Stockhausen, Cage, and Bettison at Green Umbrella concert

Meredith Monk's ATLAS is presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Yuval Sharon's production.

The Brooklyn Festival, a week-long celebration of the new music scene from New York City’s “most dynamic borough”, was launched on Tuesday 16 April with a Green Umbrella concert at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles.Interestingly enough, the festival came hard on the heels of another festival which ended Sunday, the Hear Now Music Festival.

The Barbican has scored itself something of a winner in securing the Los Angeles Philarmonic Orchestra to fulfil its International Associate Residency.

New music was the main and sole dish that last Tuesday’s Green Umbrella Concert at Disney Hall laid out, but for some audience members their encounter with these works might not be their first. To paraphrase NBC’s late 1990s marketing for its prime-time TV summer reruns: “If you haven’t heard it, it’s new to you.

At first hearing the idea of the music of Witold Lutosławski as the centerpiece of a Los Angeles Philharmonic “Green Umbrella” concert made a strangely incongruous impression. Music new or difficult is the usual fare of such a program.

The concert paired strong new works by Joan La Barbara, Nicole Lizée and Paola Prestini with compositions by Luciano Berio and George Crumb for a satisfying evening of adventurous works for voice.