It may be the classiest tribute of them all.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra has commissioned a musical composition in honor of P-22, that beloved mountain lion who was euthanized last December and was buried in the Santa Monica mountains by tribal leaders. The intrepid cougar, who made his home in Griffith Park for 10 years, was famed for venturing from the distant Simi Hills and safely crossing both the 101 and 405 freeways — the only one of his kind to complete both of those risky crossings unscathed.
The piece, a five-minute fanfare entitled “Cool Cat,” was composed by Adam Schoenberg, an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated composer for film, TV and orchestras across the globe who resides in Eagle Rock. It will premiere on Sept. 12 at the Hollywood Bowl as an opener for LA Phil’s program that features works by Philip Glass and Gustav Holst.
P-22, (P stands for puma, another name for mountain lions, also called cougars) was part of a two-decade long study by the U.S. National Park Service of roughly 50 cougars in the Santa Monica Mountains hemmed in by freeways and threatened with inbreeding and extinction. His father was P-1.
The slick, stealth and at times feisty male lion who would venture outside park boundaries to prey on pet chihuahuas and appeared in close-ups on hundreds of homeowner video feeds, succumbed to internal injuries after being struck by a vehicle.
He reached Hollywood celebrity status for his tenacity and urban survival instincts, qualities shared by his human neighbors, and became the subject of murals, posters, museum exhibits, school art and science projects — and on Feb. 4 his own memorial celebration in front of 5,000 people at the Greek Theatre.
There’s a Congressional effort to put his image on a U.S. postage stamp. The Los Angeles City Council on March 15 passed a resolution to commission a statue for the Tom LaBonge Panorama Trail, a hiking path by the Griffith Observatory, near where P-22 lived his final 10…
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