“When the Los Angeles Philharmonic launched its centennial season last September, media artist Refik Anadol projected a series of giddy hallucinations onto the facade of Walt Disney Concert Hall … an expression of the architecture’s extroverted personality,” writes Justin Davidson in Wednesday’s (5/22) Los Angeles Times. “Disney Hall is still spinning off energy, and the neighborhood around it is still being born…. A cluster of apartment towers called the Grand is finally starting construction.… [Architect Frank] Gehry is designing another set of performance spaces for the Colburn School, which will turn this once dour stretch of Grand Avenue into a compendium of late and later Gehry.… Every once in a while, a work of architecture can transform all it touches—in this case, the orchestra, the audience, music itself, the neighborhood and the city beyond. Hit a drum or pluck a note on the stage of Disney Hall and it rings with the high-definition clarity and soft sheen that defines American classical music in the digital age.… A concert hall is not a neutral container but an active participant in making music, and here the synchronicity among orchestra, conductor, repertoire and acoustics has helped shape the story of the art form.”
Posted May 24, 2019
In photo: Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with artwork by Refik Anadol projected onto its exterior. Photo by Luis Sinco
