Posts by Nick Norton
Dave Longstreth on composition, Song of the Earth, and playing Dirty Projectors shows again
It’s been a while since I sat down with a composer to talk about an upcoming LA Phil premiere, but when I saw that one of my favorite artists, Dirty Projectors’ founder and leader Dave Longstreth, was premiering a massive piece for the orchestra at Disney Hall on March 2, I thought it was a good time to jump back in. Dave and I had a lovely and wide ranging talk via Zoom about his processes and how he’s developed as an artist in the twenty years he’s spent with his band, and of course dug into the new piece, Song of the Earth. Enjoy our talk below.
I heard the Song Exploder interview on Up In Hudson a really long time ago, in which you mentioned that you had come up with a beat by trying to remember another beat without checking to see how close you were. And then I found out you had done the same thing, in a sense, for the Black Flag record, so I’ve got a two-parter based on that. First, if you could just talk about what attracts you to that process because you’ve done it more than once, and second, if creating compositional challenges for yourself to generate material or drive what you’re doing is also something you dig. If so, do you have any others that you use regularly?
Yeah, wow, great question. And thank you. We’re just diving in. So yeah, I mean, I think that memory is such an interesting part of creating. The way that our memories are subjective, the way our memories are imperfect, the way over time our memories become imbued with, you know, with our sensibility, with our… world view, maybe, makes writing that way compelling to me.
First of all, I have what feels like a vivid memory of this thing, maybe this beat that I heard on the radio in 2003, or this Black Flag album that I loved when I was in middle school. I have a vivid memory of it because it made such a strong impression on me in the first place, and in a way, maybe both of these things were sort of formative for my worldview, for my outlook, for my sensibility. And what has happened since then in the sort of internal mechanisms of my emotional brain? That sort of distortion is really compelling to me.
Actually, I don’t think I had really connected how similar those two sort of prompts were.
Oh, that jumped right out at me!
Well, yeah, and then the second part of your question. Can you remind me what it was?
Yeah, it’s just whether creating prompts or challenges or restrictions for yourself is a way that you like to generate material, or force yourself to come up with ideas or anything like that when composing.
Yeah, I could think it’s less of a prompt and more like just a game, or even just something that starts circling around in your head and you just get a desire to explore it, to go further. It arrives, maybe as you’re saying, in the form of a question. Yeah. Exploring things I can’t quite figure out is one of the things I love about writing music.
I think we agree about that actually. So as far as getting into being a composer, slash artist, slash et cetera. I saw that you briefly went to Yale, which is known as an elite classical music kind of school. I wondered about your decision to leave. Was it an artistic thing?
Well, I did finish school. I lived for a while with every intention of not returning and then when I was gone was when I released the first Dirty Projectors records. It became sort of popular lore that I had left. But I did go back.
Oh? Gotta update your Wikipedia…
Oh man! So yeah, it’s funny. I love…I love the music, you know? I love the music of the classical canon. And I love the textures. And I love the melodies. I think it’s just such a rich sort of history and such a rich tradition. And there’s just such an unbelievable amount of just amazing music. I think when I was in school I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about it being a closed canon, about that history having elapsed… that history having finished, and I was very eager to go out and get started.
I consider the university a place where things are sort of dissected and autopsied as opposed to being a place for something more living. More alive. So I was just eager to get out of there. I think I was essentially unteachable, but I am grateful to have actually learned a lot about orchestration when I was there.
What do you think made you unteachable?
Well, just what I’m saying. I had a chip on my shoulder. I was ready to go out there and play shows in Greenpoint in a basement to eight people. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I was ready to do. And I was just very eager to do that.
I think, though, maybe I’m underselling my reverence for… certainly the rules of counterpoint. I was passionate about it. At the same time I held it with a deep grain of salt. The study of music theory, the study of orchestration, the study of counterpoint, I took everything with a big grain of salt.
That makes a ton of sense. Since you mentioned basement shows and the whole DIY world…a lot of people refer to your earlier stuff as lo fi. I get into a little trouble around this with my own music because some of it exists in that lo fi sound world but I really, really care about clarity at the production level. Stereo image is important! Anyway, since you produce your own music, and the sound world is incredibly clear and direct, I wonder if you see a kind of path from the DIY basement vibe to the more sonically refined work you do now, or if that’s a conscious contrast, or…
Yeah, I mean, that’s an interesting question. I think of it as a continuum. And I agree with, I think, one of the things that you just said, which is that it’s a very detailed stereo image!
