February 25, 2024, 7 pm, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
Scott Dunn, conductor/piano

Mark Alan Hilt, conductor

Movses Pogossian, violin
Gloria Cheng, piano
Lyris Quartet
Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble
R. STRAUSS arr. Franz Hasenöhrl Till Eulenspiegel, einmal anders!
LEONARD ROSENMAN (arr. for piano four hands by Scott Dunn) East of Eden Suite

SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9

JS BACH Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor

MAHLER (arr. For strings by Hans Stadlmair)  Symphony No. 10 Adagio

Fierce Beauty Part II, the final concert of Jacaranda’s 2023-24 season and the organization’s history, presents a turning point in music – Schoenberg’s use of compression or composing a symphony pared down to a small group of musicians, and condensing the four-movement symphonic form into a single movement. As such, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9, is a concise, iconic masterpiece. Schoenberg’s model inspired many other composers, including Franz Hasenöhrl, who arranged Richard Strauss’s lively and tuneful Till Eulenspiegel (1895) from its original massive orchestration to a version for just five instruments – violin, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and double bass, which opens the concert. Additionally, in a piano four hands arrangement by Scott Dunn, Jacaranda presents East of Eden Suite by two-time Oscar-winning film composer Leonard Rosenman, who studied with Schoenberg and had more than 130 film credits, including East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The suite is performed by Forte Award-winning pianist Gloria Chang, who plays with “commanding technique, color and imagination” (The New York Times), and Scott Dunn, a “suave, masterly, insouciant… riveting” pianist (Los Angeles Times).

Two seminal works packed with emotion provide a bittersweet finale to the season, capping Jacaranda’s glorious two-decade-long run. Bach’s monumental Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor, an emotional 15-minute tour-de-force, is interpreted by longtime Jacaranda friend and Forte Award-winning violinist Movses Pogossian, hailed for his “fiery, centered, and highly musical performances” (Boston Globe). With a thrilling surprise, Jacaranda then fades to black with Mahler’s final work, the fiercely beautiful Symphony No. 10 Adagio arranged for strings by Hans Stadlmair for Gidon Kremer’s Kremerata Baltica.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  

Jacaranda recognizes the generous support of Schoenberg Family Charitable Gift Fund and Janet Levin and Frank Gruber for their support of Planet Schoenberg. In addition to anonymous major donors and  many loyal individual contributors, this season Jacaranda also receives public funding via grants from Creative Recovery LA, City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Department, California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program, and Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

TICKETS/INFORMATION  

For tickets and information about Jacaranda’s 2023/24 season, please visit jacarandamusic.org

VENUE ADDRESSES  

First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica, 1220 2nd St, Santa Monica, CA 90401

UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, 445 Charles E Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095  

Villa Aurora, 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. Shuttle service provided.

Jacaranda Music produces classical music adventures designed to awaken curiosity, passion, and discovery with a spirit of inclusion. By engaging a wide range of audiences, these curated concerts based primarily in Santa Monica since 2003, advance the repertoire of soloists and ensembles with live music, recordings, music videos, and education. Founded October 4, 2003, by arts impresario Patrick Scott and conductor/organist Mark Alan Hilt, Jacaranda produces a concert series that features exciting current and rising stars in the world of classical music performance with program notes singled out by Classical Voice as “so absorbing that you don’t want to pry your eyes away from the pages... plenty of context for an alert, adventuresome concertgoer.”