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Welcome Back: LACO at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Saturday, June 26 at 7:00pm

On Saturday, June 26, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra invited vaccinated supporters to gather at Walt Disney Concert Hall for a celebratory performance—a musical victory lap of sorts for having emerged from the pandemic’s deafening silence. The scheduled program was of a familiar LACO construction: something old, something new, something showy.

The Old: Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.4, “Italian,” which closed the scheduled program, was performed with the incredible degree of precision and musical nuance we have come to expect from LACO. Music Director Jaime Martín has an incisive musical intuition for bringing unexpected details to the foreground of the music, which breathes new life into even the most well-known and loved works in the canon. Here was no exception, the intricate details of Mendelssohn’s rapidly-animated textures emerging in the spaces of longer melodic lines. As an accomplished performer himself, Martín brings a natural sense for stepping back and entrusting the musicians to do what they do best; the Mendelssohn, as a result, felt fresh and immediate, while always mantaining an unambiguous coherence.

Juan Pablo Contreras’s chamber arrangement of his orchestral work, Mariachitlán, roused the hall with an energetic juxtaposition of musical textures that drop the listener into the vibrant intersection of traditions, styles, and sounds of Guadalajara. An unmistakable tribute to mariachi  overlaps with passages evoking the guitar, soloistic moments for the brass, strings, and harp, and a startling whistle which initiates a chant for which the piece is titled. There is a romanticism and a grit to Mariachitlán that both performers and audience responded to: Contreras’s writing feels fun and serious, fractured and coherent, modern and traditional.

The program’s opening work, Variaciones Concertantes was the showy one. Written by the great Argentinian composer, Alberto Ginastera, in the middle of the 20th century, the work is beautiful, effective, and haunting, revealing a strong influence by Aaron Copland not only in its orchestration, but also in the personal approach to incorporating folk material. Principal Cello Andrew Shulman and harpist Elizabeth Zosseder performed a stunning and intimate duet that opens the work, which unfolded into episodes of lively, shimmering episodes that showcased most of the ensemble’s principal musicians including notable solos by Erik Rynearson (Principal Viola), Ken Monday (Principal Bassoon), Sandy Hughes (Acting Principal Flute), Claire Brazeau (Principal Oboe) and David Grossman (Principal Bass), among others. Concertmaster Margaret Batjer’s virtuosic performance on Variaciones was truly extraordinary, with impeccable musicianship and phrasing that enraptured the audience throughout the concerto-like violin solo. Martín managed the considerable technical aspects of Ginastera’s writing while threading the variations with a sense of continuous, fluid development that anchored the choreography of solos moving through the ensemble.

After the scheduled program, Martín returned to an enthralled audience to thank those supporters who made this year—and this concert—possible. A touching, personal flute performance by Martín of Telemann’s Cunando, accompanied by Shulman on cello, was followed by an upbeat performance of Gerónimo Giménez’s Intermedio de la Boda de Luis Alonzo by the ensemble. But I was particularly struck by the sincerity and depth of gratitude evident in the hall, not only from the musicians towards their audience of supporters, but from the audience towards their musicians. These two pillars of our music community, LACO and Walt Disney Hall, remind us that making art is not just entertainment. After a year of prolonged isolation, the immeasurable loss of loved ones, and a persistent sense of uncertainty, making art reminds us what we do still have, what we do still share. Seeing that reminder worn on the faces both on and off stage assigned real weight to the words we have been waiting to hear:

Welcome Back.

LACO’s second live performance since the pandemic will be happening on Thursday, July 1 at The Huntington in San Marino. The program includes the original 1915 version of de Falla’s extraordinary sung ballet El amor brujo conducted by Music Director Jaime Martín and featuring 

LA’s own celebrated mezzo soprano Suzanna Guzmán. Martín also leads Debussy’s iconic Prélude à “L’après-midi d’un faune” and the world premiere of KiMani Bridges’ The Flower. For more information go to www.laco.org

Interviewing The Furies on P.M.S. (People Menstruate Show)

The Furies is a contemporary violin duo whose mission is to bring intersectional feminism into the concert hall through immersive performance experiences that challenge our audience and community, for us to learn more about the histories of women in a white male dominated canon, and to encourage audience members to demand more diverse programming from their musical institutions. New Classic LA caught up with the string duo to chat about their upcoming Equal Sound show on March 1st with ~Nois and all things PMS.

NCLA: What has the process of working through your upcoming show P.M.S. (People Menstruate Show) been like? Any similarities or differences in your preparations from A Cure for Hysteria?

Kate: Our new show, P.M.S. (People Menstruate Show) is an examination of the seriousness and the silliness surrounding the culture of menstruation. There are a lot of stereotypes about people who menstruate, some of them harmful, some of them silly, but all of them are important to address. It’s wild to me that I have been getting my period monthly since I was 12 years old, and I still feel awkward talking about it with friends, like it’s this big secret that we all know is there but would rather not talk about. We’ve watched a lot of old commercials selling period products in the process of working on this show, and it’s fun to think if an alien visited earth and only learned about menstruation by watching those commercials, what would they think it is?? Anyways it’s been pretty freeing to talk so much and so openly about menstruation in the making of this production!

Maiani: We’ve been experimenting with the presentation of our ideas without being too tied to our former show ACFH. Although ACFH has helped lay somewhat of a groundwork for us, we are not married to any one way of presenting our shows, which is so fun! With ACFH we presented a much more abstract show, whereas P.M.S. has a new approach; more direct and invasive… much like PMS itself.