You can make choices about fidelity. You can make textures that are a little bit ambiguous. Those are colors. Those are beautiful colors, especially when you’re using them as it sounds like you are, thoughtfully and with intention. Then we’re just using a very wide canvas, and can aim at textures that are less defined, or hazier, and have more ambiguity in them, or we can aim at textures that are very clear and very recognizable. Why not use that whole range, that whole spectrum?
I think with some of those earlier records I just had what was available to me, and so that’s a bit lower fi than what I have available to me now, but it is also what it was.
You know? I love it. I love it. That tradition of indie rock too, you know. Guided by Voices and Pavement, and home recording artists I love. I think those early Dirty Projectors records were in dialogue with them. I considered myself in that sort of tradition, in dialogue with that music.
So as you’ve kinda gotten—I don’t know if the right word is resources or access or fancier gear, or more production skill, or—
Not being such a punk about it?
Yeah, that’s it. What I wondered is if your approach to writing has changed much as you’ve had access to more resources.
One way or another, every album, every body of work that you make is just different. It’s a different moment in your life. It’s a different moment in our culture’s relationship with technology. One way or another, the tools have ended up being different every time. And you’re a different person, of course.
Every record is just a different thing. I’ve actually been marveling a little bit at what feels like a moment of cyclical return for me on Song of the Earth [Dave’s piece with the LA Phil]. I feel really connected now to the way I thought about songs and the possibilities of music when I was starting out in my teens and twenties, and it feels interesting.
Was there something that kind of removed you from that feeling in the interim? I mean, you’ve been in a touring band for a long time…
Since I became a professional musician? Of course considerations of what works on stage, or even passive or unconscious considerations of an audience’s expectation, begin to sit there in the room with you.
Because Song of the Earth began in a pandemic moment, and also in a moment when I had just had my daughter, it really just felt like some of those edges were softer. Some of those lines had dissolved, and I made something that surprised me, and confounded me a lot. And so it’s been really rewarding to make this piece.
It’s gotta be exciting. Since we talked about memory earlier, is a similar process sort of going on here with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde?
Absolutely. As I’ve continued to write and revise the piece, the connections between the Mahler and this one have become softer and, in a way, other aspects or connections to that piece have become stronger.
In a conscious way?
No, unconsciously. I really love the Mahler orchestral songs, the Rükert-Lieder and Kindertotenlieder, particularly with Janet Baker singing. I love those recordings so much. And those orchestrations, too, are so, so wonderful, so beautiful.
Two or three years ago I hadn’t really spent that much time with Das Lied von der Erde. I found it imposing and just so dense that it was difficult to have it open for me. And then it did, and I got super into it. And I love that. It’s this meditation on the impermanence of all things. On a very simple, basic level. I just like that. And I like that phrase, “the song of the earth.”
I think honestly just that simple aesthetic appeal is what kept bringing me back to Song of the Earth, to Das Lied von der Erde for a while. And then, there’s something with that title. What is that title? It’s grand, even grandiose. It’s portentous. And then this huge work with this big title ends up being so much about fragility and the passages of things from growth and bloom into a sort of wispy autumnal character. And then passing. I just thought it was really beautiful.
It seems like the medium in which you’ve been creating has included chamber and orchestral music more and more often, at least over the last decade. Was getting back into the classical world a deliberate decision?
I think that I’ve always been interested in writing scored music, and I think that for most of my professional life I’ve been so focused on Dirty Projectors, that everything I’ve written has gone through the prism of the band. There are a fair number of string arrangements and that sort of thing all over the Projectors records. But they’re tucked into a strong fabric. You might notice them less. And so I think in the last couple of years I’ve really…been changed. My attitude is a bit about just allowing things to live outside of the band, to do other things and have more streams open to me, and to write dedicated concert music seems so fun to me. And so this is that.
Does that feel freeing?
Yeah. Or it’s certainly a new challenge, a different thing than what I have been doing.
