Bramwell Tovey Leads Two LA Phil Concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, 7/14 & 16

Audience favorite Bramwell Tovey makes his first of several visits to the Hollywood Bowl this season to lead the LA Phil in two classical concerts, Tuesday, July 14, and Thursday, July 16, at 8 pm.

The Tuesday, July 14 concert is an all-Rachmaninoff program featuring Tovey, the LA Phil and pianist Garrick Ohlsson performing the riveting Piano Concerto No. 3. Also presented that evening are the composer's Vocalise and Symphonic Dances.

Thursday's all-Beethoven concert features Tovey and the LA Phil with its gifted Principal Concertmaster Martin Chalifour playing the Violin Concerto. Also on the program are Beethoven's thunderous Egmont Overture and Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral."

Grammy and Juno award-winning conductor/composer Bramwell Tovey was appointed Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in 2000. Under his leadership the VSO have toured to China, Korea, across Canada and the United States. Tovey is also the Artistic Adviser of the VSO School of Music, a state-of-the-art facility and recital hall which opened in downtown Vancouver in 2011, next to the Orpheum, the VSO's historic home. His tenure has included complete symphony cycles of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms as well as the establishment of an annual festival dedicated to contemporary music. In 2018, the VSO's centenary year, he will become the orchestra's Music Director Emeritus. In the 2014/15 season Tovey made guest appearances with several U.S. orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Kansas City Symphony. In Europe he performed with the BBC Philharmonic and the Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester and he traveled to Australia on two separate occasions for engagements with the symphonies of Melbourne and Sydney. A talented pianist as well as conductor and composer, Tovey has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras including the New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St Louis, Toronto, and Royal Scottish orchestras. In the summer of 2014 he played and conducted Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Phil and in Saratoga with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also performed his own Pictures in the Smoke with the Melbourne and Helsingborg Symphonies and the Royal Philharmonic.

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, many commissioned for him. An exponent of Busoni's rarely programmed piano concerto, Ohlsson brought it to the National Symphony (Washington) and London's Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2014. In 2015, Ohlsson presented a series of recitals in London, San Francisco, Chicago and New York in honor of the centenary of Alexander Scriabin's death. He also returned to the orchestras of San Francisco, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Minnesota, BBC Scotland and Prague where he is a frequent guest. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. His 10-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a Grammy award for Vol. 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3, with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, was released in 2011. Most recently, both Brahms concerti and Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto were released on "live" performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels, and Ohlsson was featured on Dvo?ák's piano concerto in the Czech Philharmonic's live recordings of the composer's complete symphonies & concertos, released July of 2014 on the Decca label.

Martin Chalifour began his tenure as Principal Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1995. He received a Certificate of Honor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and is also a laureate of the Montreal International Competition. Apart from his LA Phil duties he maintains an active solo career, playing a diverse repertoire of more than 60 concertos. Chalifour has appeared as soloist with conductors Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Neville Marriner, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Outside the U.S., he has played solos with the Auckland Philharmonia, the Montreal Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Malaysian Philharmonic, among others. Chalifour is a frequent guest at several summer music festivals, including the Sarasota Festival, the Mainly Mozart Festival, and the Reno Chamber Music Festival. In December 2014 at the same Nevada festival, Chalifour was featured with his friend and colleague Noah Bendix-Balgley in a special program entitled "The Concertmasters of the Berlin Phil and the LA Phil." Maintaining close ties with his native country, he has returned there often to teach and perform as soloist with various Canadian orchestras, most recently with the Vancouver Symphony and Bramwell Tovey. Martin Chalifour has recorded solo and chamber music for the Telarc, Northstar and Yarlung labels. He teaches at the University of Southern California and Caltech. He was appointed as a Yosemite Centennial Ambassador for 2016, serving to inspire a new generation of stewards and supporters in the 100th year of the National Park Service.

Complete programs:

Tuesday, July 14

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

BRAMWELL TOVEY, conductor

GARRICK OHLSSON, piano

ALL-RACHMANINOFF

Piano Concerto No. 3

Vocalise

Symphonic Dances

Thursday, July 16

LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

BRAMWELL TOVEY, conductor

MARTIN CHALIFOUR, violin

ALL-BEETHOVEN

Egmont Overture

Violin Concerto

Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"

The HOLLYWOOD BOWL is located at 2301 N Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90068. Subscriptions and single tickets for performances during the Hollywood Bowl 2015 summer season are available now at HollywoodBowl.com, or via credit card phone order at 323.850.2000, and in person at the Hollywood Bowl Box Office.