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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
How Kamasi Washington and 100 musicians filled LACMA's empty new building with a sonic work of art
'The general public was admitted to new Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the first time on Friday night — not to look at art but to listen to music,' wrote Times music critic Albert Goldberg in 1965. Exactly 70 years and three months later, history repeated itself. Thursday night was the first time the public was allowed into LACMA's David Geffen Galleries. The occasion was a massive sonic event led by jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington. More than a hundred musicians spread out in nine groups along 900-foot serpentine route of Peter Zumthor's new building, still empty of art. The celebration, which drew arts and civic leaders for the first of three preview nights, was far grander than the concert on March 26,1965, that opened LACMA's Leo S. Bing Theatre the night before the doors opened to the museum's original galleries. That occasion, a program by the legendary Monday Evening Concerts in which Pierre Boulez conducted the premiere of his 'Éclat,' helped symbolize an exuberant L.A. coming of age, with the Music Center having opened three months earlier. Monday Evening Concerts had been a true L.A. event drawing local musical celebrities including Igor Stravinsky and showing off L.A.'s exceptional musicians. The mandolinist in 'Éclat,' for instance, was Sol Babitz, the father of the late, quintessential L.A. writer Eve Babitz. Boulez, an explosive composer, eventually turned the 10-minute ''Éclat,' for 15 instruments' into a 25-minute orchestral masterpiece, 'Éclat/Multiples,' and left unfinished sketches behind to extend that to a full hour. Washington turned out to be the ideal radical expansionist to follow in Boulez's footsteps for the new LACMA, with a resplendent enlargement of his 2018 half-hour EP, 'Harmony of Difference.' The short tracks — 'Desire,' 'Knowledge,' 'Perspective,' 'Humility,' 'Integrity' and 'Truth' — employ nearly three dozen musicians in bursts of effusive wonder. For LACMA, Washington tripled the number of musicians and the length. What some critics thought were bursts of bluster, however enthralling, became outright splendor. Introducing the program, LACMA Director Michael Govan called it an event that has never happened before and may never happen again. I got little sense of what this building will be like as a museum with art on the walls, but it's a great space for thinking big musically and, in the process, for finding hope in an L.A. this year beset by fires and fear-inducing troops on our streets. Washington is one of our rare musicians who thrives on excess. He has long been encouraged to aim toward concision, especially in his longer numbers, in which his untiring improvisations can become exhausting in their many climaxes. But that misses the point. I've never heard him play anything, short or long, that couldn't have been three times longer. His vision is vast, and he needs space. In the David Geffen Galleries, he got it. The nine ensembles included a large mixed band that he headed, along with ensembles of strings, brass, woodwinds and choruses. Each played unique arrangements of the songs, not quite synchronized, but if you ambled the long walkways, you heard the material in different contexts as though this were sonic surrealism. Acoustically, the Geffen is a weird combination. The large glass windows and angled concrete walls reflect sound in very different ways. Dozens of spaces vary in shape, size and acoustical properties. During a media tour earlier in the day, I found less echo than might be expected, though each space had its own peculiarities. Washington's ensembles were all carefully amplified and sounded surprisingly liquid, which made walking a delight as the sounds of different ensembles came in and out of focus. A chorus' effusiveness gradually morphed into an ecstatic Washington saxophone solo down the way that then became a woodwind choir that had an organ-like quality. The whole building felt alive. There was also the visual element. The concert took place at sunset, the light through the large windows ever changing, the 'Harmony of Difference' becoming the differences of the bubbling tar pits nearby or the street life on Wilshire or LACMA's Pavilion for Japanese Art, which looks lovely from the new galleries. Govan's vision is of a place where art of all kinds from all over comes together, turning the galleries into a promenade of discovery. Musically, this falls more in line with John Cage's 'Musicircus,' in which any number of musical ensembles perform at chance-derived times as a carnival of musical difference — something for which the Geffen Galleries is all but tailor-made. Nevertheless, Washington brilliantly demonstrated the new building's potential for dance, opera, even theater. The museum may not have made performance a priority in recent years, but Washington also reminded us that the premiere of Boulez' 'Éclat' put music in LACMA's DNA. Seven decades on, Zumthor, whether he intended it or not, now challenges LACMA to become LACMAP: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Performance.