So regarding doing band stuff then, how do your bandmates learn your parts? Dirty Projectors songs are often super hocketed and extremely technical. I wondered if you have had to notate it for people to learn it.
No, we don’t do any scored stuff in the band. And you know Olga [Bell], who’s playing in Song of the Earth and was in the band on the Swing Lo [Magellan] tour cycle is a virtuosic classical pianist. So she’s very comfortable in and familiar with the notated page. And Maia [Friedman] is to some extent as well. But no, with the band it’s always just listening. Listening and practicing.
You start slow. You speed up over time. And it’s just a lot of rehearsal, people practicing individually, then us coming together and rehearsing for a long time.
That makes sense. I mean, I find when you learn stuff by rote, it’s the best way to lock in a group.
For sure. And for hocketing specifically. I just think there’s nothing like muscle memory.
So for the show with the LA Phil, they’re billing it as songs from across the entire Projectors discography. Since you’re focused on newer pieces, what’s your relationship like with those older songs when you play them live?
We’re gonna play a set of music from all different eras of Projectors. It’s great to go back to the older material. It always feels different. I think, particularly in this context, it’s going to feel really fresh. I’m really looking forward to it because between having kids and the pandemic and everything, it’s really been a minute since the Projectors played. So I’m really excited to go back to play material from across the records.
That’s awesome. I just have a couple of quick questions left, because I know you’ve gotta get back to mixing. One of my best friends—this might seem weird—you’re his favorite musician/producer. He even commissioned a portrait for his studio—
Whoa! I wanna see that.
I will send it over!
I asked my friend what I should ask, and he wanted to know when we might hear the Alarm Will Sound live recordings of your piece The Getty Address.
Oh, it’s on a hard drive! When I’ve shown Song of the Earth work in progress to my brother, he’s like “dude, this is Getty Address part 2.” So this stuff is very connected to that piece.
I think what happened is that I just got impatient by the time we had done those shows. We did get the recordings of them, but by the time we had done it I was ready to move on to the next thing. And they’re just sitting on a hard drive. They’re beautiful performances. Maybe we’ll reissue the record at some point and include those as sort of additional material. That would be cool… thanks for asking. Thank your friend for the idea.
What’s your musical obsession as of late?
Oh, wow! Well, let’s think here. I listen to different music at different times of day. [long pause] If I think about what I’ve listened to a lot recently, the gagaku music from the court of Imperial Japan has been really resonant with me. I’ve been pretty obsessed with Parsifal, the Wagner opera. And then this earlier Reich piece, from the 70s, one for mallets, women voices, and Farfisa [Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ]. I’ve been listening to that because it’s just such an insane recording. I never spent that much time with that one, but it’s just really, really amazing. And then 70s Brazilian music as well. That’s fun to listen to with my daughter.
Same question, but about gear.
Oh, dear. We have got a 1969 Yamaha baby grand piano in our living room, and that’s really changed my relationship with music. I love to play that thing. I like to write on it—a lot of the music I’ve written lately has been on it.
And to close: what’s a musical love of yours that you wish more people knew about or listened to?
Oh, that’s an interesting one. Perennially underrated. Okay, I would say Little Wings. He’s a songwriter, lives down here in Southern California. Just such an amazing lyricist, and it’s such an incredible kind of universe he’s continuing to spin out for everyone. I wish more people knew his music.
Well, thank you! I’m really excited for the show.
Thank you so much. I know, me too. Yeah, I can’t wait.
The March 2 show also features opener Mount Eerie. Info at laphil.com/events/performances/2879/2024-03-02/dirty-projectors-with-the-la-phil.
Welcoming Richard An, our new Editor In Chief
Dear friends,
I am extremely excited to share the news that, as of May 1, Richard An has taken over the reigns as New Classic LA’s editor in chief.
When I started New Classic LA fourteen years ago the new classical and experimental scenes in Los Angeles—while boasting a healthy number of shows and events—felt extremely disconnected and decentralized. I felt this was detrimental to the health of the music community. People who attended recitals on the west side had no idea what upstart musicians, composers, ensembles, and concert producers were doing in DIY venues, and the folks attending those experimental shows rarely showed up for stuff at Disney Hall and Colburn, even though the music seemed, to me, to be of interest to similar audiences.
