LA Phil debuts composer with one billion streams
OrchestrasMessage received:
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association announced today an addition to the Walt Disney Concert Hall 2024/25 season: Gregory Alan Isakov with the LA Phil on Saturday, March 29, 2025, at 8PM. This one-night-only performance marks Isakov’s debut with the LA Phil and his first show at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The show will include symphonic arrangements of favorites from Isakov’s six full-length studio albums, including his most recent, the acclaimed Appaloosa Bones, as well as previous releases like Evening Machines and Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony. The orchestral versions of these songs were arranged by Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa) and Jay Clifford (Jump Little Children). The LA Phil will be conducted by Christopher Dragon.
Beloved by his devoted community of fans and critics alike, Isakov has garnered over 1 billion streams to date and averages 7 million monthly Spotify listeners. The Associated Press praised Appaloosa Bones, saying, “His new songs are relentlessly majestic, a kind of musical morphine,” while Paste declared, “he’s continuing to make expertly-tooled music…it’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout.”
This is fantastic!!! More great contemporary music!!! I hope the Met commissions him to write an opera for the opening of their new opera house, to open in 2050, on Staten Island!!!
Please stop calling song writers composers!
I live my life apart from the world of one-to-one-billion streams, but upon reading this I did sample the music of Gregory Alan Isakov on You Tube with the “Stable Song.” Conventional folk-ish music perhaps but affectingly sung unconventional lyrics (and some striking images on the video). This one was with the Colorado Symphony. Assuming what I heard (and saw) was representative, I’d say it is a potentially interesting evening of music for those in that frame of mind. The Leonard Cohen influence he claims seems accurate to me. You have to pay attention to the lyrics in other words.
Just a little more searching showed that I indeed DID know some music of this artist: his song Big Black Car.
The Met mounts “shows.”
Now the LA Phil gives “shows.”
All concert works are “songs.”
The “favorites from” are those streamed the most.
No bleeding chunks.
“Symphonic arrangements” and “orchestral versions” mean the same.
All entail other composers.