ARTICLE: La Jolla Music Society to celebrate 55th anniversary with star-studded season and a record 71 performances
George Varga
June 11, 2023
Opera legend Renée Fleming, jazz keyboard giant Herbie Hancock, 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winner Rhiannon Giddens, ballet standout Tiler Peck and San Diego-born mandolin wizard Chris Thile are among the artists who will appear as part of La Jolla Music Society’s 2023-24 season.
With a record 71 performances scheduled between October and next June by more than 75 headlining artists — 40 of them making their LJMS debuts — the season will be the largest in the nonprofit arts organization’s history. Most of the events are in La Jolla, while some concerts and dance performances will be at the San Diego Civic Theater and the nearby Balboa Theatre.
The season will also mark an increase in the number of appearances by major dance troupes, including a 50th anniversary performance by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. And it will boast considerably more jazz than any prior edition, including an April weekend “mini piano festival” featuring Herbie Hancock and Hiromi, and four May and June concerts curated by — and featuring — 83-year-old San Diego saxophone legend Charles McPherson.
“Next year will be the 55th anniversary of La Jolla Music Society and the fifth anniversary of our Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center,” said Leah Rosenthal, the society’s artistic director. “It’s been really exciting to see how we’ve grown.”
That growth, both qualitative and quantitative, was slowed in 2020 and 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. But LJMS rebounded more easily than many other arts organizations, due to the support of its loyal patrons and to its state-of-the-art home, the $82 million Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center.
The 49,200-square-foot center, which opened in April 2019, houses the 513-seat Baker-Baum Concert Hall. It is also home to The JAI, a cabaret-styled venue that — depending on the event — can accommodate 142 people seated at tables, 170 in rows of chairs, or 300 standing.
Because it is equipped with first-rate audio and video recording facilities, The Conrad — as it is also known — was able to deftly pivot to audience-free online concerts during the pandemic shutdown.
In April 2021, LJMS began holding reduced-capacity concerts in its Wu Tsai Courtyard, then returned to full-capacity concerts in August of that year for its annual SummerFest, whose 2022 edition achieved a record income of $407,008 in 2022 — 36 percent more than in 2021 — and topping even its pre-pandemic festival sales.
‘A transformation’
“Our growth since the opening of The Conrad is a far more interesting story than our growth post-quarantine,” said LJMS CEO and president Todd Schultz. “Because it’s really about a transformation of the organization and our growing in a way that enables us to serve the community in more and different ways.”
Prior to The Conrad’s opening, the society averaged 25 to 30 fall-through-spring concerts and 15 during SummerFest. Its 2022-23 season at The Conrad, which concludes today, boasted 61 concerts. SummerFest, which returns in August, will have 21 concerts along with numerous education and outreach programs.
Those numbers do not include the soaring number of rentals of The Conrad to other arts organizations — including Art of Elan and Camarada — or co-presentations with the San Diego Symphony and San Diego Opera. The venue is also rented out for events as varied as high school proms, weddings and corporate meetings. LJMS now has three staff members focused on rentals, up from just one in 2019.
“Between last October and this September, we will have hosted 220 active dates. That gives you a sense of the growth of the organization and the difference The Conrad has made,” said Schultz, who has headed LJMS since January 2021.
During a single weekend earlier this year, Schultz proudly noted, LJMS presented six events — four in the Baker-Baum, one in The JAI and one at downtown San Diego’s Balboa Theater.
“We won’t do that much every weekend, but it went beautifully and we had the staffing expertise and structure in place to pull off all six smoothly,” he said.
“Right now is an important moment for us to make sure we are growing at the correct rate to build both our audience and institutional capacity, as well as our ability as an organization to keep up with that growth.”
Schultz and SummerFest Music Director Inon Barnatan credit Rosenthal as essential to LJMS’s ability to draw longtime attendees and new audiences alike. Under her guidance, the organization has built on its chamber-music foundation with an array of other offerings from around the world of music and across the globe.
The 2023/2024 lineup features Grammy-winning South African vocal ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo, India’s Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and France’s Quatuor Ébène. Also in the lineup are Swiss jazz singer Tatiana Eva-Marie, Japanese pianist Mao Fujita and the all-female mariachi group Flor de Toloache, which is based in New York.
That is in addition to such celebrated classical-music stars as cellist Alisa Weilerstein, pianists Yefim Bronfman and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Kronos Quartet and Sam Green, who bring their live documentary A Thousand Thoughts to The Conrad on March 8.
“Leah is one of my favorite programmers in the U.S. and her seasons are just terrific,” said Barnatan, who will be the pianist for Renée Fleming’s Feb. 14 concert.
“I also think Leah has something pretty rare as an artistic director, in that she’s brave, has taste and is not afraid to take a gamble if she really believes in something. Leah follows her ear and heart, not somebody else’s example or season schedule. She really leads in that respect and this is reflected in the 2023/2024 season she has booked.”
Rosenthal was hired in 2008 by LJMS and was named its director of artistic planning and education in 2011. She became the director of programming in 2016 and artistic director in early 2020.
Rosenthal has a bachelor’s degree in voice performance and a master’s in arts management. She previously held various positions with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival, PBS and the Chicago chapter of The Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammy Awards are presented.
Rosenthal laughed when asked how many performances the upcoming LJMS season will include.
“Is it 75? I don’t count them!” she said. “I know we’ll have almost double the number of concerts in The JAI than we had last season, and that’s where most of this expansion in our new season is coming from.
“We had eight or nine concerts in The JAI last season and now it’s going up to 15. And for this year’s SummerFest, The JAI will have two evenings of jazz, as well as evenings with (SummerFest composer-in-residence) Thomas Ades. So, we are continuing this thread and establishing The JAI as an incredible secondary performance space with its own atmosphere and appeal, including food and drinks.”
Under Rosenthal, LJMS’s seasons at The Conrad have grown increasingly diversified, adding a global roots music series, a discovery series to showcase rising new classical and jazz talents, a National Geographic lecture series, and more.
“The heart and soul of what we do is classical music and we will never take that away,” she stressed.
“And our commitment extends beyond The Conrad and it’s extremely important as part of our strategic plan that we present great artists in downtown San Diego. Three of the four dance performances in our upcoming season will be at the Civic Theater. And we’ll again have concerts at the Balboa Theatre, including Herbie Hancock, Lila Downs and Rhiannon Giddens with the Silk Road Ensemble, which was founded by Yo-Yo Ma and which Rhiannon is now leading.
“At this moment, things feel more normal than at any time in the past three years. The performing arts world has started to get its momentum again and audiences are back, maybe not completely, but with a willingness to go to multiple shows. Things are running as smoothly as they were before the pandemic and it really feels like a weight has been lifted.”
La Jolla Music Society 2023-24 season
When: Oct. 7 to June 9
Where: The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla. Events are in The Baker-Baum Concert Hall or the adjacent JAI, unless otherwise noted.
Tickets: Series subscriptions, available starting Tuesday, are priced from $59 to $446. Single tickets go on sale July 17 and are priced from $20 to $150. Series subscriptions and Choose-Your-Own packages for any four shows or more are discounted 10 percent.
Phone: (858) 459-3728
Box office: 7600 Fay Avenue, La Jolla (open weekdays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and two hours prior to each evening performance)
Online: theconrad.org