Working on P.M.S. has been a cathartic experience. There are moments in the show that are taken from our personal life experiences and fears, so finding an artistic way of expressing these stories and fears requires a great deal of vulnerability, especially while crafting a show that includes media we don’t necessarily dominate. We strongly believe there is no one right way to make art, it’s a big part of our creative ethos, but I personally still have a way to go in unlearning some of the classical dogma that classical musicians are taught. We idealize the canon and the rigid code of conduct, and I find myself having to actively challenge the biases and fears that came with my formative musician years. All of that to say that we find it all too confining for what we as The Furies want to do. For example, I’m playing a gigue from Bach’s Partita 3, but Kate and I have decided to play around with how it’s presented. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say it will be a mixture of autobiographical experiences and anxieties as it relates to the loss of innocence/coming of age theme of this show.

We also find it interesting to explore the fact that Bach was a devout Christian and his greatest muse was his god. We are pairing what some would consider divine music with a theme that is often intentionally overlooked and also stigmatized in the ideals of organized religion: our biology. I think such veneration of customs demands a “sacrilegious” critique.

Kate: I think another big thing in this new production has been giving ourselves permission to try out some new shit. The best part about creating these two shows has been having a clear vision, and then learning whatever skills we need to learn to make that vision come true. We are trying a lot of things we were not taught to do in our classical training, like movement, comedy, electronics, singing, percussion, etc., and it’s been liberating and terrifying incorporating all these new performance techniques into our shows.

NCLA: Anything surprising or unexpected surface as you were creating the project?

Kate: It has been interesting to discover similarities in some of the feelings and responses that came up making this show in comparison to our hysteria show. On the surface, talking about menstruation can seem to be one thing, but actually it relates to so many other challenges that people face, and it was challenging to pick and choose which elements we wanted to focus on. For instance, our last show, A Cure for Hysteria, was about the concept of disenfranchising people who seem “hysterical,” and menstruation is a part of that. So it’s hard to isolate topics that deal with oppression from each other because they all intersect at some point. There are plenty of people who don’t menstruate, but are still subjected to feeling shame, loneliness, isolation, distrust in their own bodies and feelings. So in a way, though we are talking about menstruation, we are trying to address broader feelings that come with the ways in which our culture tries to use our own bodies againsts us, to discredit us, to make us question our own feelings and convictions.

NCLA: You recently treated New Yorkers to an evening with friends ~Nois. What can listeners expect for the LA double bill experience?

Maiani: One of the fun things about sharing a double bill with ~Nois is the contrast in how we present our programs. Despite our different styles (both in presentation and musical selection), what ties our sets together well is an informality and genuine interest in sharing our work. There is nothing pretentious about ~Nois; they are an amazing band who have successfully held on to the playfulness of music making. I hope our audience feels similarly about The Furies. We super enjoy listening to and playing with them, so perhaps we will play an encore together at the very end… we shall see!

NCLA: We are so fortunate to be able to use the arts as a platform for change and calling out social inequities, and The Furies don’t shy away from big subjects that are unabashedly female centric and socially taboo. How has this been received by audiences? Anything that you’ve discovered in these formative years as a duo?

Maiani: Our performances have generally been well received. On occasion there is an audience member who is uncomfortable and leaves mid show, and I’m actually fine with that. If some people don’t have an adverse reaction to our programs then we aren’t exactly doing a good job of presenting taboo topics.

Although we never doubted the thoughtfulness of our audience, we’ve discovered that most of them are much more receptive than we had expected. But of course that’s a limiting perspective as we have yet to play in very conservative cities. These formative years as a duo have taught us, among other things, that we want to create even more discomfort.

Kate: It’s been really informative for us to see how many of our peers and audience members crave live performance experiences that ask questions in a different way. We have been really fortunate so far to hear some great feedback at our shows. It’s been nice to see our musical community reach out wanting to share our ideas on their concert series or create new projects together.

It has also been revealing hearing some of the criticisms about the work we do. They often have less to do with the content and quality of the shows, and more to do with whether or not they think we’re jumping on a trend. It is just one more clear example of how there is this scarcity mindset in classical/new music communities, that somehow when we do the thing that challenges us and is a creative outlet for us, we somehow are taking away from other things people are doing. Maiani and I feel empowered by what we are doing.

Maiani: Ironically this criticism has come from people who’ve never attended our shows. We don’t think culture and music making is a zero-sum game.

NCLA: Anything else you would like to share?

Maiani: YES! We are having a tampon drive for The Midnight Mission! We will be collecting unopened boxes of tampons before and after our show. We hope that by encouraging people to donate boxes of tampons, we will not only help a large number of menstruators in need, but we will also motivate non-menstruators to get over their irrational discomforts of buying tampons… Doing good is a great motivator. A win-win!

LA Phil at 100: A birthday concert remembers institution’s history.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s very first performance, Walt Disney Concert Hall hosted (among other events) a Centennial Birthday Celebration Concert this past week.

The concert was foremost a celebration of the philharmonic’s past, bringing together conductors emeriti Zubin Mehta and Esa-Pekka Salonen to join Gustavo Dudamel, with short promotional videos linking each maestro’s turn at the podium. A last-minute program change pushed Salonen to the opening of the concert, with an excellent performance of Lutosławski’s 4th Symphony–a piece commissioned by the Phil under Salonen’s direction and premiered with the orchestra under Lutosławki’s own baton in 1993. The 4th symphony is one of the LA Phil’s great contributions to the orchestral repertoire; the work understands how to make the orchestra resonate, while also exploring new territory both for the musicians and conductor. In that way, its success reminds me of the relationship that the LA Phil’s has built with Andrew Norman over the past few years.

