SANCTUARY SERIES
Pre-Concert Conversations
The Jacaranda experience is more than classical concert going. The room has stunning acoustics and wrap-around seating with comfortable pews. Two lobbies and a welcoming courtyard encourage social interaction and sharing. So does the free coffee and cookies at intermission. Program notes are extensive and include fascinating cultural, political and often unexpected historical information that sets a rich context for the music. Brief verbal introductions welcome the audience and performers. The performance standard is exceptionally high with powerful music that can generate peak moments. To the Jacaranda experience we have added the Sanctuary Series pre-concert conversations at 7pm, unless otherwise announced. Please join us.
PAST
2023-24 PLANET SCHOENBERG
Saturday, November 11, 2023
PERILOUS BALANCE
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Peter Knell is a Los Angeles based composer who is deeply invested in musical structure as a crucible to intensify the affective experience of the listener. He has consistently been rewarded by the enthusiastic reception of his work by audiences and performers.
Saturday, September 23, 2023
HANGING GARDENS
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Patrick Scott, Artistic and Executive director of Jacaranda Music joins Mark Alan Hilt, Jacaranda's Music Director to discuss the opening of the 2023-24 season Planet Schoenberg and details of Hanging Gardens.
PAST
2022-23 CAMARADERIE
Friday, May 19, 2023
ZA’ATAR
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Kimia Jamshid, a cellist and tanbour player, is a member of the world-renowned Iranian ensemble, Shams Ensemble. Inna Faliks is currently Professor of Piano and Head of Piano at UCLA with performance and recording credits across the globe. Shahāb Pāranj is an Iranian-born composer who is considered one of the pioneers among his generation of Iranian composers. His composition style integrates Persian and Western composition techniques.
Saturday, April 15, 2023
FANTASTICAL
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
The music of American composer Mark Grey has been commissioned or premiered by such organizations as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and National Opera of Belgium La Monnaie. Thomas Kotcheff is a Los Angeles based composer and pianist whose compositions have been performed internationally by The Riot Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, and the New York Youth Symphony amongst others. Sarah Gibson's compositions reflect her deep interest in the creative process across various artistic mediums - especially from the female perspective. Her compositions have been performed at various venues across the United States and Europe.
Saturday, March 4, 2023
NEW ALBION
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Kathryn Krasovec is a graduate of the Juilliard Opera Center and The San Francisco Opera's Merola Young Artist Program. She is the recipient of The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and is a member of The Juilliard Opera Center. Daniel Mallampalli is the Senior Programming Manager of the LA Phil. Michael Kudirka specializes in both contemporary works and in the field of microtonality with his interchangeable fretboard system. In November, 2017 he completed his third production run of Thomas Adès' The Exterminating Angel at the Metropolitan Opera of New York.
Sunday, February 12, 2023
SIMILAR/CONTRARY
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
David Kaplan has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras including the Brittain Sinfonia and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin. Timo Andres is the recipient of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protege Prize presented by Philip Glass. The Andres-Kaplan Duo released their collaborative album Shy and Mighty in 2010. Mark Alan Hilt is the director of the Harvard-Westlake upper school orchestra program, organist, and director of First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Saturday, October 22, 2022
ARKHIPOV
Kirk Douglas Theatre - 9820 Washington Boulevard, Culver City
7:00 pm
Peter Knell is a Los Angeles based composer who is deeply invested in musical structure as a crucible to intensify the affective experience of the listener. He has consistently been rewarded by the enthusiastic reception of his work by audiences and performers. Stephanie Fleischmann is a librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. She is the recipient of Opera America’s 2022 Campbell Librettist Prize. Cori Ellison is a leading creative figure in the opera world. She has been staff Dramaturg at Santa Fe Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and New York City Opera. She is a founding faculty member of American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program.
Saturday September 24, 2022
VINEYARDS OF MYTH
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Dylan Mattingly is a composer living in Berkeley, California. He is co-artistic director and cellist of Contemporaneous, a new music ensemble based in New York. Henry Gruber is currently pursuing a PhD at Harvard University, with a dissertation titled "Shifting Landscapes of Wealth and Power in the Late- and Post-Roman West." His research concerns the impact of the collapse of the Roman Empire on the rural economy of Spain. Archaeological data from rescue excavations is used to reconstruct changes in settlement patterns, trade routes, and overall material culture during the crucial period 300-600 of our era. He has spent eight summers on digs, excavating in Italy, Israel, and Spain.
2021-22 TURNING POINTS
Saturday March 19, 2022
TROPOSPHERE
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Sandrine Cassidy is a Sustainability Specialist dedicated to helping cities, businesses, non-profits and schools implement leadership standards and programs in waste reduction, recycling maximization, energy and water conservation, pollution control and green purchasing. Jeffrey Holmes is Professor of Composition at Chapman university. His Kaun (Kenaz) receives its world premiere tonight. Thierry Pécou is artistic director of Ensemble Variances. The three discussed ecology, climate change, and sustainability, in a panel discussion moderated by Thomas Aujero Small.
Saturday September 11, 2021
TWIN TOWERS
Rehwold Chapel, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Anthony Davis is a 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for his opera, The Central Park Five, as well as a multiple Grammy nominee. He will discuss his work, including Restless Mourning, the chamber oratorio which Jacaranda is giving its West Coast premiere on the second half of the concert. He has been a Professor of Music at UCSD since 1998.
