Best known for electronic music chart-toppers, Moby's upcoming orchestral debut finds the artist ready for his second act and more.

There is a verdant gaggle of new trees in the yard of Moby&rsquo;s Los Angeles home and work compound where, just days before, was a shimmering symbol of SoCal success.

&ldquo;Getting rid of my pool and replacing it with this miniforest seems like one of the best things I&rsquo;ve done,&rdquo; he demures amidst the&nbsp;freshly planted Canary Island Pines.

For the last eight years Moby, who turned&nbsp;53 on September 11, has embraced his new life in L.A. after decades in New York, where he was as infamous for his dance-hall debauchery as he was famous for his career as musician, composer, and performer. &ldquo;New York was paradise when I was a drunk. And the Lower East Side was a drunken playground,&rdquo; he admits, fingering his now graying beard, but without a whiff of nostalgia.

That decision to decamp and embrace a new lifestyle, one often centered around progressive causes, was, he said, key to his being able to celebrate an important milestone this year: 10 years of sobriety.

October 12 will be another milestone for Moby. That&rsquo;s the date of his debut orchestral performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. &ldquo;The night will feature music from some of my better known songs from Play and 18 as well as some of my favorite L.A.-based singers as special guests,&rdquo; he said, a gleam in his eye perceptible even through his trademark dark-framed glasses.

&nbsp;

Let&rsquo;s talk about &ldquo;L.A. Moby.&rdquo; You had your vegan caf&eacute; in New York, but it seems like right when you moved west, you came out as a major advocate and activist&mdash;for veganism, animal rights, environmentalism, and other progressive causes including now a very strong stance against Trumpism. What&rsquo;s the connection between this place and this awakening in you?

Pre-sobriety, to my shame, a lot of external things concerned me&mdash;not to sound too Southern California: my career, being invited to the right parties, dating the right people, good reviews. The last 10 years has been this sort of weird, spiritual, interesting&mdash;I can&rsquo;t say progression&mdash;but path.

Why not progression?

Because a path can be circuitous. [Laughs] So one of my daily prayers is just to be of service. I learned that the more selfish I am, the more unhappy I am and the less things work out. The more I am humble and try to be of service, the more things&mdash;selfishly, even paradoxically&mdash;are better. My parochial concerns are so tiny compared to the concerns I have as an activist. So it&rsquo;s made me reprioritize for now: I do care more about activism than my own career.

Sometimes, though, to be a good advocate for the issues you care about, it can help to be a big public persona. But it&rsquo;s tricky; the thing to be wary of is how much of it is ego, wanting accolades or respect? It&rsquo;s human to want those things but the causes are bigger than anything about me. Of course, for some people though, it&rsquo;s second nature&mdash;like Trump, because that&rsquo;s all there is: There is no cause except for self-promotion.

How&rsquo;d your upcoming debut concert with the L.A. Phil come about?

I went backstage after seeing Bryan Ferry at the Hollywood Bowl and the woman who books the L.A. Philharmonic asked if I&rsquo;d do something. I said, &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; They offered me the Bowl first but I wanted to do something in the Disney Concert Hall, which is built for an orchestra and one of the world&rsquo;s most perfect acoustic venues.

Can you describe your relationship to orchestral music?

The music I&rsquo;ve made the last few decades, it has a lot of ostensibly classical elements. I use a lot of strings, but because I do everything at my home [studio], I tend to work with sample libraries. So, the only times I&rsquo;ve worked with an orchestra were when I&rsquo;ve worked on films like the Jason Bourne movies and some of [director] Michael Mann&rsquo;s movies.

Oddly enough, I had a lot of classical music in my life. I grew up playing classical guitar and I studied music theory. My mom had been a pianist. An apocryphal family story is that my great-grandmother taught classical composition to Arthur Fiedler, who became the conductor of the Boston Pops. I&rsquo;ve always loved the power of classical music to convey really powerful emotion, even with a very limited lexicon.

What do you mean by &ldquo;a very limited lexicon&rdquo;&mdash;not an orchestra?

Right, if you think about, like, Beethoven&rsquo;s &ldquo;Moonlight Sonata&rdquo; (Piano Sonata No. 14). It&rsquo;s so beautiful, heartbreaking, and poignant&mdash;and it&rsquo;s one instrument. And there are no words. You just strip everything away and you just have one piano.

So what happened to the deep connection to classical music?

When I was nine I learned to play the guitar. And then a few years later, I heard punk rock for the first time and then tried to unlearn everything!

What do you hope to achieve with this concert?

I have seen some bands perform with an orchestra where it is an afterthought for them. So what I don&rsquo;t want to do is put the band up front and the orchestra in the back. And there won&rsquo;t be any electronics, no dance beats, no synthesizers. What I do want is to really focus on the orchestral elements. Mostly, I&rsquo;m looking forward to the beauty and the grandeur of it.

Moby, Reinvented

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Moby, Reinvented

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