FRANK GEHRY & ALEX ROSS in conversation with Barbara Isenberg May 11, 2009

New York Public Library - LIVE presents
FRANK GEHRY, ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, ALEX ROSS and BARBARA ISENBERG
Monday, May 11, 2009

JOIN the FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY for as little as $40 and SAVE $10 PER TICKET FOR FUTURE LIVE EVENTS.

Length: 1 hr 30 mins
Intermission: None
Seating: General Admission
You choose your seats when you get to the theater.

I. FRANK GEHRY & ALEX ROSS in conversation with Barbara Isenberg

II. ESA-PEKKA SALONEN in conversation with Alex Ross

Once in a while an orchestra is lucky enough to form a partnership with a conductor who not only leads great performances but becomes a shaping force in music history. From 1992 until this year, the brilliant Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen made the Los Angeles Philharmonic the most interesting orchestra in America.

Fresh from his farewell LA concert, Salonen talks to New Yorker critic Alex Ross about his tenure in LA, Disney Hall, Stravinsky, Radiohead, his own music, and the future of the art.

About Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry’s architectural career has spanned five decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe, and Asia. Notable projects include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Nationale- Nederlanden Building in Prague; and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. Projects under construction include the Beekman Residential Tower located in New York City, which will be Gehry’s first high rise building to be completed.

About Barbara Isenberg

Barbara Isenberg is the author of Conversations with Frank Gehry, which reflects her interviews with the architect over the past 20 years. Other books include Making It Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical and State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work. Founder and host of the Getty Center’s Art Matters public interviews, she is currently Associate Director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC.

About Alex Ross

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for The New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won a National Book Critics Circle Award and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008 he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

About Esa-Pekka Salonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish conductor and composer, is Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position he will hold until summer 2009. He was recently appointed Principal Conductor of London’s Philharmonia and began his tenure in September 2008. Salonen is renowned for his interpretations of contemporary music and has given countless premieres of new as well as his own works. He has led critically acclaimed festivals of music by Berlioz, Ligeti, Schönberg, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky and Magnus Lindberg. His own orchestral works include Foreign Bodies, Insomnia, Wing on Wing, and Helix.

Official Website: http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=5209