Mehta followed Salonen, first with Wagner’s Overture from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and then with a somewhat unconvincing performance of Ravel’s La valse. Still, the audience of this particular event seemed more interested in Mehta’s mere presence than Ravel’s intricate layerings. Further, had these works opened the concert (and so preceded the Lutosławski) as planned, the flow would likely have been less awkward.

Current music director Gustavo Dudamel led the final set, starting with Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite, which had some excellent moments, including a stunning lullaby, and featured several of the ensemble’s talented soloists. Dudamel was then joined by Mehta and Salonen for the premiere of a new commission by Daníel Bjarnason: From Space I Saw Earth. The piece, which uses all three conductors by splitting the ensemble into groups, is interesting in concept, exploring timelines and the compression and stretching of material (the piece was inspired by space exploration and the moon landing). In practice, though, while the choreography between the three conductors was interesting to watch, I’m not convinced that the three fully bought into the piece. As a result, there were interesting smears of texture, but the performance never quite achieved the level of detail or balance needed to give the audience much-needed landmarks to grab onto.

That being said, for what it was–a celebration with some music–the event was quite successful. It would have been hard to look around at all the talent, history, investment, and direction of the LA Phil without a heartfelt recognition of their significance to local and national arts community. At the same time, I could not ignore a thought which has become familiar this season: while there is certainly value to remembering its history and making bold marquis statements with famous names, works, and soloists, ultimately it is innovation that serves as the life-blood of the LA Phil, and which makes it relevant and important today.

LA Phil at 100: Looking Backward & Looking Forward

Thursday evening is the LA Phil’s Centennial Birthday Concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Recovering from a whirlwind previous season that saw volumes of new works, artists and commissions, this birthday concert looks to distill the Philharmonic’s past, present, and future into a tidy package. By bringing together conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Zubin Mehta, and Dudamel, the program highlights Los Angeles history from Stravinsky to Lutosławski, culminating with a bold glance into the future in the premiere of a newly-commissioned work by Daníel Bjarnason.

Bjarnason’s From Space I Saw Earth comes highly-anticipated, and rightfully so: the Icelandic composer has produced outstanding work in his residence with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, as well as in his collaborations with the LA Phil itself. But this new work pushes even those bounds, with all three of the towering conductors of the evening performing simultaneously on the new piece—a logistical undertaking rare in its conception, and made even more rare by the caliber of musicians involved. The idea is bold and beautiful, local and global, nostalgic and forward-looking, in a way that lends a sense of “ah, there she is” to the LA Phil that we know and love.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly to Bjarnason about the commission for From Space I Saw Earth, which is inspired (as many of his works are) by science and space. He says the piece plays on perspectives, the same musical material being stretched and compressed into parallel timelines which intersect and diverge over the course of the piece–me makes the analogy of how fermatas bring the breath back together in chorales, before they depart again. This effect is an interest reflected in much of his music, so the idea for multiple conductors presented a way to achieve it quite organically, albeit magnified by the considerable amount of freedom Bjarnason offers each conductor in how they move through the material. With this whole complex routine contained to the stage, the natural choreography of the performance, Bjarnason says, reinforces and dramatizes the effect of these independent sections diverging and converging.

The new work’s role in the program as a whole is well thought out. The freedom and resulting cumulative effect pairs well with the ad libitum sections granted to the conductor in the Lutosławski’s symphony (commissioned and premiered by the Phil in 1993 under the composer’s baton), which alternates smeared orchestral textures with tightly-coordinated passages. And, compared to the narrative drive of Stravinsky’s Firebird, I anticipate that Bjarnason’s rich sense of space and knack for detailed, bubbling orchestrations may wrap up the night with an opulent sonic blanket. Before any notes are even played, this concert already promises to be a fitting celebration of 100 years, to the day, since this philharmonic sprang to life, and a statement that it plans to lead us into the next 100.

LACO Season Opener: Martín makes new work feel like a classic, and a classic feel brand new.

Saturday’s opening concert inagurated a new era at Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra—one not only marked by a new conductor in Jaime Martín, but also a season that feels almost startlingly fresh in everything from its commissioning projects to its slick new logo and updated website.

LACO Director Jaime Martín with Andrew Norman PC: Michelle Shiers Photography

The season opened with the first installment of an Andrew Norman commission, aptly titled Begin. Norman’s writing was, expectedly, sensitive and immensely creative, with hocketing lines across the orchestra dissolving into a timbral stew before swirling and bubbling up into moments of coalescence. Norman’s particular brand of magic is creating a sense of impossible inevitability from even the most exploratory ideas, and Begin was no exception, arriving at intense, coordinated thrusts of sound that seem somehow simultaneously unimaginable and unavoidable. Like with his recent Sustain, in Begin Norman shows incredible maturity and restraint, always leaving a hint of his material devolving back into chaos. The orchestration was especially effective in articulating the drama of the piece, with quiet moments smeared thinly across the stage while tutti gestures are brought forward with thick, rich resonance; a conversational approach which helped reinforced the spirit of a concerto for chamber orchestra.

