The Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group is to give the US premiere of Colin Matthews’s Continuum for mezzo-soprano and large ensemble. Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct the group on 11 January 2005 in the Walt Disney Hall.

One of Matthews’s most important recent scores, the 40-minute Continuum sets French, Italian and English texts by Rainer Maria Rilke and Eugenio Montale and has been described in the press as “dazzling” and “remarkable” and striking”, with The Times (London) describing it as “ever more masterly on each rehearing.”

It will be the second recent high-profile West Coast premiere for Matthews – his 13-minute Reflected Images for orchestra received its first performances by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas in October 2003.