Michael Tilson Thomas And Frank Gehry Named As Honorees For Colburn School's 2018 Gala

At its annual gala event, Celebrate Colburn, the Colburn School will honor renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and acclaimed architect Frank Gehry with the Richard D. Colburn award, for their exemplary achievements and contributions to the worlds of classical music and the performing arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Celebrate Colburn takes place at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday, April 22, 2018, at 7 p.m., followed by a post-performance dinner at a location to be announced.

The gala concert program includes Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D Major, "Titan," performed by the Colburn Orchestra, led by Tilson Thomas.

"It is impossible to underestimate the importance of Michael Tilson Thomas's legacy and significant artistic achievements that have elevated the world of classical music throughout California and the world," said Colburn School President and CEO Sel Kardan. "His leadership, innovative artistic vision, and dedication to music education serves as a model of excellence for us all."

"Frank Gehry has revolutionized our relationship with the physical world around us, and has transformed our concert-going experience with the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which propelled Los Angeles's cultural renaissance," said Kardan. "His work is vital to the growth of the arts in Los Angeles, and we are proud to honor him and his work at this year's gala."

Michael Tilson Thomas is Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. A Los Angeles native, as a high school student he attended what became the Colburn School before entering the University of Southern California. Michael Tilson Thomas is the third generation of his family to follow an artistic career, and was recently selected by California Governor Jerry Brown as an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, which celebrates individuals who embody the state's spirit of innovation.

Frank Gehry, one of the most prolific and accomplished architects of our time, has called Los Angeles his home since 1947, and has has built an architectural career that has spanned over six decades and produced public and private buildings throughout the world. One of the most notable buildings in Frank Gehry's Los Angeles portfolio is the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall. Gehry's work has earned him several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Pritzker Prize. Notable projects include Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower located in New York City; Opus Hong Kong Residential; Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France; the Biomuseo in Panama; the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; the West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California; and the Boulez Hall in Berlin.

The Colburn School gala concert performance is at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Sounds About Town series. Tickets for the concert performance are priced from $15-$45.

The concert will be followed by a post-gala dinner where the honorees will receive their awards from President and CEO Sel Kardan. The gala chairs are Carol Colburn Grigor and Murray Grigor, and the honorary co-chairs are Carol and Warner Henry, Ann and Robert Ronus, Alyce de Roulet Williamson and Warren Williamson, and Marilyn Ziering.

Event Information

Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 7 pm

Walt Disney Concert Hall

COLBURN ORCHESTRA

Michael Tilson Thomas, Guest Conductor

Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major, "Titan"

Annual Gala Dinner following the concert; location to be announced.

Cocktail Attire

Colburn Gala Chairs

Carol Colburn Grigor

Murray Grigor

Honorary Co-Chairs

Carol and Warner Henry

Ann and Robert Ronus

Alyce de Roulet Williamson

Warren Williamson

Marilyn Ziering

Tickets start at $15.

Visit colburnschool.edu for more information.

Gala concert and dinner tickets start at $1,000.

For more information contact Amy Bryan, abryan@colburnschool.edu, 213-621-1047.

About Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas is Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, America's Orchestra Academy, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. His grandparents, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, were founding members of the Yiddish Theater in America. His father, Ted Thomas, was a producer in the Mercury Theater Company in New York before moving to Los Angeles where he worked in films and television. His mother, Roberta Thomas, was the head of research for Columbia Pictures.

Mr Tilson Thomas began his formal studies at the University of Southern California where he studied piano with John Crown and conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl. At age nineteen he was named Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. He worked with Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Copland on premieres of their compositions at Los Angeles' Monday Evening Concerts. During this same period he was the pianist and conductor for Gregor Piatigorsky and Jascha Heifetz.

In 1969, after winning the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, he was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That year he also made his New York debut with the Boston Symphony and gained international recognition after replacing Music Director William Steinberg in mid-concert. He was later appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra where he remained until 1974. He was Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic from 1971 to 1979 and a Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1981 to 1985.

In February 1988 he inaugurated the New World Symphony, a post-graduate orchestral academy. In addition to their regular season in Miami Beach, they have toured in Europe, South America, Japan, Israel, and the United States. New World Symphony graduates have gone on to major positions in orchestras worldwide. In 1991 Mr Tilson Thomas and the orchestra were presented in a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF in the United States, featuring Audrey Hepburn as narrator of From the Diary of Anne Frank, composed by Mr Tilson Thomas and commissioned by UNICEF. This piece has since been translated and performed in many languages worldwide. In 2011 the New World Symphony moved into a new campus designed by Frank Gehry.

