Best classical music of 2020: 10 heroes who came to our rescue in a horrendous year
Kristy Edmunds is executive director and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
Gustavo Dudamel, left, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Kristy Edmunds.
(Photo illustration by Micah Fluellen / Los Angeles Times; Getty Images; Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times (Dudamel and Salonen); Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times; Carolyn Cole/ Los Angeles Times)"Twenty-twenty was the year that was, however much for classical music it may have seemed the year that wasn’t. Live performance, as we knew it, came to a sudden halt early March.
In startling advance of the Black Lives Matter protests, the Los Angeles Philharmonic happened to be in the middle of its revolutionary Power to the People! festival, examining the artistic legacy of Black protest movements and the issues of racial and economic inequality. Well before the presidential election, Yuval Sharon’s innovative opera company, the Industry, had to cut short its run of “Sweet Land,” an acute questioning of America’s foundation myths, exposing our democracy’s fragility. With summer wildfires still in the future but the pandemic at our doorstep, UCLA‘s Center for the Art of Performance barely squeaked in its operatic treatment of Octavia Butler’s prophetic novel “Parable of the Sower,” forecasting the dire social and political consequences of environmental irresponsibility.
Admirable local institutions of all sizes — Los Angles Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Piano Spheres, Boston Court, New West Symphony, the Wallis and REDCAT among them — rose to find innovative ways to keep the music coming online and to continue the discussion of potent issues.
But let this year’s top 10 go to classical music first responders who magnificently kept music mattering...
Kristy Edmunds. For the head of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, the curtain falling on “Parable of the Sower” was but the prelude to her indomitable dealing with a year-plus intermission from the art of live performance. But the Center still holds. She has scrupulously filmed a host of artists for inspiring online performances and festivals. She — like Borda, like the L.A. Phil with its YOLA Center and unlike Colburn — also has found in the pandemic opportunity, not obstacle, to continue her Nimoy Theater project, renovating the old Crest Theater in Westwood as CAP UCLA’s new home."— Mark Swed, Dec. 8, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
Read more about Kristy Edmunds.
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