Grant Gershon has been the artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale for 20 years. As he celebrates that milestone, however, it’s the future he wants to talk about, not the past.
“I really feel like the most important work — the most impactful work of the Master Chorale — is coming up,” says Gershon, sitting at a metal table in the garden tucked away behind Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the gala celebrating his 20th season recently took place.
His biggest goal going forward: to create a comprehensive youth choir where “geography and financial considerations would never be a barrier.”
Ensuring a vibrant, vital trajectory for choral music has long been key to Gershon’s vision for the Master Chorale. During his lengthy tenure, he has transformed the organization from a respected choir that performed what one long-time Master Chorale singer called “the chestnuts of the golden age of choral music” to one of the most adventurous, boundary-pushing and admired choirs in the country.
Gershon “decided to redefine the very idea of a professional choir — what it should be, and what it could be,” says former Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who first inspired Gershon to take up conducting after the pair worked together in 1992 at the Salzburg Festival. There, they collaborated with opera and theater director Peter Sellars on his staging of Olivier Messiaen’s opera “Saint François d’Assise.”
Gershon, who served as a rehearsal pianist and vocal coach for that project and refers to Salonen as his mentor, has “boundless artistic and musical curiosity,” Salonen notes. Gershon later went on to become Salonen’s assistant conductor at the L.A. Phil, subbing on his own for the very first time when Salonen’s wife went into labor with the couple’s second daughter, Anja Sofia.
“It was insane. It’s the kind of thing that would never happen nowadays, because there’s so much more structure,” says Gershon. “But they put me up there.”
Gershon continued to learn from Salonen and the L.A. Phil, occasionally working with the Master Chorale, before briefly moving with his wife to New York City. He returned to his home turf in 2001 when the Master Chorale hired him to succeed Paul Salamunovich, who had served as music director since 1991.
Under Gershon’s leadership, the Master Chorale has staged 45 world premieres and made 38 commissions of original music, says Jean Davidson, Master Chorale president and CEO. It has also succeeded in transforming a largely volunteer-based organization into one that boasts 100 professional member singers represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists.
“That Grant believes in contemporary composers with a commitment to risk-taking is gradually expanding the canon of choral music to be more inclusive,” says Davidson.
The chorus is increasingly talking about diversity, integration, inclusion and access, says assistant conductor Jenny Wong, and has made a point to feature singers from a wide variety of backgrounds and ethnicities. Two years ago, the chorus committed that 50% of their future programming would elevate work by composers from historically underrepresented groups in classical music, including people of color and women.
“In the last four years, I’ve sung in more languages than I ever did in my entire career, and that’s exciting,” says singer Amy Fogerson, who has been with the Master Chorale for 35 years.
Fogerson adds that Gershon arrived with a broader knowledge of modern music than the two previous conductors. “He also knew artists like John Adams and brought them into the Chorale. For me it’s like opening a new present on Christmas Day to be working in that kind of collaborative environment.”
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