LA Phil

Grammy winners Renée Fleming and Béla Fleck join forces for The Fiddle and the Drum, an evening of Appalachian folk music marking America's 250th anniversary, her expressive singing set against his banjo virtuosity and full My Bluegrass Heart band. Aoife O'Donovan joins on vocals alongside fiddle, mandolin, dobro, bass, and guitar for a night of mountain songs, haunting ballads, and folk hymns.

Pat Benatar, a four-time Grammy winner, and guitarist and producer Neil Giraldo were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame together in 2022, decades after building the sound behind rock staples “Love Is a Battlefield,” “Heartbreaker,” “We Belong,” and “Invincible.” The duo brings hit after hit to Walt Disney Concert Hall for one night.

Global piano star Lang Lang, who has performed at the Olympics and for Pope Francis and topped Billboard charts, returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall for an all-solo recital spanning Mozart's playful Rondo, two Beethoven sonatas including the “Pathétique,” and Spanish-flavored works by Albéniz and Granados. He closes with two pieces by his self-described piano hero, Franz Liszt, including the Consolation No. 2 he calls “a whispered prayer that suddenly opens up into something universal.”

Elim Chan conducts her own symphonic take on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for shaping the score “as if she were born to conduct ballet.” Yefim Bronfman joins for Liszt's Second Piano Concerto, the same piece that launched his career at age 15 and which Bachtrack says he now delivers “with punch and flair,” alongside unexpected poetry.

Members of the LA Phil perform Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2, a piece so demanding the composer admitted it's “a trifle nasty to play,” alongside Brahms' String Sextet No. 2, written after a failed relationship the composer said left him finally “freed.” Doors open at 6:30pm with a complimentary glass of wine before the performance.

Elim Chan leads the LA Phil through Debussy's hazy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, a work Pierre Boulez said “breathed new air into the art of music,” and Stravinsky's bold, Picasso-esque Petrushka. In between, violinist Karen Gomyo, praised by the Chicago Tribune as “a first-rate artist of real musical command,” gives the world premiere of Samuel Adams' Violin Concerto, son of LA Phil Creative Chair John Adams.

Clark Wilson, the only organist to win both Technician of the Year and Organist of the Year from the American Theatre Organ Society, performs a live score on the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall organ for John S. Robertson's 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, considered the first great American horror film and John Barrymore's first virtuoso screen performance. A Halloween night of silent-era horror at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Academy Award winner Michael Giacchino hosts a Halloween doubleheader: a first look at Headless, his new musical with collaborators Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson inspired by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, followed by the LA Phil performing his Werewolf by Night score, called a “full-on endorphin rush for horror nerds,” live to picture. Sarah Hicks conducts Marvel's monster-hunter tale in full gothic style.

Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, the composer's own meditation on fate and “the fatal power which prevents one from attaining happiness.” Saxophonist Steven Banks, whom the Seattle Times says moves “between soprano and alto saxophones as if an actor playing multiple roles,” joins for Billy Childs' Diaspora, a concerto built on poetry by Maya Angelou, Claude McKay, and Nayyirah Waheed.