In college I’d written for the show calendar site San Diego Punk, and figured a unified calendar would be a helpful way for people to find out about each others’ events and work. I was also new in town as a composer, and wanted to meet people and get free tickets to stuff I could write about. So one quiet afternoon at work I put up a calendar page.
The requests for coverage of events came in almost immediately. Throughout the 2010s New Classic LA served as a central calendar site, particularly for the new music community (whatever that term might mean), and I started bringing on friends and volunteers to write reviews and interview musicians and members of the scene on what they were up to. It was great! I think at the peak we had like 10 or so people writing for us on a volunteer basis.
Then life took over. I moved away from LA for another round of grad school, and found keeping things up to date very challenging. When I moved back I needed a job, and my duties running the concert series/organization Equal Sound were taking up most of my non-composing, non-rent-paying attention. The site floundered, and looked abandoned and empty for quite a while. When the pandemic hit, I thought that was the end for its time, and even reached out to a few libraries about archiving it.
Now that we are back to shows, everything again seems to be bifurcated. Yet I’ve had many friends—many of whom I met through New Classic LA—tell me they wished the site was still alive, so they could find interesting music outside of their immediate circles or local geography (which, as all of us Angelenos know, is a top-of-mind concern). I wished that too, and did not want New Classic LA to die, but knew that I didn’t have the resources in my life to run it anymore.
Enter Richard An. We met through seeing each other at shows relatively often, and interacting on social media. Richard seemed to be involved in everything. He is one of the rare Los Angeles musicians who went to both USC and Cal Arts, and is equally at home performing challenging, virtuosic music or creating avant garde sound sculptures. Further, he is an assistant director or associate of a rather large number of organizations, and runs an ensemble. He is connected, talented, and, as I’ve realized through our conversations, has the foresight, wisdom, and sensitivity to oversee New Classic LA’s growth into a central resource for our scene. He’s also a super nice guy. More about Richard is on his website, richardanmusic.com.
I am stepping into a background role to be of help when needed, but he is now the person in charge that the site has needed for quite some time. I hope you will join me in welcoming Richard, and are as excited as I am to see what he does with New Classic LA.
With endless gratitude to all of you who visit this site and make our scene what it is,
Nick Norton
Founder, former editor in chief, New Classic LA
P.S. Go to shows!
M.A. Harms on carnation, lily, lily, rose
M.A. Harms is a Los Angeles based composer and performer who is currently exploring the intersections between grief, gender, and sex through a combination of text and sound. They are a firm believer that sound and visual aesthetic are equally significant within performance, and because of this, performance art is rapidly becoming a major component of their work. Margo’s focus is on navigating literal stories and personal life events via sound practice, obscuring them to the point that they begin to bridge the gap between individual and “universal” experiences.
On April 28 at 8:30 pm Boss Witch Productions presents part two of M.A.’s project carnation, lily, lily, rose at Human Resources. lily, rose is an installation and performance at Human Resources Los Angeles that brings to life the world of Kelly Link’s short story through live music and theatrics by M.A. Harms, navigating the woeful and complex reflections of our anti-hero, the story’s main character, as he reflects on his life post-mortem. This project explores periods of sorrow, disgust, humor, and anger through the realization of musical performance, video found footage, white out illustrations, stop motion animation, and mannequin instruments. Writer siri gurudev caught up to ask some questions.
By siri gurudev
sg: How do you describe yourself as an artist?
Harms: That is something I struggle with a lot. I think of myself as a musician and a
percussionist, although I don’t think that a lot of the things that I do come off as what we know as
percussion, as in the group of people that I’ve been training with. Have you heard of ignorant
style tattoos?
sg: I have not!
Harms: They’re supposed to look like scratcher tattoos, almost. They look like doodles. They
look like kids could have done them, but they couldn’t be done by kids. They are executed well.
They’re intentionally messy. And I guess I’m thinking of myself as an ignorant style musician.
sg: You have been incorporating performance art into your practice. How is your
relationship with performance?
