Salonen, who was the Los Angeles orchestra’s music director from 1992 until 2009 and stays a draw when he guest conducts here, said that the festival would pay tribute to the keenness of California audiences for brand spanking new music by little-known composers, the sort of works that he, Dudamel and Payare have each promoted from their podiums.
“It’s been something I had been fascinated with for a very long time, from once I knew I could be taking up in San Francisco,” Salonen said in an interview from Paris, where he was conducting the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his recent Sinfonia Concertante for Organ and Orchestra. “As an alternative of seeing one another as rivals, we should always do something together.”
The festival, which is planned for Nov. 3 through Nov. 19, will feature, along with the three conductors’ ensembles, over 50 orchestras, chamber music groups, choirs and jazz ensembles. They are going to perform in grand spaces just like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, in addition to smaller and more intimate ones tucked in communities across the state. The majority of the repertory, which remains to be being organized, will probably be from the past five years, and from the worlds of jazz and classical music.
“The entire idea is that there will probably be recent music, commissioned within the last five years, and with different composers from in every single place,” said Payare, who had taken a train from London to Paris to fulfill Dudamel and Salonen, where he was conducting “The Barber of Seville” on the Royal Opera House. “There’s quite a lot of music that has not been explored, which have never been performed. It tells us so much about this era of California. It’s very welcoming and helps you to be who you might be and do things that usually are not traditional.”
Many of the performances will probably be indoor. “Because the festival happens in November, we’ll have all of our performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall,” said Dudamel, who also leads the Philharmonic on the Hollywood Bowl. But in San Diego, which is temperate almost year-round, Payare said, among the shows that he’ll conduct will probably be on the orchestra’s recent outdoor Rady Shell.