LACO director Jaime Marín with Anne Sofie von Otter PC: Michelle Shiers Photography

The performance by LACO was so lively and convincing that a newcomer might well have wondered what Berlioz and Beethoven were doing on the program of a new music ensemble. Anne Sofie von Otter was charming, but the Berlioz (and encores) that concluded the first half were effective, if unexceptional.  Martín managed the balance with von Otter’s soft mezzo-soprano voice quite well, lending the piece an easy nonchalance, and from a programming perspective, it was a sensible choice to follow the Norman (and seemed to resonate with many in the audience). Musically, though, it did not showcase the ensemble’s technical or musical potential, save a few of the cycle’s softest moments.

The performance of Beethoven Symphony No.7, on the other hand, was extraordinary. Martín brought his experience in the woodwinds section to his interpretation, bringing out Beethoven’s subtle lines and details as they move through the orchestra with incredible clarity. The work was precise and raucous, intimate and boisterous—all the dramatic contradictions that make Beethoven, well, Beethoven. And it was in this performance that Martín really showed the musical sensitivity that is his own magic, each adjustment he showed from the podium elicited a (somehow) more perfect music. From the minute details to the overarching form, LACO and Martín’s performance on the Beethoven was simply exquisite, and might be the best performance of it I have ever heard, live or recorded.

LACO conductor Jaime Martín PC: Michelle Shiers Photography

There are small things I could critique: the position of the second violin section really needs to be adjusted slightly to face the audience as they were much too quiet, and their sound, even when it cuts through, is muffled from being angled back towards the orchestra. The lack of young (or even middle-aged) audience members is also concerning, though LACO seems to be doing their part to reach out to younger audiences, and the Royce Hall performances certainly attract more young people to attend. But overall, what we learned from Saturday’s performance is that under Martín, LACO is an ensemble capable of making new works feel like established classics, and established classics feel brand new. Paired with an administration which is proving to have a nuanced understanding of the LA music scene and a real plan for the future, LACO is certainly the organization to watch this season.

Jaime Martín, flute virtuoso and conductor, takes the reins of LACO

LACO Music Director Jaime Martín PC: Ben Gibbs

LACO Welcomes Jaime!
Jaime Martín, Conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
September 28th, 8:00 pm at Glendale’s Alex Theater
September 29th, 7:00pm at Royce Hall

*See LACO.org for more information on open rehearsal, reception, and pre-concert festivities in honor of the opening of the season


On September 28th, flute virtuoso and conductor Jaime Martín will officially take the baton as Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. LACO is one of the institutions at the heart of the Los Angeles music scene, balancing excellent traditional programming with the commissioning of new works and a wildly adventurous SESSION series. The commencement of Martín’s role is, on the surface, a sensible import of the European tradition for an ensemble which shines in that repertoire—and certainly, this season does not shy away from tried-and-true major works, nor from utilizing Martín’s relationships with world-class soloists like Anne Sofie von Otter and Christian Tetzlaff. But there is more to this appointment than simply a conductor with deep ties to the global classical music scene: Martín is a sensitive and curious leader, whose passion for collaboration is already coming into focus for LACO. And in a moment when Los Angeles has an abundance of musical talent, creativity and energy, this combination might make Martín just the person to harness west-coast excitement into world-class refinement.

In anticipation of LACO’s opening concerts on September 28th and 29th, I was able to sit down with Martín to talk about his appointment as Music Director. He is charismatic and energetic, and he speaks about the ensemble and Los Angeles with a genuine spark in his eyes. Over the course of our conversation, the importance of relationships, trust, and freedom in his music-making emerged as clear through-lines. Looking at the programs and music of this coming season,  you get the sense that these are not just ideals, but foundational to the way he engages with and creates music.

With his background as a performer, it is natural that Martín treats his role at the podium with a deep sense of trust for the musicians in front of him. One of the things he values most, he says, is “if the musicians tell me after the concert that they had the feeling of being free; that they feel I let them breathe with the music.” And with a chamber orchestra of LACO’s caliber, that freedom has created some wonderful moments, already, under Martín’s baton. “There are no passengers in an orchestra, everybody is driving in a way,” Martín explains–and this core belief is evident in his responsiveness while leading the musicians, as well as in his commitment to bring world-class soloists and commission works to celebrate the ensemble.

Martín conducting LACO
PC: Jamie Pham

Which brings us to another facet of Martín’s relationship-building: Composers. Besides an impressive lineup of soloists, the new works presented this season include the beginning of a prolonged collaboration with Andrew Norman, a commission and SESSION curation for Missy Mazzoli, and collaborations with Juan Pablo Contreras, Christopher Rountree, and Derrick Spiva Jr., among others. An emphasis on Los Angeles talent is clear, but the half-dozen commissions (one for each of the six concerts Martín will conduct this season) articulate an overall support for living composers that itself feels Angeleno at heart. Of course, placing new works alongside staples of the canon risks the forced, awkward juxtapositions that other orchestras have tried in recent years, where intermission is marked by donors leaving and students arriving. But somehow LACO’s 2019-2020 program feels genuine in putting forth new and established works with equal esteem.

This sense of genuineness comes in part from an emphasis on building longer-term relationships with composers like Norman, Reid and Mazzoli, who are already becoming widely accepted as worthy companions to the great masters of old. But the intent to find and support new masterworks is also a broader impulse on Martín’s part, who hates the word “routine,” and sees what is happening in Los Angeles right now as a unique opportunity to bring great new works forward:

I don’t think we need to find excuses to program. We have to make people excited and curious; I think that is the starting point. In the end, the ideal situation is when you create a relationship of trust with the audience. Then, that audience looks at the program in five years and maybe they don’t recognize any of the pieces, but they say “you know what, I’m going to go because if they’re performing that, it must be worth listening to—and maybe I’ll be surprised!” If we could achieve that, it would be fantastic. But you cannot demand that trust, you have to earn it.