Harms: It is rooted in my percussion background just because it’s such a visual instrument. And
when you’re studying, half of what they’re talking to you about is how to move your body and
make things look seamless and make things look effortless even when they’re hard. On top of
just being pressured to present femininely, I’ve always thought very heavily about the way I look
when I play, and that’s transferred into trying to extend out into my space. It started with me
wanting to turn my stages into living rooms or bedrooms so that I could have a space that felt
esthetically comfortable and familiar and do things that scared me. I was trying to provide
comfort to myself and my audience in doing it, and it suddenly started to expand more.
Definitely because of the pandemic, too, we were forced to do things at home. I’ve always cared
about visuals, and I don’t know, all of a sudden, it became really important.
sg: I love that, like leaning fully into the embodied part of the practice.
Harms: Yes, I spent a lot of time thinking about my body. And I think it started with me learning
about Charlotte Moorman, a cellist. She’s very famous for being a topless cello player. And she
got arrested for it. She was doing it in the 60s, and she went to jail. And it was a big deal. People
were very upset. It started with me emulating that, too, but thinking more from the perspective of
being nonbinary and being scared about the way my body looked. And instead of hiding it
through lots of fabric and clothes, which I tended to, performing naked and being overly
vulnerable.
sg: Speaking of vulnerability, I know it’s a big existential question, but what are some things
that you have learned about life by doing art?
Harms: I’ve learned how to survive. I’ve learned how to be my authentic self, or at least I’ve
learned how to find a path toward that. I’m scared of so many things, but I’m learning. I’m
finding an outlet through it, and I’m finding a community through it. I found so much truth and family through my art practice and collaborating with people. I’ve become way more open-
minded, and I’ve learned patience. I think that I’ve always been an emotional person, and I used
to think that was a bad thing. And I think through art, it helped me find power in my emotional
intensity. If I hadn’t found these outlets, I think I probably wouldn’t be here right now.
sg: That’s beautiful! And I’m curious, what kind of topics do you explore in your art?
Harms: When I was 14, my mom got sick with pancreatic cancer. And for a long time, my whole
identity revolved around taking care of my mom and my family. My dad was also heavily
struggling with alcoholism. My mom passed right before I went to college. She was a teacher
and my hero. So, I was desperately trying to be her and honor her instead of figuring out who I
was.
In my fourth year of undergrad, when I started getting into the women and gender studies
department, I finally started genuinely thinking about me and who I am and getting to explore
myself. Gender identity became a focus for me. And then, right before the pandemic hit, my dad
died, too, from liver failure. I was so angry. And it just resulted in this massive collapse.
I applied to grad school and got into CalArts. At that time, it was just talking and playing and
utilizing text. And the living rooms and bedrooms were there already, but I didn’t really know
why I was doing it. Finally, I realized that grief was the center point of everything. And I knew
I’d been grieving, but I didn’t realize how much it was influencing my practice. I spent my whole
time at CalArts just being extremely vulnerable and giving really personal projects about how
hard I was feeling. Everything was about grief and about learning who I was as a 24-year-old and
finally acknowledging those parts of myself.
sg: Tell me about the Boss Witch project you are developing. Is it connected to your work in
grad school?
Harms: This project is actually different because while it was important for me to do those things
that I did at CalArts, I was finding that while making it was therapeutic, presenting them was
painful and could make me extremely upset. And while I knew I needed to do it and say it, the
ultra-vulnerability happening all the time was hurting me. I’m really excited about this project
because the short story I’m setting is about those topics, but it’s not my words, and it’s not my
story. And while I have a sentimental attachment to it from thinking about it for so long, and the
people that showed it to me are people I really love, it doesn’t hurt me to share it. It’s a self-care
way to explore the things that make me who I am at this point.
sg: What is the story that you are using for the performance?
Harms: The first one from a book of short stories called Stranger Things Have Happened by
Kelly Link. It’s such a fantastic story. It’s about a guy who wakes up in purgatory in the form of a
beachside hotel, but he’s the only person there. And he knows he’s dead, and he knows his wife is
alive. And he’s writing these letters to her, trying to hash out what happens leading up to him
dying. And he tells the same four stories several times and gives you more and more details to
realize how terrible of a person he was.
sg: And finally, tell me more about what we can expect to see!