In August 1995 he led the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in the premiere of his composition Showa/Shoah, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Thomas Hampson premiered his settings of poetry by Walt Whitman, Renee Fleming premiered his settings of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the San Francisco Symphony premiered his concerto for contrabassoon entitled Urban Legend. As a Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist from 2003 to 2005, he had an evening devoted to his own compositions which included Island Music for four marimbas and percussion, Notturno for solo flute and strings and a new setting of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Other compositions include Street Song for brass instruments and Agnegram, an overture for orchestra. As Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1995, Mr Tilson Thomas led the orchestra on regular tours in Europe, the United States and Japan as well as at the Salzburg Festival. In London he and the orchestra have mounted major festivals focusing on the music of Steve Reich, George Gershwin, Johannes Brahms, Toru Takemitsu, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the School of St. Petersburg, Claude Debussy and Gustav Mahler.

Mr Tilson Thomas became the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1995 and his tenure has been broadly covered by the international press. With the San Francisco Symphony he has presented eighteen festivals including ones devoted to the music of Mahler, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Wagner and American Mavericks.

His recorded repertoire of more than 120 albums includes works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky as well as his exploration of the music of Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Steve Reich, John Cage, Ingolf Dahl, Morton Feldman, George Gershwin, John McLaughlin, and Elvis Costello. With the San Francisco Symphony label, SFS Media, his ongoing series of recordings include the symphonies of Gustav Mahler and Robert Schuman, West Side Story, and works of Beethoven, Ives, Debussy, and John Adams.

Mr. Tilson Thomas's television work includes a series with the London Symphony Orchestra for BBC Television, the television broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts from 1971 to 1977 and numerous productions on PBS Great Performances. Mr Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony produced a multi-tiered media project, Keeping Score, which includes a television series, websites, radio programs, and programs in schools.

Mr Tilson Thomas is a Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, was Musical America's Musician of the Year and Conductor of the Year, Gramophone Magazine's Artist of the Year, and has been profiled on CBS's 60 Minutes and ABC's Nightline. He has won eleven Grammy Awards for his recordings. In 2008 he received the Peabody Award for his radio series for SFS Media, The MTT Files. In 2010, President Obama awarded him with the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States.

About Frank Gehry

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, served in the US army in 1955, then studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design under the GI Bill. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned over six decades and produced public and private buildings throughout the world. Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry's work include a particular concern that people exist comfortably within the spaces that he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of their sites and the budgets of his clients.

His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field. He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, and his buildings have received over 100 national and regional A.I.A. awards. In 1977, Mr. Gehry was named recipient of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Gehry was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1987. In 1989, he was named a trustee of the American Academy in Rome and was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, perhaps the premiere accolade of the field, honoring "significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture." In 1991, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1992, he received the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture) from the Wolf Foundation. In the same year, he was named the recipient of the Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association to "honor outstanding contributions to the development, popularization, and progress of the arts." In 1994, he became the first recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award for lifetime contribution to the arts and was bestowed with the title of Academician by the National Academy of Design. In 1998, Mr. Gehry received the National Medal of Arts, became the first recipient of the Friedrich Kiesler Prize and was named an Honorary Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1999, Mr. Gehry received the Lotos Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club, that same year, he received the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2000, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts. In 2002, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003, Mr. Gehry was inducted into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and he was designated as a Companion to the Order of Canada. In 2006, Mr. Gehry was a first year inductee into the California Hall of Fame, and he was awarded Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour from the French Government. Subsequently in 2014, Mr. Gehry was elevated to the rank of Commandeur of the National Order of the Legion of Honour. In 2008, Mr. Gehry received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale. In 2010, Mr. Gehry received the John Singleton Copley Award from the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust, and he received the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Award in New York. In 2014, Mr. Gehry received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. The third annual Getty Medal was awarded to Mr. Gehry in 2015. In 2016, Mr. Gehry was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal and the Leonore and Walter Annenberg Award for Diplomacy through the Arts from the Foundation for Arts and Preservation in Embassies. In November 2016, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama.

Mr. Gehry has received honorary doctoral degrees from Occidental College, Whittier College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, the Technical University of Nova Scotia, the Rhode Island School of Design, the California Institute of Arts, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the Otis Art Institute at the Parsons School of design, the University of Toronto, the University of Southern California, Yale Uiversity, Harvard University, the University of Edinburgh, Case Western Reserve, Princeton University, the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and the Juilliard School in New York City, New York. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Oxford. Mr. Gehry has held teaching positions at some of the world's most prestigious institutions including Harvard University, University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, University of Toronto, Columbia University, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and at Yale University where he still teaches today.

