Apologies if there's already another thread on this topic.
here's my out-on-a-limb take on the search for the LA Phil’s next music director.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic finds itself in one of those rare interludes when the air feels held between breaths. The orchestra has changed music directors only a handful of times since the late nineteen-twenties, each appointment a pivot that spoke as much about the city as it did about the band. When Gustavo Dudamel bounded in, barely past twenty-five, he carried an open-armed optimism about youth and a faith in cosmopolitan culture. Before him, Esa-Pekka Salonen arrived from Helsinki with a modernist chill that reshaped the string sound and tipped the programming toward the unfamiliar. Now Dudamel is bound for New York, and the choice that follows will carry a similar charge.
Inside the hall, in the donor lounges where the champagne never seems to run out, there is a low hum of expectation: the next director should be a woman. Not as a novelty, but as an overdue fact. The thought brings its own quiet tangle of questions. Conductors don’t swap podiums like chess pieces; each comes with a distinct climate of temperament, taste, and public face. The puzzle is whether Los Angeles will repeat its habit of betting on a rising name or reach for a steadier hand with a map already drawn.
Tianyi Lu has already passed through the building’s bloodstream. A former Dudamel Fellow — a role that in Los Angeles operates as much as a proving ground as a résumé line — she has been slipping between European opera pits and symphony rosters, collecting prizes and building a repertoire that leans toward the contemporary. Her readings have a clarity that never feels antiseptic, a stage sense that never strains for effect. More to the point, the players know her body language; in a first season that often runs like a sprint, that sort of familiarity can be oxygen.
Anna Handler is the more perilous card. Younger still, fresh out of the same fellowship, she has already been called back to the Hollywood Bowl and has a Berlin post lined up that will expand her operatic range. Appointing her would echo the Dudamel leap — another conductor in the twenties age bracket, another jump into the unknown. It could dazzle. Or it could take a decade before anyone can say.
Elim Chan carries herself differently. Another alumna of the fellowship, she has since built a portfolio of European chief conductor posts and high-visibility festival slots. Her First Night at the Proms drew the sort of attention you can’t buy, and she has been testing the waters with American orchestras. On the podium she borders on theatrical, and in a city that treats spectacle as a civic virtue, that isn’t a drawback. If odds were being laid, hers might be the name to watch. She has a competitive pulse that’s hard to miss and an ease with the older, male donor cadre whose sway over the final decision will not be small.
Karina Canellakis and Nathalie Stutzmann hover at the edge of the frame, both with the credentials to sharpen the LA Phil’s global profile. Canellakis is tied to a long contract in the Netherlands and holds a guest post in London; Stutzmann runs the Atlanta Symphony and moves easily between the Met and Bayreuth. The question is whether either could give Los Angeles the time and obsessive focus the city has come to expect.
The pattern, once you see it, is plain. Los Angeles tends to gamble on conductors still in the process of becoming — artists who might, over a decade, reshape the sound, the repertoire, the reputation. Novelty is part of the bargain. By that logic, Lu or Chan fit the bill better than the established heavyweights. But the mood after the pandemic is less predictable. There’s a counterweight in the room for stability, for a name whose authority is already banked. The gender factor complicates the calculus — this would not be mere optics but a statement that the rules of orchestral leadership are in motion.
The real handicapping never appears in print. You can glimpse it in the programming grid: which guest weeks fall where, which concerts are linked to premieres or gala nights. This season, several of the names in play will get that slot. Chemistry can’t be scored, but when it happens, the room feels it in its bones.
The decision will move at the tempo of seasons, not months. And when the announcement comes, it will be dressed as if it had always been inevitable. The truth will be messier: a trail of whispered alliances, strategic invitations, and dinners that lasted past midnight. Whoever steps to the podium in the autumn of 2027 will take command of one of the world’s most restless orchestras — and an audience that doesn’t care much for looking back.
here's my out-on-a-limb take on the search for the LA Phil’s next music director.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic finds itself in one of those rare interludes when the air feels held between breaths. The orchestra has changed music directors only a handful of times since the late nineteen-twenties, each appointment a pivot that spoke as much about the city as it did about the band. When Gustavo Dudamel bounded in, barely past twenty-five, he carried an open-armed optimism about youth and a faith in cosmopolitan culture. Before him, Esa-Pekka Salonen arrived from Helsinki with a modernist chill that reshaped the string sound and tipped the programming toward the unfamiliar. Now Dudamel is bound for New York, and the choice that follows will carry a similar charge.
Inside the hall, in the donor lounges where the champagne never seems to run out, there is a low hum of expectation: the next director should be a woman. Not as a novelty, but as an overdue fact. The thought brings its own quiet tangle of questions. Conductors don’t swap podiums like chess pieces; each comes with a distinct climate of temperament, taste, and public face. The puzzle is whether Los Angeles will repeat its habit of betting on a rising name or reach for a steadier hand with a map already drawn.
Tianyi Lu has already passed through the building’s bloodstream. A former Dudamel Fellow — a role that in Los Angeles operates as much as a proving ground as a résumé line — she has been slipping between European opera pits and symphony rosters, collecting prizes and building a repertoire that leans toward the contemporary. Her readings have a clarity that never feels antiseptic, a stage sense that never strains for effect. More to the point, the players know her body language; in a first season that often runs like a sprint, that sort of familiarity can be oxygen.
Anna Handler is the more perilous card. Younger still, fresh out of the same fellowship, she has already been called back to the Hollywood Bowl and has a Berlin post lined up that will expand her operatic range. Appointing her would echo the Dudamel leap — another conductor in the twenties age bracket, another jump into the unknown. It could dazzle. Or it could take a decade before anyone can say.
Elim Chan carries herself differently. Another alumna of the fellowship, she has since built a portfolio of European chief conductor posts and high-visibility festival slots. Her First Night at the Proms drew the sort of attention you can’t buy, and she has been testing the waters with American orchestras. On the podium she borders on theatrical, and in a city that treats spectacle as a civic virtue, that isn’t a drawback. If odds were being laid, hers might be the name to watch. She has a competitive pulse that’s hard to miss and an ease with the older, male donor cadre whose sway over the final decision will not be small.
Karina Canellakis and Nathalie Stutzmann hover at the edge of the frame, both with the credentials to sharpen the LA Phil’s global profile. Canellakis is tied to a long contract in the Netherlands and holds a guest post in London; Stutzmann runs the Atlanta Symphony and moves easily between the Met and Bayreuth. The question is whether either could give Los Angeles the time and obsessive focus the city has come to expect.
The pattern, once you see it, is plain. Los Angeles tends to gamble on conductors still in the process of becoming — artists who might, over a decade, reshape the sound, the repertoire, the reputation. Novelty is part of the bargain. By that logic, Lu or Chan fit the bill better than the established heavyweights. But the mood after the pandemic is less predictable. There’s a counterweight in the room for stability, for a name whose authority is already banked. The gender factor complicates the calculus — this would not be mere optics but a statement that the rules of orchestral leadership are in motion.
The real handicapping never appears in print. You can glimpse it in the programming grid: which guest weeks fall where, which concerts are linked to premieres or gala nights. This season, several of the names in play will get that slot. Chemistry can’t be scored, but when it happens, the room feels it in its bones.
The decision will move at the tempo of seasons, not months. And when the announcement comes, it will be dressed as if it had always been inevitable. The truth will be messier: a trail of whispered alliances, strategic invitations, and dinners that lasted past midnight. Whoever steps to the podium in the autumn of 2027 will take command of one of the world’s most restless orchestras — and an audience that doesn’t care much for looking back.