Hams: Part of the commission went to Rainey Chevako, an experimental animator and
filmmaker. She did these phenomenal animations and video collages. And I’ve been making
instruments out of mannequins. I got a few of my friends to record parts for the fixed media
component of it: Mason Moy, Daniel Newman-Lessler, and Nicholas Deyoe. Next up, we’re
going to be at Human Resources on April 28. And I’m going to do a solo show telling the story.
I’m going to be the talking percussionist that I came to LA to be but in my own way. It’s all
percussion to me, but there are going to be mannequin guitars being played and bowing clocks
and jacking off dildos with bells. I’m excited to wear a strap-on. It’s going to be a retelling of the
story with fixed media components and projected material. It will be the mannequins, a desk, a
carpet, and me. I’m thinking of it as an opera. It’s a musical telling of a cohesive story from start
to finish. That’s what’s coming up next.
carnation, lily, lily, rose is a two-part project presented by LA-based artist M.A. Harms including an interactive installation at Coaxial Arts March 24–26 (carnation, lily) followed by an installation and performance at Human Resources Los Angeles on April 28 (lily, rose). This work is co-presented by Boss Witch Productions, Coaxial Arts, and Human Resources Los Angeles, and is developed with support from a 2022–23 Boss Witch Productions Commission.
Synchromy’s Urban Birds made for a musical scavenger hunt at Debs Park
This past Saturday afternoon found me hiding from the heat under a tree at the base of a small hill listening to cellist Jennifer Bewerse playing composer Brandon J. Rolle’s Call and Echo, inspired by the call of the Hermit Thrush. While Rolle’s piece didn’t incorporate the bird’s call directly, it imitated and built upon its structure of distinct phrases and interruptions, with alternating textures of arpeggios, high harmonics with quiet singing, and slowly developing more lyrical material in the cello’s low end. And this was only one composer/performer duo’s take on one bird from the flock of ten that Synchromy presented in their program Urban Birds.
The concert was spread throughout the Audubon Center at Debs Park, just south of the 110 in Montecito Heights, a hidden gem of trails just northeast of downtown LA. Performers perched along said trails, repeating their pieces at intervals so as not to overlap with their immediate neighbors, but to create a sensation of distant sounds to search out—not unlike the bird call hunting theme of the entire event. Guests were handed not programs, but “musical birding field guides,” and children who managed to find all ten birdsong-inspired performers were rewarded with stickers reminiscent of a junior ranger program at a national park.
Behind the aforementioned tree — shade was at a premium — trails wrapped up the hill to the left and right. On the first plateau, one came to a clearing with bassist Scott Worthington performing Jen Wang’s Monster, with sliding harmonics imitating the call of the Mourning Dove. Alongside him stood composer/performer Christopher Adler with a khaen, a southeast Asian mouth organ for which Vera Ivanova had written Mockingbird Hopscotch, a piece that grew from the uncertainty of a nervous bird learning a new song into a filled out tapestry of synth-like repetitions.
Across a bridge at the other side of the clearing stood an oboist Robert Walker, leaning hard into Diana Wade’s Pyschopomp. Inspired not by the song of the Common Raven, but of the raven’s status as a guide to the underworld, the piece’s fast and high ostinati alternating with aggressive multiphonic material made for a piece that should become a staple of the solo oboe repertoire. Behind the oboe, coming from somewhere below, one could pick out virtuosic runs on the high end of a flute (Dante De Silva’s Heat Thrasher performed by Rachel Beetz), and occasional growls through the underbrush above from Brian Walsh’s bass clarinet performing Pamela Madsen’s Owl’s Breath.
Suddenly the whole event clicked. Intentionally or otherwise, trying to take in the diverse approaches to birdsong inspiration in the height and space of the venue brought to mind the legendary clashing marching bands Charles Ives listened to in his youth, the vertical symphonies of Henry Brant, or, to state the obvious—an uncomposed version of Messiaen’s own Exotic Birds. I found myself looking for places between performers to hear interesting and perhaps unintended combinations of sounds and melodic lines, an outdoor polyphony of monophonic instruments.
