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!
Correct. This thread is ridiculous.
So…Schubert is out? Rorem? Songs can be part of a compositional output.
No, they are composers. They write out every part. Read every clef. Know the intimacies of every instrument. They don’t use a Capo to transpose music on their instrument because they can only play in one key.
Capos are not a sign of incompetence, they allow open string chords to sing beautifully in different keys than they would normally. They allow different textures and voicings to what you can get without them. Practically every guitar player uses them from time to time, even the best flamenco guitarists use them commonly and they can play practically anything!
You miss the point…what a surprise!
Yes, songs can be part of a compositional output. But with songwriters with no formal musical training, song are the ONLY output.
Schubert composed 600 songs…along with symphonies, overtures, Masses, operas, string quartets and other chamber works, piano sonatas, etc., etc., etc…types of works that SONGWRITERS such as Isakov have zero ability to create.
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.
Oh oh…..
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.
Thanks for the announcement, he’s gifted.
Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oldnn0-K-Pg&list=PLSBWvYm8t6ubuBrPZh97akkZuwhm7GGHY
Something seems a bit off when the phrase “a kind of musical morphine” is intended as praise.
I guess folk music spiffed up with a symphonic touch makes more sense than, say, rap music sweetened with the same thing.
I wonder what very twangy country western music of over 30-40 years ago would sound like accompanied with strings and brass?
Bingo, his music is not very original. He’s bringing back folk and c&w sounds of the 1960’s and 1970’s. It’s pleasant, his lyrics seem to move people, but it is nothing earth shattering, just pleasant easy to follow tunes of another time.