1 WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

So shiny when it was first completed that the building drove neighbors crazy. But the real brilliance of this edifice, home to the LA Phil, has been to shine a light on LA’s burgeoning classical-music scene.

2 COLBURN SCHOOL, CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC

Located across the street from the Disney Hall and adjacent to the Museum of Contemporary Art, this stalwart conservatory was founded in 1950 as the preparatory wing of USC Thornton School of Music. It boasts a gifted faculty and the reconstructed Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rehearsal studio of Jascha Heifetz. Alumni include solo violinists Leila Josefowicz, Anne Akiko Meyers, and Jennifer Frautschi; violinist Robert Chen, concertmaster with the Chicago Symphony; and solo violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama. The school offers full scholarships.

3 LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC

Praised as one of America’s most forward-thinking orchestras, the LA Phil is housed in the impressive Walt Disney Concert Hall. LA-area music fans are awaiting the arrival of its soon-to-be music director Gustavo Dudamel, but the amazing Esa-Pekka Salonen commands the podium through the 2008-2009 season.

4 LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

The LACO was formed 40 years ago as an outlet for Hollywood’s talented film and recording arts players. Pianist Jeffrey Kahane, who has a knack for nurturing new string players, serves as music director. In 2005, the American Symphony Orchestra League awarded the LACO First Place Award for Programming of Contemporary Music.

5 THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (JASCHA HEIFETZ TAUGHT HERE)

The dynamic solo violinist and educator Midori serves as head of the strings department at this institution. The school has a great rep for its programs in orchestral studies, music scoring, and music industry arts. The school has a rich strings tradition: violinist Jascha Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky taught here.

6 UCLA MUSIC LIBRARY

This facility is creating a history database that will contain 50,000 tracks allowing people to hear and feel the music from America’s past. The database will include songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. Currently, the library holds 835 albums, equaling 14,232 tracks.

7 SCHOOL OF MUSIC AT THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS

With the advent of a recent $15 million donation from musician Herb Alpert, CalArts is creating innovative, cross-disciplinary programs that should be a hot-bed for creative musicians, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, and others.

8 DAKAH ORCHESTRA

Mozart meets Mingus as this experimental 63-piece orchestra blends classical, jazz, hip-hop, and other disciplines in a highly charged hybrid of sound.

9 SOUTHEAST SYMPHONY

When orchestras denied jobs to black classical musicians, the players started their own organizations. Sixty years later, this symphony is still going strong, performing everything from Baroque to contemporary music.

10 J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

This famous museum is also a chamber-music venue.

11 LA COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

Sunday chamber-music concerts enliven a trip to this stellar museum.

12 HOLLYWOOD BOWL

Summer home to the LA Phil and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, founded in 1945 by Leopold Stokowski.

13 THE DA CAMERA SOCIETY

This vibrant performance and educational organization is out to demystify chamber music, engaging 20,000 school kids each year. The society also hosts chamber-music concerts at historic sites throughout the county.

14 MUSICA ANGELICA

This critically acclaimed Southern California Baroque orchestra, under music director Martin Haselböck and concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock, enjoys an international reputation for excellence.

15 STRING PROJECT LA

A great place to learn alternative styles, from rock to jazz to hip-hop. Recent workshops have been hosted by fiddler Richard Greene, jazz violinist Christian Howes, and blues fiddler Lisa Terry.

The 2003 opening of deconstructivist architect Frank Gehry’s twisting titanium-covered Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles launched a flurry of activity that has seen the rise of the City of Angels as a key destination not only for classical-music lovers, but also string students. It’s the glistening new home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and its soon-to-be music director Gustavo Dudamel, as well as the edgy REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). Across the street from Disney Hall, the venerable Colburn School has ramped up activities at its music conservatory, attracting such notable string faculty as violinist Robert Lipsett, violist Paul Coletti, cellist Ronald Leonard, and the members of the Calder Quartet. Meanwhile, violin virtuoso Midori is making sweeping changes as the innovative head of the strings department at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. This year, Ralph Kirshbaum—the American-born cellist and educator who until recently had been living in the UK for the past 30 years—joined the list of celebrated educators flocking to the Thornton string faculty. In 2007, the Herb Alpert Foundation granted $30 million to UCLA to create the cross-disciplinary Herb Alpert School of Music; in April, the foundation donated another $15 million to the School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts. And LA boasts a thriving arts scene—from coffee houses and concert halls to world-class museums and libraries—to help stimulate curious minds. The metropolitan area boasts thousands of performance spaces. Gramophone recently dubbed LA’s contemporary music scene a “brave new world” populated by the likes of the Southwest Chamber Music ensemble and the far-reaching Nucleus Ensemble, but it’s also home to more than a dozen regional community orchestras. And, of course, there are career opportunities in the film and recording industries. All that and sunny, sandy beaches, too!

—Greg Cahill