Each year since its founding in 1919, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been hailed as Southern California’s leading performing arts institution. Today, under the dynamic leadership of Gustavo Dudamel the Philharmonic is recognised as one of the world’s outstanding orchestras. Both at home and abroad it has, as the Berliner Zeitung stated, “…proved that it belongs among the best in the United States.”

This is a view shared by the more than one million Southern Californians who experience performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic each year. There is a 30-week winter subscription season at Walt Disney Concert Hall and a 12-week summer festival at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, where “Music Under the Stars” has been a popular tradition since 1922.

But the orchestra’s involvement with Los Angeles extends far beyond regular symphony concerts in a concert hall. It embraces the schools, churches, and neighborhood centers of a huge and vastly diverse community. In fact, the Los Angeles Philharmonic devotes much of its energy and resources to ensuring that its presence is felt in every corner of Los Angeles.

The Philharmonic owes its birth to William Andrews Clark, Jr., a multi-millionaire and amateur musician, who established the city’s first permanent symphony orchestra in 1919. The 94 musicians of the new ensemble met for their first rehearsal Monday morning, October 13 of that year, under the direction of Walter Henry Rothwell, whom Clark had brought from the St Paul (Minnesota) Symphony Orchestra. Eleven days later, Rothwell conducted the orchestra’s première performance before a capacity audience of 2,400 at Trinity Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Following its opening season in 1919–1920, the orchestra made Philharmonic Auditorium, on the northeast corner of Fifth and Olive, its home for the next 44 years. Mr Rothwell remained the orchestra’s music director until his death in 1927. Since then, ten renowned conductors have served in that capacity: Georg Schnéevoigt (1927–1929), Artur Rodzinski (1929–1933), Otto Klemperer (1933–1939), Alfred Wallenstein (1943–1956), Eduard van Beinum (1956–1959), Zubin Mehta (1962–1978), Carlo Maria Giulini  (1978–1984), André Previn (1985–1989) and Esa-Pekka Salonen (1992–2009); and Gustavo Dudamel (2009–present).

Since its first season, the Philharmonic has made downtown Los Angeles its winter home. It was in December 1964 that it began its residency at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center of Los Angeles County.

In the fall of 2003, the Philharmonic took up residence in the acoustically superb, stunning Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall—the fourth performing venue in the Music Center complex. At the same time, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association vastly increased the number of concerts it presents during the winter season, which now includes jazz, world music, organ recitals, Baroque concerts, holiday programs, and much more.