Los Angeles Philharmonic’s newly announced 2019–2020 season includes a fully staged presentation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George. Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the musical, with performances running May 7–15, 2020. The production, directed by Zak Winokur, will arrive weeks after Sondheim’s 90th birthday (March 22, 2020).
The LA Phil will also bring Sondheim’s melodies to the West Coast this summer; as previously announced, Into the Woods is this year’s musical to be staged at the Hollywood Bowl.
The new season kicks off with seven programs under Dudamel’s baton, including such works as Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, Gershwin’s Concerto in F, and a world premiere of Esteban Benzecry’s piano concerto Universos Infinitos, an LA Phil commission.
Dudamel will also conduct in an October 24 concert, joined by Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen and Conductor Emeritus Zubin Mehta. They’ll fist take turns at the podium to conduct repertoire with which they’ve been known for at the Philharmonic, followed by the world premiere of a Daníel Bjarnason composition written for an orchestra with three conductors.
Additional highlights include Wagner and Mahler programs conducted by Mehta (featuring soprano Christine Goerke singing selections from Götterdämerung), Dudamel conducting an Ives and Dvořák program, and the two-week festival Power to the People!. For more information, visit LAPhil.org.
Sunday in the Park With George was last seen on Broadway in a Sarna Lapine-helmed revival starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford.
