Mark Swed has been the classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times since 1996. Before that, he was a music critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Wall Street Journal and has written extensively for international publications. Swed is the author of the book-length text to the best-selling iPad app, “The Orchestra,” and is a former editor of the Musical Quarterly. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism, honored in 2021 and 2007.
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Ellen Reid’s “Floodplain” for L.A. Chamber Orchestra and Gabriela Ortiz’s “Altar de Cuerta” for the L.A. Phil put environmental art in new contexts.
Music by composers from Ukraine or with Ukrainian heritage is, and has long been, all around us.
Native American composer Raven Chacon’s “Voiceless Mass” for organ ensemble is the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for music.
The L.A. Philharmonic begins a survey of Stravinsky and Latin American ballets with a landmark work that demonstrates Dudamel’s musical mastery.
Thomas Adès curated the L.A. Phil’s Gen X festival, a celebration of visionaries from that generation. A highlight: his orchestral “Dante.”
Harrison Birtwistle, Louis Andriessen, Frederic Rzewski, George Crumb, Alvin Lucier, William Kraft: They came to prominence in the 1960s. May their sounds live on.
Radu Lupu, the Romanian pianist who died on April 17, looked like an anarchist and played like a god.
Gustavo Dudamel returns to the L.A. Phil to lead a new production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” with Deaf West Theatre.
This week, L.A. Opera premieres “In Our Daughter’s Eyes,” a new one-man opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun; “Everything Rises,” commissioned by the UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures series and featuring Davóne Tines and the violinist Jennifer Koh, also opened.
Did authors Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno have a tiff at the Brentwood Country Mart? Given the intellectual firepower of postwar Brentwood, probably.