[2][3] When the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion opened its doors on December 6, 1964, the twenty-eight-year-old Zubin Mehta led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program that included violinist Jascha Heifetz and performances of Strauss' Fanfare and Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major.

The Mark Taper Forum, "scandalizing the power structure of Los Angeles," according to its artistic director Gordon Davidson, with its provocative opening production of John Whiting's The Devils.

[citation needed] Since its opening in 1964, The Music Center has seen the American debuts of Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the world premieres of The Shadow Box, Zoot Suit, Children of a Lesser God, and Angels in America at the Taper, and performances by Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Katharine Hepburn, and Maggie Smith at the Ahmanson.

[citation needed] The Philharmonic and L.A. Master Chorale joined forces to provide the accompaniment to Eisenstein's restored silent film classic Alexander Nevsky.

[citation needed] The Music Center hosts the annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration on Christmas Eve since 1960 with performances from singers, dance groups and musicians.

The 10-ton, 29-foot bronze sculpture Peace on Earth (1969 by Jacques Lipchitz, a Cubist sculptor who fled the Nazi occupation of Paris, was dedicated on May 4, 1969, and originally installed as the focal point of the Music Center plaza.

His mammoth bronze sculpture shows a dove descending to Earth as a spirit of peace, further symbolized by a Madonna standing inside a tear-shaped canopy, supported by reclining lambs.

The architects of The Music Center, Welton Becket and Associates, opposed placing sculpture in the plaza between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Mark Taper Forum.

[9] Three years after the Peace on Earth installation in 1982, Frederick and Marcia Weisman donated the bronze sculpture Dance Door (1978) by Robert Graham to the Music Center.

Over the past ten years, The Music Center has developed an ambitious dance presentation program, which has established a distinguished reputation – locally, nationally, and internationally.