The Score | Saluting Lou Harrison at 100

There isn’t one simple way to honor Lou Harrison, who would have turned 100 this past May. Several orchestras presented music by the wildly eclectic composer whose interests embraced Javanese gamelans, Eastern calligraphy, gay opera, and political activism. Among those paying homage was the San Francisco Symphony, which in June performed selections from Harrison’s Suite for Violin with American Gamelan, on a program including works by Charles Ives, George Antheil, and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. The Toledo Symphony Orchestra and Toledo Museum of Art marked Harrison’s centenary with an August 12 music marathon that included chamber concerts, gamelan demonstrations, and Eva Soltes’s film Lou Harrison: A World of Music; the day culminated with Third Coast Percussion performing the Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra with soloist Paul Jacobs, and the Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra with soloist Todd Reynolds. In June, the Los Angeles Philharmonic presented Harrison’s 1971 opera Young Caesar.