GRANT GERSHON
Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director
Hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership, Grant Gershon, Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director, celebrated his 20th anniversary season in 2021-22 with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, which he has turned into the "finest-by-far major chorus in America.” (Los Angeles Times)
Gershon, who elicits technically precise and expressive performances from musicians, is committed to increasing representation in the choral repertoire, and in 2020 he announced that the Chorale will reserve at least 50% of each season for works by composers from historically excluded groups in classical music. For his career-spanning leadership in the field of choral music, Gershon received Chorus America’s 2022 Korn Founders Award. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the USC Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017.
In July 2019, Gershon and the Chorale opened the famed Salzburg Festival with Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars. The Salzburg performances received standing ovations and rave reviews by such outlets as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which called Lagrime “painfully beautiful.” In 2022–23, Gershon will collaborate again with Sellars in the Chorale’s production of Music to Accompany a Departure.
Gershon’s discography includes Grammy-winning Best Choral Performance for Mahler: Symphony No. 8, “Symphony Of A Thousand”, Grammy-nominated recordings of Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical), and commercial recordings with the Chorale that include Glass-Salonen (RCM), You Are (Variations) (Nonesuch), Daniel Variations (Nonesuch), A Good Understanding (Decca), Miserere (Decca), and the national anthems (Cantaloupe Music). He has also led the Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks, including, at the request of John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
As resident conductor of LA Opera, Gershon conducted the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in November 2018. He made his acclaimed debut with the company with La Traviata in 2009 and subsequently conducted Il Postino, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann, and The Pearl Fishers. In 2017, he made his San Francisco Opera debut conducting the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West, directed by Peter Sellars, who also wrote the libretto, and made his Dutch National Opera debut with the same opera in March 2019.
In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, and he has performed on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center and the Making Music series at Zankel Hall. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Salzburg, and Vienna festivals, the South American premiere of the LA Opera’s production of Il Postino in Chile, and performances with the Baltimore Symphony and the Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino in Turin, Italy. He has worked closely with numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, and his mentor, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Los Angeles Master Chorale
SOPRANO
Tamara Bevard
Christina Bristow
Hayden Eberhart
Kelci Hahn
Harriet Fraser
Elissa Johnstone
Caroline McKenzie
Beth Peregrine
Alina Roitstein
Anna Schubert
Addy Sterrett
Courtney Taylor
Rebecca Tomlinson
Suzanne Waters
Andrea Zomorodian
ALTO
Garineh Avakian
Mindy Chu
Janelle DeStefano
Michele Hemmings
Callista Hoffman-Campbell
Shabnam Kalbasi
Sharon Chohi Kim
Sharmila G. Lash
Sarah Lynch
Adriana Manfredi
Margaurite Mathis
Julia Metzler
Lindsay Patterson Abdou
Niké St. Clair
IIana Summers
Kimberly Switzer
Kristen Toedtman
tenor
Casey Breves
Matthew Brown
Bradley Chapman
Daniel Curran
Adam Faruqi
Charlie Kim
Shawn Kirchner
Charles Lane
Michael Lichtenauer
Sal Malaki
Edmond Rodriguez
Darita Seth
Todd Strange
Matthew Thomas
BASS
Michael Bannett
Reid Bruton
John Buffett
David Castillo
Dylan Gentile
Will Goldman
Abdiel Gonzalez
Scott Graff
James Hayden
Luc Kleiner
Chung Uk Lee
Brett McDermid
Jamal Moore
Adrien Redford
Mark Edward Smith
Shuo Zhai
The singers of the Los Angeles Master Chorale are represented by
the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO, Elyse Willis, AGMA Delegate.
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