“Four years ago, Joshua Weilerstein came to Los Angeles as a 23-year-old graduate student to be one of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Dudamel fellows,” writes James Taylor in Saturday’s (4/18) Los Angeles Times. “This week Weilerstein returns to L.A.”—to conduct the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra—“as a maestro in his own right after a stint as assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic and, in November, winning the job of artistic director for the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne in Switzerland…. His family is a musical dynasty that includes his father, Donald Weilerstein, a violinist and founder of the Cleveland Quartet, and his mother, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, a noted chamber musician and faculty member at New England Conservatory. [Cellist] Alisa Weilerstein, Joshua’s sister, is a MacArthur grant winner….. Weilerstein wants to push boundaries in repertory. On the LACO program is a work by 35-year-old composer Joseph Hallman. The moody, 17-minute piece is titled ‘imagined landscapes: six lovecraftian elsewheres,’ and it’s inspired by the macabre writings of author H.P. Lovecraft….. Ultimately Weilerstein feels his job as a leader of an orchestra is to communicate the power of music. ‘I think people are looking for experiences,’ he says.”
Posted April 20, 2015