Martín conducting LACO
PC: Jamie Pham

The opening concert of the season is a clear signal of Martín’s seriousness about earning this trust: Andrew Norman—a Los Angeles composer who probably knows LACO better than any other—will premiere the first part of a three-year collaboration with the orchestra, alongside Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’été  (featuring renowned mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter), and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Fusing old and new, local and global, this season at LACO is poised to pick up the baton left by the LA Phil’s astonishing centennial season, and in doing so, it may help define the livewire that is the Los Angeles music scene today.

A note on the future of New Classic LA

Hi everybody. Nick Norton here, founder, editor, designer, and sometimes-subject-of-reviews of New Classic LA. And I just signed the necessary documents to transfer ownership of the website to Equal Sound. This post is to explain why that is, and let you, dear readers and supporters, know what I’ve got planned for New Classic LA’s next decade.

DECADE?!

Yeah, decade. I set up New Classic LA more than ten years ago now. When I moved home to LA after my first round of grad school for composition and started trying to make connections in the new music scene, the first thing I noticed was that there was no central concert calendar. While I was in college I had written for a site called San Diego Punk that had a calendar of every punk or hardcore show in San Diego. You could check the site every Monday and decide what bands you were going to see that week. It made it incredibly easy to get connected with the punk scene.

I’ve always thought that shows are the bread and butter of any music scene. In addition to being the main outlet for artists, they’re also a place for musicians and community members to meet, hear something new, make connections to people who might inspire them, have their ideas and preconceptions challenged, and—increasingly important in this age of daily political terrorism—do something enjoyable.

Writing for San Diego Punk, and having their calendar as a resource, introduced me to a ton of musicians in the San Diego scene when I first moved there. When I got to LA and needed to meet musicians, I thought “hey, I’m passable enough at building websites to throw a basic calendar page together, and that would be a good way to meet people.”

So I did it. Mostly on downtime at my day job. Within days I received emails from five or six ensembles asking me to list their shows and offering me press tickets.

“Whoa,” I thought, “this is actually working!” But as a composer, this presented me with a massive conflict of interest. Could I accept free tickets to shows if I didn’t write about them? If I wrote about them, would that turn me into a critic rather than a composer? If I said nice things would they be interpreted as syncophantic attempts to get my pieces played? If I said mean, or at least critical, things, would that keep my pieces from getting played?

My solution was to ask people who seemed interested in the New Classic LA if they wanted to write for it. I didn’t have a budget, so the payment was free tickets to shows or free CDs (this was when CDs were still a thing). That way we could post things regularly to keep traffic up, they could struggle with the inherent conflicts in reviewing their peers, and I could focus on the calendar aspects of the site.

This model worked pretty well for a while. For a long while, actually—it’s more or less what we still use. At one point I think I had ten writers contributing semi-regularly, and two friends helping out with maintaining the calendar. Things were cool. But as I grew and found more opportunities as a composer, I had less and less time to pay attention to all of the review and interview requests and necessary updates and maintenance to the site. Plus I had a new project to which I was devoting the large majority of my free time and energy: the concert series Equal Sound.

Producing concerts with Equal Sound is, for me, an artistic process akin to composition. In fact, I believe running New Classic LA is a form of composition as well. Music, for me, is a way of listening, and unique to every listening individual. My job as a composer, then, is to help people hear things. I always ask myself what the best way to do that is in any given situation: if there’s something that I want people to hear that doesn’t exist yet, perhaps I have to write that piece and have it performed or recorded. If that thing that I want them to hear already exists, then maybe the best way for me to help a listener hear it is to put on a concert of that thing, or to make a mixtape with that thing on it, or, in the case of New Classic LA, to write about that thing or get some publicity for an event featuring it.

With this in mind, more and more of my time and energy has been going to Equal Sound. Last year we received our 501c3 letter from the IRS, and I went all in on trying to grow the series. Realizing I didn’t have time for both, I started asking trusted friends if they’d be interested in taking over New Classic LA. I even looked into having bigger music sites acquire it. While I was putting effort into this, the site itself began to flounder as I wasn’t chasing down writers for updates. You might have noticed that things here have been lacking lately. I simply didn’t have time for both Equal Sound and New Classic LA. One had to go, and it wasn’t going to be Equal Sound.

But I didn’t, and don’t, want New Classic LA to die. It just needs a better infrastructure and more resources to continue to run well and serve our community.

Thankfully, we came up with a solution. The lawyers who got Equal Sound’s 501c3 set up advised us to make our mission broad so that we could partake in a wide range of musical activities. Equal Sound’s mission, as it were, is “to introduce listeners to new music by breaking down the traditional confines of musical genres.”

In case you don’t see where this is going, writing about music and running a concert calendar is a great way to introduce listeners to new music. Equal Sound has an infrastructure, and a bank account, and a board. And the board just approved Equal Sound taking ownership of New Classic LA.

Now, instead of splitting my attention between projects, I can refocus it to make New Classic LA work within the context of Equal Sound’s mission.

So I’m rebuilding the site. The concert calendar will still be front and center, but it will live alongside a public database of LA musicians, ensembles, venues, presenters, and resources, which many people in the scene have said they want. The reviews and features will continue with our staff writers, though to facilitate better journalism we will also create a separate set of community pages where people can post their own reviews and interviews, to give other concert series and musicians a platform to say what they want to say. We will also solidify a fundraising program to help cover the site costs and pay the writers. We’re going to grow this thing to be sustainable and to help our music community thrive.

