LA Phil presents “Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings”

Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings is a 12-hour festival featuring live performances and art installations activating every corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall campus on November 16, 2024. Presented by the LA Phil, this edition of the LA Phil’s beloved new-music marathon explores the intersections of art, technology, and nature through the theme of field recordings.

Curated by Pulitzer-prize winning composer Ellen Reid, Noon to Midnight features the work of visionary composers performed by a host of Los Angeles-based ensembles and solo artists. The festival showcases how recordings and reflections of natural and built environments are being utilized in composed music for healing and meditative purposes, as a tool to resist climate change, as political statements, and for pure listening pleasure.

At the center of the program is the world premiere of Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, a groundbreaking new film-based artwork accompanied by live performances from the LA Phil New Music Group and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Audiences can also engage directly with the festival’s theme through intimate performances, a listening room, interactive installations, and conversations led by LA Phil’s Insight program.

Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings is an invitation to experience how sound changes us by participating in deeper forms of listening. Purchase tickets here.

Noon to Midnight is part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information, please visit pst.art.

Lightscape is an innovative multimedia artwork created by the artist Doug Aitken in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It’s a modern mythology propelled by music that asks the questions, “where are we now?” and “where are we going?” Lightscape is a shapeshifting act of contemporary storytelling that unfolds in various stages: a feature-length film, a multi-screen fine art installation, and a series of live musical performances.

The world premiere of the concert iteration of Lightscape caps off the LA Phil’s daylong Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings festival, with Grant Gershon leading the LA Phil New Music Group and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in a hypnotic series of original soundscapes and minimalist compositions to accompany Doug Aitken’s vivid moving images.

Following its concert premiere, Lightscape migrates to the Marciano Art Foundation in the form of a multi-screen art exhibition running from December 17, 2024 through March 15, 2025 with weekly live music activations curated by the LA Phil, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Doug Aitken. Tickets will go live on December 9th. To find out more visit lightscapeart.org.

Lightscape is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between Doug Aitken, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The project is generously supported by the Marciano Art Foundation; Birdrib Productions; Maria Seferian; and the Hillenburg Family. Additional support is provided by the Arison Arts Foundation; Joni* and Miles Benickes; Peter and Elizabeth Goulds, L.A. Louver; and Ron and Pamela Mass.

*In memoriam