Ann Glaviano

Earlier this year I drove up to Knoxville, TN, for the Big Ears Festival. Basically it’s a festival for the fringes of various musical genres: weird heavy music, weird folk music, weird chamber music, etc. I enjoyed the hell out of it, as did several hundred other hipster-looking people roughly my age who had traveled to see these concerts. At one point I looked around--I was at a Knoxville Symphony Orchestra performance of John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean--and I thought, The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra would kill to get this demographic at their concerts. I wonder if they program this kind of weird stuff. I would go see it. So I resolved to investigate the 2016-17 LPO programming and DIY my own weird season with my home orchestra. I got insight from an LPO insider and a local composer. There are several ways to build your own season in terms of ticket packages (pick 5, pick 7, etc). Here’s a pro tip for people aged 21-40: Subscribe to Prelude Plus.

For $150 you get:

Tickets to 5 concerts, which are pre-selected as a Prelude package.

However, you also get free ticket exchanges for concerts at the Orpheum. So you can swap, for free, any of the 5 pre-selected concerts for other concerts at the Orpheum (e.g., the recommendations I list below). I think this means you’d have to buy one-offs if you wanted to see the chamber concert at the Prytania Theater, or Home Alone at Mahalia.

But! You also get Prelude Discount on additional tickets to LPO concerts.

And a Prelude Discount on LPO Salon Series concerts.

Pre- and post-concert, there are Prelude gatherings at the Moxy, a block from the Orpheum, and you get drink discounts.

You also get tickets to these special Prelude events: Oct 20 – Prelude Season Kick Off Party at New Orleans Museum of Art; Apr 1 – Saints Training Facility Event with the LPO; Apr 25 – Prelude VIP area at Swing in the Oaks at City Park

THE WEIRD SEASON: SOME SUGGESTIONS

Preview each program free on the LPO Spotify account (search user Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra)

Sep 29: Tick Tock Goes the Bach (Orpheum) --Nontraditional seating arrangement --Guest Karina Canellakis play-conducts

Oct 28, 29: Brahms Requiem (Orpheum) --Note from local composer Tucker Fuller: “I'm excited for the Brahms Requiem and Barber Prayers of Kierkegaard--I guess because I think it's a cool pairing. Both are deeply personal works that use non-liturgical texts to express each composer's relationship to religion.”  

Nov 17, 18, 19: The Planets (Orpheum, First Baptist Covington) --Includes Mothership by Mason Bates, composer and DJ, who incorporates electronic sampling in his work

Dec 3: Home Alone (Mahalia Jackson) --Movie screening with orchestra performing the John Williams score live. Cameo by St. Michael Special School bell choir

Dec 9, 10, 11: Holiday Spectacular (Orpheum) --Still in planning stages but what they have planned sounds pretty dope

Dec 15, 16: Baroque Christmas (Orpheum, First Baptist Covington) --Nontraditional seating arrangement --Includes Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio and selections from Handel’s Messiah

Jan 13, 14: Edgar Meyer and An American in Paris (Orpheum) --Double bassist Edgar Meyer has been called “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument” --Program includes an Adam Schoenberg premiere and an Edgar Meyer double bass concerto --Tucker says: “I generally dislike symphonic poems, but Gershwin is probably the best American composer. It is also nicely paired with Bernstein's On The Waterfront Suite. I mean, it's Americana at its best. And, on top of that, a new commission? Depending how the election goes, this could either be a really good or super sad concert.”

Jan 15: Edgar Meyer Quintet (Prytania Theater) --More Edgar Meyer, chamber style --Includes Cary Boyce’s Nightshade, described by the composer as a “funky” string quartet influenced by David Bowie and Sergei Prokofiev --Meyer and LPO Principal Bassist Dave Anderson also team up to perform Anderson’s own Seven Bass Duets

Jan 20, 21, 22: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Orpheum) --Movie screening with orchestra performing the John Williams score live

Apr 6: Water Music (Orpheum) --Nontraditional seating arrangement --Companion piece to the outdoor performance on Apr 8 --LPO commissions Yotam Haber to compose a new take on Handel’s Water Music (considered one of the first public concerts, outside of royal courts), which was performed on a barge on the Thames --Video accompaniment of Louisiana waterways and coastlines by artist Isabelle Hayeur