Lightscape: Los Angeles Master Chorale

For over 60 years, the Grammy Award–winning Los Angeles Master Chorale has been a standard-bearer for choruses across America. Hailed for its powerful performances, technical precision and artistic daring, the Chorale reaches nearly 100,000 people a year through its concert series at Walt Disney Concert Hall, its international touring of innovative works and its performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and others.

Led by Grant Gershon, Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director; Associate Artistic Director Jenny Wong; and Interim President & CEO William Tully, the Master Chorale was named “the finest-by-far major chorus in America” by the Los Angeles Times. From intimate performances with just six or eight singers to full-scale collaborations featuring 100 voices, it consistently thrills audiences with its versatility and artistic depth, performing early choral works alongside pop classics and modern pieces as well as exclusive commissions from the world’s most innovative composers.

Voices of Master Chorale singers have been featured on numerous film scores including Star Wars – The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, Wicked, How to Train Your Dragon, Fantastic Four, and Superman (2025) as well as on the 2025 and 2026 Academy Awards, broadcast to over 19 million viewers around the world.
Recently, the Chorale toured its productions Heinrich Schütz’s Music to Accompany a Departure and Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, both directed by Peter Sellars, earning rave reviews across the globe. Süddeutsche Zeitung called performance of Lagrime di San Pietro “painfully beautiful,” while the Sydney Morning Herald praised Lagrime di San Pietro as “stunning … Their voices soared to the heavens.” After the Chorale performed in London, The Stage called Lagrime a “balm for the soul.” In his review of Music to Accompany a Departure, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times called the Chorale’s performance “transcendent” and “incomparably moving.”

Created by legendary conductor Roger Wagner in 1964, the Chorale is a founding resident company of The Music Center and choir-in-residence at Walt Disney Concert Hall. It has an industry-defining commitment to fostering new music and has commissioned composers including Louis Andriessen, Jeff Beal, Eve Beglarian, Reena Esmail, Gabriella Lena Frank, Shawn Kirchner, David Lang, Morten Lauridsen, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Ellen Reid, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Derrick Skye, Moira Smiley, Dale Trumbore, Chinary Ung, and Eric Whitacre. In 2023, the Chorale launched 25 in 5, an initiative to commission 25 new works over the course of five seasons. Composers featured in this series to date include Doug Aitken, Billy Childs, Saunder Choi, Jason Max Ferdinand, Ernesto Herrera, Marques L. A. Garrett, Zanaida Stewart Robles, Carlos Simon, Rufus Wainwright, and Hyowon Woo. The Chorale also enjoys a close relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In this role, the Chorale has appeared on numerous recent Grammy Award-winning recordings with Gustavo Dudamel, including Mahler’s 8th Symphony, Gabriela Ortiz’s Revolución diamantina, and Thomas Ades’s Dante.

The Master Chorale’s renowned education programs include Voices Within residencies, where students find their creative voices to write and perform their own songs, and the expansive Oratorio Project for high school students. The Chorale also presents the annual High School Choir Festival, a yearlong program that culminates with teenagers from around the Southland performing in Walt Disney Concert Hall. In May 2025, the High School Choir Festival celebrated 36 years as one of the longest-running and widest-reaching arts education programs in Southern California. The Chorale’s newest education program, Youth Chorus LA, launched in the 2024/25 season bringing free music and choral lessons to students grades 3 to 6, which prepares future generations of choral singers and uplifts communities through the transformative power of choral music.

Grammy Award–winning conductor Grant Gershon, Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, has been hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership, and for eliciting technically impeccable and emotionally committed performances. The Los Angeles Times has proclaimed the Chorale “the best-by-far chorus in America” under Gershon, a reflection on both his programming and performances. In April 2022, Chorus America honored Gershon with the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art, in recognition of his career-spanning leadership in the field of choral music.

In July of 2023, Gershon and the Chorale made a triumphant return to the famed Salzburg Festival with Music to Accompany a Departure (Heinrich Schütz), directed by Peter Sellars. About the performances, the Süddeutsche Zeitung declared, “Everything is warmth, radiance and emotion”, and the Augsburger Allgemein wrote, “And what a choir! Flawless intonation…light-flooded transparency and an almost unearthly tonal richness.” In 2025, the Chorale toured this groundbreaking production to Paris and Brussels.

Gershon enjoys a close working relationship with many of the leading opera composers of our time, including his long-time friend and collaborator John Adams. He led the world premiere performances of Adams’ opera Girls of the Golden West, and his theater piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. Adams wrote his two-piano masterpiece Hallelujah Junction for Gershon, who premiered it with fellow pianist Gloria Cheng. Gershon also led the world premieres of two operas that have quickly become classics: Daniel Catán’s Il Postino (for LA Opera) and Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath (for Minnesota Opera).

Gershon has led more than 200 performances with the LA Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing an enormous range of choral music, from the early pillars of the repertoire to newly commissioned works. With the Chorale Gershon has led world premiere performances of major works by composers including Michael Abels, Louis Andriessen, Jeff Beal, Eve Beglarian, Billy Childs, Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ricky Ian Gordon, Shawn Kirchner, David Lang, Morten Lauridsen, Steve Reich, Ellen Reid, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chinary Ung.

In addition to the Grammy Award–winning (Best Choral Performance) Mahler: Symphony No. 8 with Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic, Gershon’s discography with the Chorale includes recordings of music by Nico Muhly, Henrik Gorecki, David Lang, and Steve Reich for Decca, Nonesuch and Cantaloupe Records. He has also led the Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks, including, at the request of John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. On DVD he has recorded and filmed Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Daniel Catán’s Il Postino with L.A. Opera for Sony Classical.

As Resident Conductor of LA Opera for several seasons, Gershon led the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in November 2018. He made his acclaimed company debut with La Traviata in 2009 and subsequently conducted productions of Il Postino (world premiere), Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann, Tosca, The Pearl Fishers, and The Magic Flute. Gershon has frequently led opera performances with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts—most recently La Bohème in the summer of 2024.

In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the historic Trinity Wall Street. He has been featured on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center and the Making Music series at Zankel Hall. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Salzburg, and Vienna festivals; Teatro Colon in Buenos Aries, the Barbican in London, and the Paris Philharmonie. He has worked closely with numerous legendary conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, and his mentor, Esa-Pekka Salonen.