L.A. Phil and London’s Barbican strike a deal

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Not only Angelenos, it seems, are excited about the approach of D-day -- that is, the day next fall when Gustavo Dudamel (right) will officially take up residence at Walt Disney Concert Hall as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Londoners apparently are also jazzed.

At any rate, the folks who run the Barbican Centre, the largest performing arts center in Europe, certainly are. They announced today that they have reached agreements with five foreign musical organizations to become its ‘International Associates’ -- groups that will have ongoing relationships with the center and that will eventually be in residence there for a time. The five are the Manhattan-based New York Philharmonic and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from Germany and the L.A. Phil.

Plans call for the Phil under Dudamel to first appear at the Barbican during the 2010-11 season and to take up residence there in the 2012-13 season. Next season, though, the center’s permanent resident band, the London Symphony Orchestra, will be playing John Adams’ new ‘City Noir.’ That’s the piece the Phil commissioned for Dudamel’s gala opening concert in Los Angeles. On D-day.

-- Craig Fisher