This is going to be a huge project. It will take time. Things might look dead for a while while I build the new site on a testing server. But this is something I am extremely excited to work on, which is something that I haven’t felt in a while about working on the site. I believe this will be better for all of us in the LA scene. If you have thoughts or comments or ideas, I’d be very pleased to hear them too. Just comment below, or use the contact page. If you’re into making a now TAX DEDUCTIBLE contribution toward the site expenses, visit this page.

I really appreciate your taking the time to read this, and can’t wait to share the next decade with you.

Yours,
Nick Norton

TL;DR: Equal Sound now owns and operates New Classic LA. I’m making a massive overhaul and the site will look a bit outdated until it’s done, at which point it will again become the best resource for new music in LA.

Diagenesis Duo: Hands and Lips of Wind

Diagenesis Duo
Diagenesis Duo: Hands and Lips of the Wind

First things first: this is a beautiful record.

The Diagenesis Duo is comprised of soprano Heather Barnes and cellist Jennifer Bewerse.  Ms. Barnes and Ms. Bewerse have been performing as a duo since 2011.  Though I have been familiar with both excellent musicians for some time, I was not aware of this particular configuration until I was asked to review this record.  Together, they are magnificent. 

A duo of voice and cello, you say?  Perhaps you’re thinking, “what an odd, if interesting, combination?!”  Indeed, there is undeniably a surfeit of music for voice and piano, especially soprano and piano.  So much so that the Los Angeles-based unSUNg concert series (a fine one, that showcases LA living composers) specifically requested compositions that were NOT for soprano and piano.  While certainly fewer in number than voice/piano offerings, there are of course more than a handful of works for voice and various other instruments.  But I can’t recall when, if  ever, I’ve heard music for voice and cello.  If there was any doubt as to the viability of such an ensemble, this record should lay them to rest.

Hands and Lips of Wind presents the music of 4 composers: Mischa Salkind-Pearl, Harrison Birtwistle, Stephen Lewis, and Adam Scott Neal. 

The album is bookended by two movements of Mischa Salkind-Pearl’s Hands and Lips of Wind, whence comes the album’s title.  The text of these two movements are poems, in English translation, by Octavio Paz.  The composer describes his piece thus:

Octavio Paz’ poems often display enormously evocative imagery contained in few words. I wanted to bring that spirit to my setting of the five poems in this piece. In particular, these poems move effortlessly between images of light and darkness, motion and stillness. These ideas are potentially very musical. My settings approach the poems as complete entities, emphasizing the prevailing affect of each poem.

The opening track, In the Lodi Gardens, is a meditation on this New Delhi garden, park, and burial place.  (Paz lived in India when he was the Mexican ambassador to that country in 1962-68.)  The music itself, thankfully, in my opinion, does not invoke anything Indian, per se – if anything it reminds me of Hebrew cantorial – but evokes, through Ms. Barnes’ powerful singing, an omnipotent goddess, both warning and welcoming.  It is a glorious and intrepid introduction to the power, but also the emotional range of her vocal prowess. 

The next work is 9 Settings of Lorine Niedecker, by the English composer Harrison Birtwistle.  Birtwistle sets these epigrammatic poems in equally pithy, epigrammatic, at times enigmatic fashion.  (Most of the nine movements are under one minute in length, with the longest timing out at two minutes and twenty-four seconds.)  They are delicate, at times humorous, and rich settings quite worthy of their careful, sensitive, personal texts.  Ms. Niedecker, for those unfamiliar with her work (I had never heard of her), was an American poet, who lived from 1903 until 1970.  She was a member of the Objectivist poets (who are not related to the work or quasi-philosophical movement of the same name associated with Ayn Rand and other self-serving greedy bastards.) The Objectivists were influenced by Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, among others.  The scale of these works can’t help but remind one of the compositions of Webern and Schoenberg, specifically, in the case of the latter, the Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19.  The harmonic language is, obviously, quite different.  But the overall cadence, the clarity of lines, the power of both the sounds and the silences, create a similar presence and emotional impact. 

Next is the three-movement Con Mortuis In Lingua Mortua by Stephen Lewis. As its title (with the dead in a dead language) might suggest, it is an eerie trip to an underworld of foreboding spirits.  It is not offputting, not at all, but rather invites us to tread, however carefully, along unknown paths.  I can’t help but think of it as a musical equivalent of a Haunted House, where we feel a mix of excitement and fear.  We know, or at least try to remind ourselves, that the danger is not real, but we can’t help but be at least a bit afraid.  The three movements, Wail, Marche Funèbre, and Totentanz are of diverse character, but all showcase the precision and emotional range of the performers. 

Con Mortuis In Lingua Mortua is followed by Adam Scott Neal’s five-movement work, Travels.  There is a time-honored tradition of various literary works portraying a character who wanders, seeks, encounters a wide range of situations and personages.  (Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, even Partch’s Barstow, immediately come to mind.)  So here, as in the work of others, we meet a traveler and his meditations on his encounters.  The five movements begin with The Universe, and end with The Horizon. I particularly like the order as it resists a more cliché progression from the small to the grandiose and eternal.  If anything, it is the opposite.  While I suppose it could work in either direction, given the personal, modest and inward quality of much of Travels’ music, I found this order of presentation much more satisfying.  A small detail, small but worthy of mention, would be the extended techniques in the third movement, The Wayfarer.  These techniques are few and rather modest, just a few tongue clicks, breathy quasi-whistles and some percussive knocks on the body of the cello.  Subtle though they may be, I must say, their presence is still strong and immediately felt.  I’m loathe to say anything negative at all, but once I heard these sounds I realized that I could have easily taken in some more non-traditional sounds. 

