Seth MacFarlane Backs LACO Fanfare Series by Six Hollywood Composers

LOS ANGELES — John Williams is scheduled to debut the first in a series of new fanfares for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in fall 2027, as the ensemble prepares to move into its Frank Gehry-designed home, Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall.

The project, curated and financially backed by entertainment mogul Seth MacFarlane, brings together Williams, Ludwig Göransson, Thomas Newman, James Newton Howard, John Powell and Joel McNeely. Their original works, each five to seven minutes long, will open select LACO concerts.

The 1,000-seat hall is under construction in downtown Los Angeles as the centerpiece of a 100,000-square-foot expansion of the Colburn School campus. Designed by Gehry Partners, it is engineered for chamber music and dance, with a dedicated, acoustically optimized space for LACO. The 42-player orchestra is significantly smaller than the neighboring Los Angeles Philharmonic, which performs with more than 100 musicians at Walt Disney Concert Hall, also designed by Gehry.

McNeely, a longtime musical partner of MacFarlane, initiated the collaboration. McNeely’s wife, Margaret Batjer, is LACO’s concertmaster. The composer is an Emmy winner who also works as a conductor.

The other composers bring a range of film credentials: Göransson is a two-time Oscar winner known for *Black Panther* and *Oppenheimer*; Newman has received 15 Oscar nominations and comes from one of Hollywood’s historic musical dynasties; Howard has scored more than 150 films; and Powell is an Oscar nominee known for high-profile animated and action features. Williams has won five Academy Awards and received 54 nominations.

MacFarlane, creator of *Family Guy* and a five-time Grammy-nominated vocalist, recently released the album *Seth MacFarlane Sings the Muppets*. He has long advocated for live orchestral music, insisting throughout his career that his television projects use large live orchestras. *Family Guy* often employs 60 musicians, while the science-fiction series *The Orville* has used up to 90.

“It would somehow feel thin and hollow, and people may not know why their attention is drifting, but it would drift,” MacFarlane said of television projects produced without live musicians. “Hollywood has been doing it since pictures went to sound, and I hope they continue to do it for as long as we make film and television.”

He said commercial screen music is often the only exposure many modern listeners have to symphonic orchestration. As a child, he bought John Williams’ *Jurassic Park* soundtrack before seeing the film, an experience that shaped his appreciation for classical structures. “I think it’s just good for the brain to hear complex symphonic music,” he said.

Bringing film composers into LACO’s classical programming reflects the orchestra’s origins. Cellist James Arkatov founded it in 1968 with a group of local civic leaders to showcase Los Angeles’ premier studio musicians. A Russian emigrant who had been principal cellist for the Pittsburgh and San Francisco symphonies, Arkatov built a Hollywood career recording major film soundtracks and playing backing sessions for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald.

Under its first music director, Sir Neville Marriner, LACO became an elite performance outlet for musicians who spent their days recording on Hollywood scoring stages. That dual identity continues: many core players record television and film soundtracks by day, then perform works by Bach, Mozart and contemporary composers at night.

“We really thought about… ‘What statement can we make to Los Angeles and to the performing arts world that really shows who we are?’” said LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader. “And it really was this tie to Hollywood, to Los Angeles, to our musicians themselves.”

Cadwallader described the fanfare format as a “bursting, effervescent moment of music,” akin to the brass-heavy opening of *Star Wars*, and intended as a celebratory “amuse-bouche” for the orchestra’s new era. The fanfares will be performed at Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall and the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.