Time Out
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
It may not have any art yet, but LACMA's new building offers plenty to look at inside
There's not a single piece of artwork to see on the concrete walls of LACMA's new building right now. And yet, this is undoubtedly the most exciting art destination in Los Angeles this weekend. Months ahead of the galleries' planned April 2026 debut, and before the institution begins installing artwork, LACMA has allowed the public to take a peek inside its new David Geffen Galleries—to the tune of a one-of-a-kind performance from local saxophone extraordinaire Kamasi Washington, no less. For the museum members and everyday Angelenos who were lucky enough to secure tickets, they'll find more than 100 musicians split between 10 performance areas, with each ensemble playing a different component of the six-part jazz suite Harmony of Difference; you might catch Washington soloing on sax toward the center of the building, but round a corner and you'll hear the buzz of a brass section or the echoing voices of a choir. But what about the building itself? The Peter Zumthor-designed replacement for LACMA's myriad mid-century buildings on its eastern campus consolidates collections into a single-floor, 110,000-square-foot amoeba-shaped space. It's also, since its unveiling in 2013 and start of construction in 2020, invited plenty of strong opinions about everything from its aesthetic to its footprint. So what's it like to actually step inside (still sans art, of course)? I was invited to the museum on Thursday for the first of three performances. About an hour before sunset, I filed past the familiar spider-like lines of Tony Smith's Smoke sculpture and hoofed it up the long staircase into the David Geffen Galleries (there are elevators, as well). I passed by what looked like a ground-floor restaurant space and a future bookshop but could only gawk from outside. Upstairs, though, I was free to roam across the entire floor—and roam I did. The building isn't broken up into traditional rooms; instead, there are roughly two dozen enclosed galleries toward the center of the structure, while the entirety of the exterior is lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. The views are absolutely dreamy and offer a fresh vantage point that makes it feel as though you're floating above one of L.A.'s most crowded cultural corridors. Each curve unveils a new, unexpected perspective: overlooking the lake at the La Brea Tar Pits, eye-level with the bubble-like theater of the Academy Museum and literally on top of the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Yes, the building spans the busy road (Jeff Koons's floral Split-Rocker sculpture will eventually anchor the outside of the southern side), and it's tough to articulate just how wild it is to shuffle along the museum floor and suddenly find yourself crossing over the iconic street. At every point, the architecture perfectly frames each vista, so—for better or worse—expect plenty of posing, particularly as the setting sun floods the west side with dramatic lighting. Despite all of those windows, it was easy to get a little bit turned around inside of the space—but I imagine that'll be much less of an issue once there's actually artwork installed. For now, it's a lot of unadorned concrete, so if you're not looking out a window, there are no other visual cues to place exactly where you are. Without paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations, the interior galleries feel raw and empty because they're, well, raw and empty right now—so I'll hold off any sort of proper judgment until after the installation process has wrapped up. (You can see how the galleries will look with art inside over on LACMA's site.) When Washington's performance wound down, it was dark out. As I descended the staircase out of the David Geffen Galleries, Urban Lights' rows of streetlamps glowed in the background. On my way in, I thought some angles of the building were more flattering than others; the profile of the tar pits side looks beautiful, but stand close enough to the western tip and it feels a little like a low-angle selfie. But as I was exiting and looked back up the staircase at night, it was as if the entire building was floating. It was oddly peaceful—and already difficult to imagine the museum and Wilshire Boulevard without it. Check out some more photos below. Kamasi Washington continues his performances on Friday and Saturday—tickets are unfortunately sold out—followed by a series of member previews of the building. The David Geffen Galleries open April 2026.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LACMA has finished construction on it's newest building
Plus, jazz musician Kamasi Washington will be performing his 'Harmony of Difference' this weekend, where he'll use over 100 musicians to realize his composition. Unfortunately, all three nights are sold out. But you can still sign up to become a member in order to tour the space over the next week and a half.
