Brown Closes First Season as LACO Director

When Iona Brown, the British-born music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, leads the ensemble tonight at Ambassador Auditorium and Friday at the Japan America Theatre, she will be doing so in her customary manner: seated as first violinist and using her bow, rather than standing front and center with a baton.

That practice has attracted considerable attention locally, and Brown, who is also director of the London-based Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (which will be at Ambassador Auditorium Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, next Wednesday and April 28) and artistic director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in Oslo, is genuinely mystified by the attention.

“In Europe a lot of people direct orchestras from the violin, and no one thinks about it,” she said the other day at her Pasadena hotel, newly arrived from London to prepare this week’s concerts.

“It’s just here that it seems to be unusual and there’s so much interest. I do it that way because it works well for me and players seem to respond well.

“When you’re with an orchestra like the LACO, with a maximum of 40 people but very often only 20, I think one gets in the way standing up on a podium,” she added.

“It’s absolutely unnecessary. I don’t like to be dictatorial with my gestures. I like to place as much responsibility on the players as they’re happy to have, which hopefully will grow more and more as time goes on. With that responsibility comes a great freedom.”

Then, too, Brown sees herself as a conduit between the music and audience, and as such feels that her style breeds more intimacy. Only occasionally does she stand with her back to the audience, directing and playing, as she did for the LACO’s season-opening concert in October. And a few years ago, she recalls, she did relent and conduct in the traditional manner.

How did she feel about the experience? She frowned, then said emphatically, “I cannot express what I want to express with the baton. And I love to play the violin.” Indeed, Brown, who was born 47 years ago into a musical family and has had an illustrious career as a violinist, is sometimes her own soloist.

She is now concluding the first year of her three-season contract as LACO music director. She and the orchestra are well on their way, she said, to fulfilling the goals she set when she assumed the position.

“As L.A. has the very fine Los Angeles Philharmonic, I felt that we needed to concentrate on the chamber orchestra side of music,” she said.

“I know it takes time to get to know each other and build up trust. I’m only here six weeks, generally a fortnight at a time. But when I first met them (as the orchestra’s music adviser the previous year), there was rather an instant mutual rapport which led, I think, to my appointment.

“You can’t make music together unless you’re . . . to say happy sounds a bit flippant, but the atmosphere does seem happy. We’ve had a marvelous first year. Things have come along very quickly.”

Brown’s pleasure is so obvious that one almost hesitates to mention that she is one of several defendants named in a lawsuit, filed last October in Los Angeles Superior Court by attorneys for the American Federation of Musicians Local 47, on behalf of two former LACO members.

Following her installation as music director, the contracts of concertmaster Paul Shure and principal violist Janet Lakatos were not renewed, due, the pair allege, to their openly expressed reservations about Brown’s appointment and subsequent tension between her and the two players.

Brown has yet to publicly state her version. When asked to do so now, she paused, then said, “I don’t feel I should comment, really.” She has no reservations, though, when it comes to voicing an opinion of the current orchestra roster.

“The players are so cooperative, so quick and keen to do what one asks them to do with the music. They’re flexible, because technically they’re so fine.”

Brown plans to spotlight the players’ talents in the coming season, which marks the orchestra’s 20th anniversary. “We started featuring more of the orchestra members last season. I like the orchestra to stand on its own two feet, without needing a big celebrity.”

In honor of the anniversary, almost every program will include at least one American performer, composer and/or conductor, she noted. The orchestra has commissioned Los Angeles composer Stephen Hartke to write a piece for the season opening in September, for instance.

Brown hopes that by her contract’s 1990 expiration she and the orchestra will have toured the U.S. and Europe and made some recordings. “By then, I hope, we will have really established our style even more than it is at the moment. It takes time.”