2019-20 REMEMBER THE FUTURE
Sunday February 2, 2020
PAX AMERICANA II
Rennaisance Room, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
6:30 pm
Jeff Solomon teaches for the English Department at UCLA, where he offers courses on representations of political activism and social resistance movements in U.S. film and literature. He discussed Allen Ginsberg’s “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” as well as the counterculture which Ginsberg embodied in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Sunday, February 2, 2020
PAX AMERICANA I
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
4:00 pm
Four-time Academy Award nominee Danny Elfman is one of the most influential film composers of all time. Scott Dunn is Associate conductor of the LAPhil Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The two will discuss Elfman’s piano quartet, and the challenges of writing and preparing such a work.
December 7, 2019
GIDEON’S SUITCASE
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Peter Daniels is one of 125 children to have survived the Terezín concentration camp, where he was imprisoned from 1943 until the camp’s liberation until 1945. He discussed his experience there, as well as his life in the aftermath.
November 9, 2019
THE WAYWARD
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
John Schneider is the founder of MicroFest, author of The Contemporary Guitar (Rowman & Littlefield, 1985/2015), the definitive pedagogical text on prepared guitar and extended techniques. He is a founding member of PARTCH ensemble. John Malpede is the founding Artistic Director of Los Angeles Poverty Department. The two discussed homelessness and poverty in LA, and the creativity that can be borne of these circumstances.
September 21, 2019
ORGANIC RUSH
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Resident organist Thomas Mellan and music director Mark Alan Hilt discussed First Presbyterian’s newly-rebuilt Schantz organ, and spoke to the process of preparing for the REMEMBER THE FUTURE season opener.
May 25, 2019
VIVID REVERIES
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Marek Zebrowski, author of Paderewski in California (Tumult Foundation, 2009), and Celebrating Chopin and Paderewski (Warsaw Ministry of Foreign Affaris of the Republic of Poland, 2010) is Director and Curator of the Polish Music Center at USC Thornton School. Pianist Steven Vanhauwaert will speak to the process of learning Mauricio Kagel’s last important work, Piano Trio No. 3 (2007).
2018-19 DREAM IN COLOR
April 13, 2019
STAY ON IT!
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Seth Parker Woods is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College. A longtime champion of Julius Eastman's music, he curated the Eastman Portrait Concert as part of the 2018 Frequency Festival in Chicago. Renèe Levine Packer is the author of Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and his Music, and This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo. Scott Dunn worked as Lukas Foss’ assistant from 1999 to 2003, and recorded his “Solo for Piano” for Naxos (released 2005).
March 23, 2019
FLYING DREAM
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Althea Waites is currently on the keyboard faculty for the Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University/Long Beach. The former director of the William Grant Still Center in Los Angeles, she has recorded many of Still’s piano works. Her 1993 recording, Black Diamonds (Cambria), includes the world premiere of Florence Price’s Piano Sonata. She succeeded George Walker on the faculty of Smith College.
February 3, 2019
PREMONITION
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
6:45 pm
Russell Steinberg, composer, conductor and educator, inspires audiences to deepen their passion for classical music through engaging pre-concert talks at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and an annual lecture series. He has published a series of text-supported audio downloads exploring five Mahler symphonies, including the Sixth.
November 2, 2018
SONGS OF STONES
Wende Museum of the Cold War
7:00 pm
Chief Curator of the Wende Museum of the Cold War, Joes Segal authored Art and Politics: Between Purity and Propaganda (2016), and co-authored Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West (2010), both published by Amsterdam University Press. He formerly taught at UCLA and Utrecht University.
October 20, 2018
TIME FOLDER
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Alex Purves, author of Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (2010, Cambridge university Press), Synaesthesia and the Ancient Greek Senses (2013, Acumen Press) and the forthcoming Homer and the Poetics of Gesture (2019, Oxford University Press), is a classics scholar at UCLA specializing in Homer.
2017-18 AWAKE
May 19, 2018
REGIONAL ACCENTS
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Regional Accents celebrated three generations of Spanish music from De Falla to today. Fernando Malvar-Ruiz discussed the changing political environment in Spain, and how it affects arts and culture.
March 17, 2018
MENTAL ENERGY
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Pianist Steven Vanhauwaert and percussionist Jonathan Hepfer discussed the unique challenges and the time-commitment needed to realize the solo works by Messiaen students Jean Barraque and Iannis Xenakis — deemed nearly impossible to perform.
February 24, 2018
EXTRASENSORY
Rehwold Chapel, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Joel Salinas, MD, author of Mirror Touch: Notes from a Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain (2017) discussed his personal experiences with multiple forms of synesthesia, and related them to Olivier Messiaen’s color hearing.
January 20, 2018
INDIVISIBLE
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
Author Renee Levine Packer discussed her books Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and his Music, and This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo, based on her first hand knowledge of the special milieu in which Eastman and Frederic Rzewski composed their socially conscious classics.
October 21, 2017
MICRO CLIMATES
Sanctuary, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica
7:00 pm
RAND Corporation’s Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist Robert Lempert and Jacaranda Board Chair and Mayor of Culver City Thomas Small discussed climate challenges to Santa Monica, and other shoreline cities, as well as parallels to a growing interest in micro-tonality as an alternative to equal temperament.