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Recent press quotes about the Los Angeles Master Chorale

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2004

“(The Los Angeles Master Chorale) has become the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon.”

Doug Weaver, Valley Scene Magazine, July 2005

“The ambitious repertoire that Mr. Gershon will lead the (Master) Chorale through this season is nothing short of stunning, and led me to entertain the notion of maybe setting up a lean-to backstage where I might plug in a hot plate, eat baked beans and listen to glorious music until I was discovered as a squatter. Describing music always falls short of experiencing it. But see for yourselves. Choose a concert or two, take the ride Downtown, shell out the few bucks and open your ears and minds. I’m sure you’ll find, as I have, that L.A. has treasures to rival any in the world.”

Bob Agnew, L.A. Jazz Scene, July 2005

“The Los Angeles Master Chorale, which, on this night, celebrated 41 years of existence, is in its tone, its harmony, its precision and its arrangements, a choral masterpiece.”

Bob Thomas, Pasadena Star News, September 2, 2005

“Music Director Grant Gershon has pushed the musical envelope wider in each of his three previous seasons; this one (2005-06) rips it apart.”

Rick Ginell, Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2005

“Walt Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry’s gift to surround-sound buffs, usually sits waiting for someone to take advantage of its spatial layout. Few have. Grant Gershon is among the exceptions. The piece that struck gold was Thomas Tallis’ remarkable ‘Spem in Alium.’ If the recording industry wants to jump-start its flagging multichannel formats, how about recording the Master Chorale’s Tallis right here in Disney Hall, in 5.1 surround, and marketing it as the ultimate surround demo single?”

Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2005

“superb singers. . .a world class celebration” (describing celebrar)

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2005

“The Master Chorale performance Sunday (was) led with precision and vitality by music director Grant Gershon. It was a stirring performance.”

David Mermelstein, Daily News, March 22, 2005

“On Sunday night in the Walt Disney Concert hall, this alternatingly contrived and brilliant musical evocation of Christ’s Passion (Tan Dun’s ‘Water Passion After St. Matthew’), modeled after the form perfected by Bach some 280 years ago, received its local premiere, in a performance of deep integrity and commitment by Grant Gershon and Los Angeles Master Chorale. And when, at the work’s conclusion, several members of the chorus, the various soloists and Gershon left their posts to touch the water as the lights dimmed, something very special occurred, the all-too-rare feeling that this experience would not end when one walked into the night.”

Alan Rich, Daily Variety, March 22, 2005

“(Tan Dun’s ‘Water Passion After St. Matthew”) received its first Los Angeles hearing on Sunday night in the capable hands of Grant Gershon and his splendid and adventurous Master Chorale.”

Richard Ginell, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2005

“The ample-sized chorale’s clear, luminous singing and the big sound from the small orchestra were their own rewards.”

David Mermelstein, Los Angeles Magazine, September 2004

“Succeeding through amity rather than intimidation, (Gershon) is the leader the Los Angeles Master Chorale needs now – a quiet revolutionary determined to banish Wagnerian bombast.”

Alan Rich, L.A. Weekly, June 4, 2004

“Last week’s Master Chorale concert at Disney offered fair evidence of Grant Gershon’s enterprise in building his ensemble into a significant part of our musical life, offering concerts for the thinking listener as well as the pleasure-seeking.”

Richard Ginell, Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2004

“Grant Gershon, the personable, boyish, enterprising music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, doesn’t follow a predictable line.”

Richard Ginell, Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2004

“The Master Chorale sang ecstatically. Throughout the evening, one could savor the way the ensemble’s voices blended in clearly focused, three-dimensional detail.”

Douglas Neslund, Beverly Hills Outlook, January 23, 2004

“The audience was immediately captured by the sheer beauty floating about the Hall.”

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2004

“Grant Gershon conducted a fearless performance that, despite the attention to counting necessary to keep (Steve Reich’s ‘You Are’) on track, was full of elations. With ‘You Are,’ the Master Chorale got a masterpiece.”

Alan Rich, Daily Variety, October 26, 2004

“(Steve) Reich is one of music world’s most adept game-players. That’s what brought him the stomping, stamping standing ovation from the capacity crowd at Disney the other night. On a program full of some pretty good old music – Stravinsky’s pseudo-medieval ‘Symphony of Psalms’ and a hauntingly beautiful renaissance motet by Flemish master Josquin Desprez – brand-news Reich held its place.”

Jim Farber, Daily Breeze, October 26, 2004

“The intensity may not have been as high as it was at Fenway Park in Boston, but there was a definite buzz of excitement Sunday at the Walt Disney Concert Hall surrounding the world premiere of Steve Reich’s ‘You Are (Variations)’ performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The fact that the performance was of such a high caliber reflected the effort expended by Gershon and the Master Chorale. This was a concert of which the Master Chorale can be proud.”

Victoria Looseleaf, The Voice, October 2004

“(Steve) Reich’s reputation as ‘musical tsunami’ continues with Los Angeles Master Chorale’s world premiere of his latest choral work.”

Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2004

“It was an intriguing idea – combining the rich, lustrous voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale with the instrumental prowess of some of the Southland’s finest Latin jazz musicians. And in ‘celebrar,’ Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, it worked well.”

Blake Frino, Splash, December 30, 2004

“Celebrar means to celebrate and honor with religious ceremonies, festivities or other observances; to make publicly known, to proclaim. The event (‘celebrar’) did just that. Amidst the astounding structure of the concert hall, rhythms of percussion, guitar, horns, piano and the voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale joyously reved up some holiday spirit.”

Douglas Neslund, Beverly Hills Outlook, November 14, 2004

“Perhaps a mark of Maestro Gershon’s programming genius was the impression after all was said and sung that a well-constructed and performed musical offering had been given those fortunate enough to have been present.”

Kim Devore, Malibu Times, September 9, 2004

“A musical menu that has something for everyone.”

Truman Wang, Classical Voice, March 28, 2004

“Music Director Grant Gershon again proved he’s the master of the Chorale.”

Douglas Neslund, Beverly Hills Outlook, April 19, 2004

“Master Gershon was truly the master of the score, leading all forces with his own passion and secure knowledge of the work.”

Steve Lieberman, Observer, March 30, 2004

“As usual, the Chorale was sensational. A coveted cultural treasure in the music circles of our fine city.”

Jim Farber, Daily Breeze, April 20, 2004

“The Master Chorale is singing in top form under the leadership of music director Grant Gershon.”

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2004

“The Master Chorale was augmented by the Faithful Central Bible Church Heritage Chorale into one vibrant body that, as conducted by Grant Gershon, feared no rhythm.”

Rick Ginell, Variety, March 11, 2004

“In spots, these perfs (sic) even achieved the impossible, surpassing the daunting examples of (Duke) Ellington’s own recordings. Ellington would have killed for a chorus of the caliber of the Master chorale, which produced a luminous carpet of sound.”

Tony Gieske, Hollywood Reporter, March 9, 2004

“All night, the voices were grand and glorious.”

John Farrell, Pasadena Star News, January 28, 2004

“Gershon mixed the works into an over-arching whole, a continual journal of delicate, incandescent sound that spoke to the human soul and its spiritual aspirations in a way only music can. Gershon’s singers work together with an elevated, soulful passion, and the sonic result is deeply moving.”

James C. Taylor, Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2004

“Master Chorale Music Director Grant Gershon deserves credit for ambitious programming.”

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2004

“The performance was fluid, with voices blending seamlessly. At the end of a splendid, transcendent performance, the audience didn’t so much leap to its feet as levitate.”

Press quotes about Your Are (Variations) CD
released on Nonesuch, September 2005

Westways Magazine, November/December 2005

“an absolute masterpiece”

Ivan Moody, Gramophone, November 2005

“The performance positively glitters; it seems quite clear that the Los Angeles Master Chorale under Grant Gershon is responding to the work’s intrinsic glow, the sense of spontaneity – the swing – in the music that Reich has rediscovered.”

New York Times, December 15, 2005

“All that was lacking, once again, was the Pulitzer Prize.”

Ivan Hewett, BBC Music Magazine, October 2005

“It is massively impressive. The combination of the deliberately flat vocal sounds and the dancing rhythms has an atavistic quality, as if Reich were obeying the ancient Biblical injunction to ’praise God in song and dance. It’s a quality perfectly captured in this recording.”

Anastasia Tsioulcas, Billboard, September 25, 2005

“(The Los Angeles Master Chorale) performs with authoritative expertise.”

Marion Lignana Rosemberg, Newsday, December 25, 2005

“Reich’s You Are (Variations) stirs up a dizzying cloud of sound through which peek marimba and vibraphone splashes and gnomic texts on the nature of time and though.”

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2005

“You Are (Variations) [is] a modern masterpiece by a composer with a downright Mozartean command of Minimalism. He wrote the piece in 2004 for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, which has recorded it with Nonesuch. It begins with a text by a Jewish mystic – ‘You are wherever your thoughts are’ – which, like this exciting music, cuts through the holiday season hooey like a knife through soft butter.”

Rob Cowan, The Independent (London), September 25, 2005

“In terms of its style, Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations) represents both recollection and rejuvenation. Reich’s textual prompts were Wittgenstein and Jewish religious sources, his responses gritty, urgent, organic, wildly dancing — and strangely beautiful. The forces called for – here, members of the Los Angeles Master Chorale under Grant Gershon – include voices, woodwinds, pianos and marimbas. It’s the sort of music Reich does best, intimate yet outgoing, and surely his most compelling piece since Different Trains.”

Paris Transatlantic Magazine, February 2006

“brilliantly performed by (the) Los Angeles Master Chorale conducted by Grant Gershon”

Robert Levin, Amazon.com, November 3, 2005

“The resulting work is fascinating, the textures unique and fresh, the experience haunting and captivating, with the voices used as another significant instrumental part.”

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