The last track is the final movement from the work of Salkind-Pearl’s Hands and Lips of Winds, the first composition of the album.  This movement is another setting of Paz, this time his Nightfall. It may be my favorite track, though with so many good works here, it’s really hard to say.  This setting is an austere, surgically careful nest of transparent, delicate pitch manipulations, a slowly downward-cascading acoustic construction, with dissonances harsh yet delicious, that give vivid sonic life to the dark, evocative poetry.  The piece, and the album, end as a nightfall extinguishes the light of day:

A bird falls,
The grass grows dark,
Edges blur, lime is black,
The world is less credible.

Allow me to say it again: Hands and Lips of Wind is a beautiful record.  The singing and playing, are sensitive, precise and, more importantly, inspired.  It is rife with poetry, in the best senses of the word, from the texts themselves to the composers’ settings of those texts, to the interpretations of Ms. Barnes’ voice and Ms. Bewerse’s gorgeous cello lines.  This music demands your concentration, to be sure.  But if you give it that, if you let yourself focus and then fall into the sounds that wash over you, your efforts will be wonderfully rewarded.

Hands and Lips of the Wind is available for purchase at iTunesCDBabyAmazon, and Google Play. Learn more about Diagenesis Duo at diagenesisduo.com.

Aliens, the tube, and the CIA: an interview with Spacepants

This Saturday, Spacepants perform on a bill alongside Electric Soundbath and Luther Burbank at the California Institute of Abnormalarts, or CIA, on a show presented by Synchromy. According to the pants, while Jennifer Beattie was singing and Diana Wade was playing viola at a music festival in Vermont, they met, realized they shared a life-long dream of wearing as many sparkles as possible, and ran joyfully out into a field to celebrate.  Their enthusiasm attracted the attention of some rad aliens who invited us to party and jam with them. As luck would have it, they were having a full-on sparkle party. When Jen and Diana woke up the next day, groggy and disoriented, they discovered the rad aliens had left us three parting gifts: a 25-foot long tube, a mission, and several pairs of spacepants. The tube would of course become a central focus of their music-making.  The mission, which they accepted, is to wear spacepants while bringing both their own and other earth-bound beings’ works of music, poetry, multi-media, storytelling and art to life. There was also something about crystals.

Ahead of the show Spacepants had time to answer a few questions and send us a photo of space whales cuddling.

Space whales. Photo provided by Spacepants.
Space whales. Photo provided by Spacepants.

My understanding is that Spacepants found their beginnings in a field in Vermont with some aliens and a lot of sparkles. Could you expand on that?

The thing is, this was one. serious. party.   We were completely unprepared for the life-changeingness of this party. At the party was the tube.  And honestly, nothing else mattered once we saw that thing. The aliens were maybe doing telepathy, but anyway they had this great welcoming attitude and inclusive energy, and there was this music that we just couldn’t ignore.  The aliens and the music were totally rad. We never wanted that Sparkle Party to end.

It seems like you’ve taken the 25 foot drainage tube they left you quite seriously, where some groups might do one piece with it and move on. I’ve heard you a few times and know what a range of sounds it can make…but can you sell us on tube?

Sales are not required. The tube is the perfect instrument. The tube is life.  Sounds of the tube will enter your dreams and re-arrange your subconscious formats so you can hear the sounds of the universe really really good.  We show our gratitude to our friends the rad aliens with tubular celebration at every show.

Periscope, your current live set that you’re playing this weekend, is anchored by the Spacepants arrangement of Garth Knox’s Jonah and the Whale. What went into making this arrangement? Are Spacepants down on whales?

Spacepants about to go on stage. Photo by Spacepants.
Spacepants about to go on stage. Photo by Spacepants.

We got the idea to make this arrangement by hearing the original version with tuba, and then we were like well, Jen could be a tuba too, so we called the aliens and they sent us a tube harness so we could strap the tube to our bodies, and then Diana slayed on viola and then we were pretty much there.  The existence of our best friends, Spacewhale 1 and Spacewhale 2, proves that we’re not down on whales.

The pants have one leg on each coast of the US. How do you prepare pieces? Are meetings most convenient in the loins?

Actually, there is an intergalactic rehearsal space, but it’s expensive, as you can imagine.  Spacepants gets a huge discount cause we know a guy.   We also like Miami, which is kind of like meeting in the foot, or Sea Ranch, which is in the shoulder-zone.  But yeah, it’s different! We often do that thing called planning ahead, which is weird; we dream up ideas on long phone calls, practice on our own, and delight in the unexpected. We have a huge amount of trust in each other on stage, and whatever happens, we’re wearing spacepants, so we know we’ll be fine.     

Before you met these aliens you were on what seems like a very traditional path in classical music, and now you are featured on prayer candles. This seems like a win to me. But you’ve certainly still got connections to the classical world. Are folks there, if there is a there, as receptive as you’d hope to this project?

Let’s get one thing straight: we’re not on the prayer candle, the tube is on the prayer candle.  Tube is life. 

It seems as though wherever we go, the reputation of the tube precedes itself. We’re surprised and delighted to say that many of our colleagues seem surprised and delighted by the tube.  We’re pretty sure cellists are into us, but we’re cornering the tuba market, so there might be some animosity there. 

