Esa-Pekka Salonen to Lead Scriabin's PROMETHEUS, POEM OF FIRE with LA Phil
The January program’s first half features Jean Sibelius’ The Oceanides and Gabriella Smith’s Rewilding.
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The LA Phil today confirmed program details for the first program of its 2025/26 Body and Sound festival—Prometheus with Esa-Pekka Salonen, from January 9–11, 2026 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Salonen, the LA Phil's Conductor Laureate—who will begin a five-year term as Creative Director beginning in the 2026/27 season—joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, soprano Liv Redpath, mezzo-soprano Jingjing Xu and multimedia artist Grimanesa Amorós to lead a new presentation of Scriabin’s tone poem Prometheus, Poem of Fire devised by Salonen and Thibaudet.
In Prometheus, Poem of Fire, Scriabin uses the ancient myth of the Titan who bestowed fire upon humanity—and was condemned to suffer for eternity—as a metaphor for spiritual development. Scriabin composed the piece for music and “color organ,” an instrument he conceived of which projected light of different colors linked to harmonic changes in music; by pairing music with light and color, he hoped to overwhelm and transcend the human senses, inspiring a state of spiritual ecstasy in the audience. While the technology required to translate Scriabin’s total vision for Prometheus did not exist in his lifetime, the piece has lent itself to numerous interpretations in the ensuing century, uniting music and visual art in a constant state of evolution.
In this January presentation, the visual element of Scriabin’s epic will be amplified with a new site-specific installation from multimedia artist Grimanesa Amorós titled RADIANCE. This large-scale light sculpture is inspired by one of the four classical elements of nature: fire. The work takes the form of a spark, pulsing and moving as flame does when exposed to the elements, as if it were alive, and explores how light can bridge the material and the metaphysical. Expanding upon Scriabin’s spiritual vision, Amorós finds a kinship between Prometheus and Viracocha—the Inca creator god who bestowed wisdom upon his people, taught them the arts and guided them toward civilization. In the spirit of Prometheus’ sacrifice, Viracocha’s gift and Scriabin’s visionary creation, RADIANCE serves as a visual journey for viewers of what it means to “play with fire.” Just as fire was crucial for civil advancement, the artwork is a guide to inspire a more profound exploration of identity, wisdom and human potential.
These performances mark Salonen and Thibaudet’s second multisensory presentation of Prometheus, which was previously performed by the San Francisco Symphony in March 2024 in collaboration with Cartier in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent.
The Los Angeles edition is the first of several multisensory mainstage concerts and off-site events which comprise the LA Phil’s Body and Sound festival. The initiative seeks to counteract the forces that numb our senses and reveal music’s profound impact on our health and well-being by inviting audiences to experience music differently.
The January program’s first half features Jean Sibelius’ The Oceanides and Gabriella Smith’s Rewilding, a piece commissioned by Salonen during his tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. In the second half, Prometheus will be paired with Claude Debussy’s La damoiselle élue.
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