L.A. ‘Map’ takes a spiritual route

Los Angeles-based theater and concert composer David O sets the city to a melting-pot score in his new work, “A Map of Los Angeles,” a fusion of Latin jazz and salsa, 1950s exotica, traditional ranchero music and contemporary minimalism.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, it will premiere as the centerpiece of the group’s “Almost a cappella” performance Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

It joins Esa-Pekka Salonen’s first choral work, “Two Songs to Poems of Ann Jaderlund”; three new motets by Steven Stucky; Henryk Gorecki’s “Lobgesang (Song of Praise)”; “Nocturnes” by Morten Lauridsen, who will perform as pianist; and “When David Heard,” by Eric Whitacre.

“With the exception of the Gorecki piece,” said Grant Gershon, the group’s music director, “they’re all composers who are either based in Los Angeles or have a strong L.A. connection. The majority of the pieces are a cappella and the degree of difficulty, to borrow a term from the Olympics, is in the 9.8 area.”

Much of “Map’s” musical language, O said, is the result of his collaboration with master Mexican folk harpist Sergio “Checo” Alonso, who performs with pianist, bass player and percussionists, while members of the full chorus will step out and sing “with very detailed vocal textures, as if they were a kind of a cappella orchestra.”

The six-movement piece began as an upbeat journey through the streets of L.A. and “the sometimes absurd mash-up of the English and Spanish languages in our city,” O said. But the work took a soulful turn with his accidental discovery of the venerable Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights.

O ended up spending an afternoon there, taking names from the tombstones and composing the melody of the last movement.

“What it made me realize,” he said, “is that I had really been writing a piece about angels and the dead. What started out as a light romp ends as a sort of a requiem . . . and the piece continues to have both elements in it.”

-- Lynne Heffley