Pre-alien sparkle party, were you as interested in performance art? That’s a major part of what Spacepants does.

It’s basically like this: after the Sparkle Party we realized that we had not only gained a tube and Spacepants, we had also gained a new perspective.  What the rad aliens had was curiosity, and in honor of that we are just letting our curiosity and enthusiasm direct the development of Spacepants.  So we’re pretty much interested in everything, and everything is an idea waiting to be celebrated and explored. 

Talk to me about the CIA.

Well, Diana’s dad was in it. 

Also, there’s a clown corpse, and you can drink beer in there! 

How can people find you?

@spacepantsmusic on Instagram; Facebook.com/spacepantsmusic

Anything else you’d like to add?

If you come to our show, you can make yourself a tinfoil hat.  Or, you can make yourself TWO tinfoil hats.  One to wear now, and one for later.  Also, we are lucky enough to be playing next to two other *fabulous* acts: Electric Sound Bath and Luther Burbank.  Doors are at 8:30, 18 and over, full bar at the venue.  We always encourage sparkles – get your best Sparkle Party outfits on and wear ‘em to the show!

You heard the pants. See you Saturday night. Details on the facebook event page at facebook.com/events/405850136893675.

LACO: New and Old, Contrasts and Through Lines

Kahane on Mozart, March 23 at the Alex Theater in Glendale

   

Saturday’s “Kahane on Mozart” program showcased all the nuance and detail that make the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra so enjoyable to watch. Bookended by Mozart (Piano Concerto in E-flat major, K.449 and the “Linz” Symphony No. 36), the program introduced two new pieces—a 2013 work for marimba and strings by Gabriella Smith, and the world premiere of James Newton Howard’s Concerto for Cello & Orchestra. In several ways, the program achieved an aesthetic balance by placing new and old works in opposition to each other, but it was the clever through lines that connected them which made the program so effective.

On the surface, the 230-some-odd years between the works delineated a clear line: Mozart’s careful, partitioned musical architecture highlighted thematic hierarchy and development on a grand scale, where the modern works foregrounded texture in single, shorter, and more seamless trajectories. The landmarks conveyed with cadences and tonal shifts in the Mozart were instead signified with radical changes of technique for the marimba and strings in the Smith and Newton Howard. More than anything, though the balancing and juxtaposition of contrasts which defined the classical form were responded to with a static and meditative emotional purity that evolved patiently in the modern pieces. Based on the works’ respective lengths and styles, the program rightfully navigated a musical journey that—while briefly exploring new pathways—ultimately departed and concluded at the heart of the tradition.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Mancillas
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performed the world premiere of prolific Grammy®-, Emmy®- and Academy® Award-nominated composer James Newton Howard’s Concerto for Orchestra & Cello, a LACO commission, led by Conductor Laureate Jeffrey Kahane on Saturday, March 23, at the Alex Theatre, and Sunday, March 24, 2019, at Royce Hall. Newton Howard’s work, underwritten by and dedicated to Maurice Marciano, was written for and spotlights LACO Principal Cello Andrew Shulman.

But beneath the surface were a number of connecting fabrics between the works. The soloist-driven nature of piano, cello, and marimba concertos all provided a similar, direct point of attention for the audience. The back-and-forth and layering in Newton Howard’s cello concerto suggested an appreciation of Mozart’s own conversational approach to the concerto. Perhaps most striking was the contemplative, textural exploration suggested in the inner “Andantino” of Mozart’s piano concerto, which evolved into shimmering, cinematic backgrounds in the Newton Howard, and then again into the lively, buzzing undulations in Smith’s Riprap. Having arrived at Smith’s assertive, cohesive textures of orchestration, a return to Mozart with the “Linz” symphony provided a natural sense of conclusion, employing the chamber orchestra, now, as truly a single instrument while also returning to Mozart’s bold gestural language and clear sense of form.

The performances themselves were clean, detailed, and respectful of each work’s nuanced language. Kahane performed and conducted the Mozart concerto from the piano, and while it provided some challenges—there was a lack of clarity in the piano sound (due to its positioning) and some disagreement between Kahane and the orchestra on the tempo of the third movement—it also provided for a few stunning moments of interaction, including a particularly moving performance of the concerto’s slow, inner movement. Andrew Shulman provided a sensitive performance of Newton Howard’s cello concerto, and while his sound occasionally had to battle the orchestration, his deep, rich tone and expressiveness commanded attention throughout, right through the breathtaking, dying murmurs of the work’s ending. Finally, Gabriella Smith’s Riprap balanced a modern aesthetic sensibility with a deep understanding of performative gesture: the music had a sense of studio composition, crossfading repeating, minimalist swaths, but the drama of the performance techniques (for both the marimba and the strings) made the performance impossible to take your eyes off of. Percussionist Wade Culbreath was perfectly tuned-in to this balanced approach by Smith, providing a virtuosic, physical performance while reinforcing the work’s sense of imperceptibly emerging and submerging textures.

The Mozart symphony was what you would expect for LACO: Clean, tight, pushing and pulling in all the right places. But it was also strongly highlighted by its context; the contemporary works demonstrated how challenging it really is to organize and develop a large-scale musical work, to present clear and concise musical ideas, to marry style with substance. Each composer took their own approach, but concluding with Symphony No.36 was an apt reminder of just how difficult it is to sound easy. For their part, LACO continues to make it appear effortless.