PEOPLE who attend concerts by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra are often taken aback by how young its music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, is.

Although the Finnish conductor is 50 this year, he looks at least a decade younger. And he was just 31 when he succeeded Andre Previn in the job in 1989.

He tells Life! in a recent telephone interview: 'LA has a habit of hiring young conductors. Here, youth is an asset.'

He adds: 'When I first conducted the orchestra in the 1980s, I sensed a strong connection and somehow knew this orchestra would play an important part in my life.'

As part of the Singapore Sun Festival, he will conduct the LA Philharmonic Orchestra in two concerts here this weekend - with Korean-American violinist Sarah Chang tonight and with Russian Israeli pianist Yefim Bronfman on Sunday night.

Ask the conductor if the LA Philharmonic has changed in 19 years of working with him and he says: 'We have taken on 50 new musicians. You can imagine that this has altered the orchestra quite a bit. Things changed as an organic process, rather than something extremely dramatic.'

Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!