Randall Goosby featured in the LA Times 2021 Classical Music Highlights List
Commentary: The faces and facets of classical music’s year of emergence
By Mark Swed
Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2021
We are not butterflies, winged and free, all splendor, released from our pandemic chrysalis. After our 2020 arts annus horribilis, we foresaw celebratory champagne corks popping and fireworks exploding by 2021’s end. That fantasy has been replaced by the reality that every step needs to be taken gingerly and that not all steps can move forward. Gathering remains a series of negotiated risks, ever more so now with the unpredictable rise of the Omicron variant.
Still, we emerge. And in a heartening number of instances, we have done so in glory, thanks to the many extraordinary first-emergers who made it happen. Here is some of what they’ve brought us indoors, outdoors, in our backyard, around the world and in the digital beyond.
EMERGING DIVERSITY. This is also the year in which Black conductors and musicians have rightfully been more prominent in classical music lineups. In January, Los Angeles Opera named Black tenor Russell Thomas its latest artist in residence. And when the company emerged from the pandemic this fall, it did so with mainstage productions of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” and Rossini’s “Cinderella” — all of which featured Black singers in leading roles. San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra music director Anthony Parnther made impressive appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and on the Jacaranda new music series, as did Berkeley Symphony music director Joseph Young in his debut with the Pasadena Symphony in a concert that also featured the radiant young — and yet another SoCal native — Black violinist Randall Goosby, whose Hollywood Bowl debut was a highlight of the summer.
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