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
You can step inside LACMA's new building months before opening during this Kamasi Washington performance
We've just crossed the year-to-go mark until the opening of LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries, and as promised, the Miracle Mile museum is offering a pretty unique opportunity to step inside the building's empty interior. L.A. native, Kendrick Lamar collaborator and all-around saxophone wizard Kamasi Washington will headline three performances inside the new building this June—months ahead of its artwork-filled April 2026 opening. But he won't be alone: More than 100 musicians will be scattered across 110,000 square feet of vacant gallery space. Washington's performances on June 26, 27 and 28 will tackle Harmony of Difference, a six-movement suite that he released eight years ago—but that's never been performed live in its entirety. 'I wrote Harmony of Difference in 2017 to celebrate the beauty of humanity's diversity through a metaphor of music,' Washington said in a statement. 'In music it is the combination of different notes, chords and rhythms that create beautiful songs. The same is true in life; most of humanity's greatest achievements came from the combined efforts of people of different backgrounds with different knowledge and abilities.' Washington goes on to elaborate on the Geffen Galleries' unique acoustic properties; visitors will hear both the direct sounds from nearby musicians as well as the 'spirit' of other farther-away groups of performers. If you want to check out the performance inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building, LACMA will release limited batches of tickets in three waves: – May 2 at 10am ($60, LACMA members $48) – May 22 at 10am ($75, LACMA members $60) – June 12 at 10am ($100, LACMA members $80) This won't be the only opportunity to step inside the empty galleries, though you'll need to be a LACMA member to take advantage of the others. The museum will hold a series of sneak peaks divided up by membership tiers: a reception for Partner-level members on June 29; Friend, Supporter and Partner-level on June 30; Individual and Dual-level on July 1; all levels from July 3 through 5; and NexGenLA members on July 6—that's the free membership tier for kids 17 and under (and an accompanying adult). Back to the Harmony of Difference preview: I'll just add that it's worth seeing Washington perform live in just about any setting, but I happen to think stepping inside an empty museum—before walls and artworks forever alter the interior—is a one-of-a-kind experience for art and architecture lovers. A decade later, I still look back fondly on a sound-and-video installation staged inside the Broad months before it officially opened.
Los Angeles Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
New LACMA building preview event stars Kamasi Washington with 100 musicians
Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new David Geffen Galleries will become a sonic vessel in late June when Grammy-nominated composer and jazz musician Kamasi Washington, joined by an ensemble of more than 100 musicians, will perform a series of shows inside the new Peter Zumthor-designed building. The artists will be dispersed throughout the 110,000 square feet of gallery space, and the building itself will become an integral part of the acoustic experience, the museum said. Washington is set to perform his six-movement suite, 'Harmony of Difference,' a concept album that was released to critical acclaim in 2017. Many of the musicians joining him are L.A.-based artists that Washington has played with over the years. The performances — on June 26, 27 and 28 — will mark the first time that the suite has been performed in its entirety in front of a live audience, and the music is meant to unfold as a work of art, in a way that can't be replicated again. 'The Geffen Galleries has a truly unique acoustic environment that is perfect for 'Harmony of Difference,' ' Washington said in the announcement. 'As people walk through the galleries, they will directly hear the musicians they are closest to, while hearing the 'spirit' of the other groups.' Washington's appearances are the first of many events leading to the grand opening of the building in April 2026. Tickets for the shows will go on sale on three dates. The first performance goes on sale May 2 at 10 a.m. The next performance goes on sale May 22 at 10 a.m. The final performance goes on sale June 12 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $48 to $100. From June 29 through July 6, LACMA members will be invited to tour the building prior to the art being installed. Work began on the David Geffen Galleries in 2020, and 90% of construction was completed late last year. The 900-foot-long poured concrete structure spans Wilshire Boulevard. The museum has announced a trio of recent commissions and released a detailed outline of its restaurants, theater and amenities.