Mr. Gehry continues to be actively committed to philanthropic work. He is currently engaged in a number of pro bono design projects. These include the Children's Institute Inc., a headquarters for a children's nonprofit located in the heart of the Watts area of Los Angeles; the Jazz Bakery, a nonprofit performance space dedicated to jazz music in Los Angeles; and the Pierre Boulez Concert Hall in Berlin, a performance space for the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra uniting young musicians with diverse backgrounds from around the Middle East. Mr. Gehry has also been working on a masterplan for the Los Angeles River revitalization project. Additionally, he continues to support a number of causes particularly close to him, including Turnaround Arts California, a program that works to build arts education in all schools. He is also active in the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which is actively working to find the cure for Huntington's Disease.

Mr. Gehry's notable projects include: Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota; Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague; DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Maggie's Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, Scotland; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; Hotel Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain; Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Ontario; Peter B. Lewis Science Library in Princeton, New Jersey; Lou Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada; New Campus for New World Symphony in Miami, Florida; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City; Opus Residential Tower in Hong Kong; Signature Theatre in New York City; House for the Make it Right Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana; Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France; Biomuseo in Panama; the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; the West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California; and the Boulez Hall in Berlin, Germany.

Current projects include: residential projects in Atherton, Los Angeles, Aspen and Cabo San Lucas; King Street Development in Toronto, Ontario; the Grand Avenue Project, Los Angeles, California; La Maison LVMH - Arts, Talents, Patrimoine in Paris, France; the World Jewish Museum in Tel Aviv, Israel; Louis Vuitton in Seoul, Korea; the Los Angeles River revitalization project and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. Projects under construction include the LUMA / Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France; Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; Facebook Campus in Menlo Park, California; and the Battersea Power Station Development in London.

About the Colburn School

The Colburn School comprises four academic units united by a single philosophy that all who have a desire to study the performing arts should have the opportunity and access to excellent training. The degree granting Conservatory of Music, the open enrollment Community School of Performing Arts, the Music Academy for pre-college musicians, and the pre-professional Dance Academy, a program of the Colburn School's Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, provide training to over 2,000 students from the Los Angeles area and across the world. The renowned teachers, performers, and scholars that make up Colburn's dedicated faculty serve as invaluable mentors to guide students' artistic development. The Community School of Performing Arts acts as an entry point to performing arts education, offering beginning to pre-collegiate training in music, dance, and drama to students of all ages and skill levels. Young musicians from around the world study at the pre-college Music Academy, which features a rigorous curriculum of conservatory preparatory training to high school aged students. The pre-professional Dance Academy prepares a select class of young dancers for careers in ballet. Dance classes at the Community School and the Dance Academy are programs of the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Finally, the Conservatory of Music is one of the preeminent training grounds for classical musicians, with undergraduate and advanced degrees in music performance. A robust community engagement initiative delivers performing arts education to low-income students in the surrounding areas through outreach and scholarship programs. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the Colburn School's campus boasts state-of- the-art performance and rehearsal spaces. Each season, the school presents over 300 concerts and performances, many of which are free and open to the public, at its downtown home and throughout Southern California.

About the Colburn Orchestra

Founded in 2003, the Colburn Orchestra is the flagship ensemble of the Colburn Conservatory of Music. Under the direction of Music Director and Conductor Yehuda Gilad, the Colburn Orchestra performs for Southern California audiences at venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Ambassador Auditorium, Royce Hall, Segerstrom Concert Hall, and the Valley Performing Arts Center. Since its inception, Gilad and the esteemed faculty at Colburn have invited guest conductors, soloists, and composers to work with the Colburn Orchestra to mirror a professional orchestral experience. The Colburn Orchestra has made four commercial recordings, and concerts have been broadcast on Southern California's independent television station KCET for the arts series Open Call, as well as classical music radio station KUSC. Dedicated to serving the greater Los Angeles community, the Colburn Orchestra performs for schools in neighboring communities twice a year giving five concerts in a one-week period to school children of all ages.

About the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under the vibrant leadership of Music Director & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, presents an inspiring array of music from all genres - orchestral, chamber and Baroque music, organ and celebrity recitals, new music, jazz, world music, and pop - at two of L.A.'s iconic venues, Walt Disney Concert Hall (www.laphil.com) and the Hollywood Bowl (www.HollywoodBowl.com). The LA Phil's season extends from September through June at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and throughout the summer at the Hollywood Bowl. With the preeminent Los Angeles Philharmonic at the foundation of its offerings, the LA Phil aims to enrich and transform lives through music, with a robust mix of artistic, education, and community programs.