The spread throughout the park was a welcome way to dip toes back into real concerts after months of isolation—it certainly felt better than diving back into a crowd, and bridged the individual experiences we’ve become used to with a communal live one with sensitivity. What more there is to say should be heard, and to this end, Synchromy has developed a website with videos of all of the pieces, spread around a map of the park (just click on the birds) at synchromy.org/urban-birds.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Breana Gilcher on Femme Frequencies
In honor of International Women’s Day, this Friday, March 8th, Femme Frequencies are putting on a festival throughout spaces of Art Share LA. The festival, which runs concurrently with opening night for Art Share’s new exhibition Female Gaze, celebrates spontaneous creation, experimental expression, and music for inner and outer harmony created by the hands and voices of those underrepresented in their sound-making fields. In an effort to affect direct action via art, they’ll also be collecting goods to donate to the Downtown Women’s Center.
Organizer Breana Gilcher found time this week to answer some questions about the festival. Complete details are on the facebook event page at facebook.com/events/2157131481018938. Here’s Breana:
First off, your lineup is fantastic, and fantastically diverse. I see a heavy dose of bass and electronics, some experimental pop, no shortage of classical instrumentation….there’s even some stand up. How’d you go about reaching out to such a wide ranging group?
The idea of presenting a festival like this first occurred to me a couple years ago when Vinny Golia, a teacher of mine from CalArts, wrote me with the name of an improvising oboist named Catherine Plugyers. There aren’t many oboe players who are also improvisers, so I was very interested and sought out her work. I discovered that not only is she an incredible musician, but she has been a part of annual concerts celebrating womxn in improvisation in London on International Women’s Day. It sparked something in me.
Though I’ve only been in LA a few years, that is enough time to have noticed the gender imbalance in the performing communities and the absence of concerts like ours. From that moment the concert was already happening for me, and I saw it happening in Art Share. It was loud, with music spilling out of every corner, creating currents that guided visitors through Art Share’s art galleries and music rooms. An aural tipping of the scales in the opposite direction. Now it’s all happening, this week!
Initially, my concept of the festival was centered around free improvisers, but this issue of representation is not just present in niche or avant garde genres – it’s everywhere. It became important to me to honor as many musical communities as possible and create a multi-representational event in which not only the performers are from a wide range of communities, but the audience as well. So often we go to shows and see the same people, and remain within our own sonic bubbles. I want the audience to show up and see some faces they know and many the don’t.
I chose the lineup by intentionally seeking out musical communities I was not well-acquainted with in addition to my own community. It turns out you don’t have to look hard to find incredible womxn artists in LA. I started with a short but substantial list, and very quickly found many years worth of festival headliners. It was difficult to narrow down for this one evening!
It’s important for me to admit that I was surprised by this. I too had been tricked into thinking that there wasn’t as large a community of womxn making work in LA because I was not seeing womxn filling the shows I was going to. In reality, womxn are innovating, creating and producing all over the place, in every field. Every one of the womxn you will see in the show on Friday is a headliner.
What can listeners expect, and what do you hope they’ll take from the show?
Listeners will experience an immersive, vibrant environment. There will be two performance spaces, a large open gallery for audience members to explore, and drinks so they don’t wander empty-handed! Musically, there will be something for everyone – attendees are encouraged to try it all. There is also a festival-wide sound healing event in the middle of the evening that everyone will be able to participate in, no experience necessary. Our hope is that you will walk away feeling inspired by the incredible sonic explorations of these womxn and compelled to find the femme frequencies in your own communities.
The goal is #balanceforbetter, this year’s International Women’s day theme. The angle of the show is to tip the scales. For one night, experience a rich dive into the voices of womxn in a submersive way. I want audience members to have the same feeling I did when I finished (or at least, stopped adding to) my list of possible performers: inspired and more closely connected to our diverse greater-Los Angeles musical community!
What are the biggest challenges you face curating and producing this event? How do you overcome them?
My co-producer Rachel and I have done a lot of small DIY show stuff (she also runs Classical Revolution) but neither of us had taken on as big a production as Femme Frequencies. We’d never done anything with so many artists, never fundraised on this level, never dealt with obtaining sponsorships. It was a harrowing undertaking at times, but our strong belief in the necessity of this event pushed us forward. The enthusiasm we have already received throughout this process is reassurance that a wide spectrum of musical communities in LA have been craving an event like this for some time.
As two cis white women, we were particularly self-conscious about our expression of radical inclusivity within this event. The celebration of womxn to us means ALL womxn, of all colors, ages, abilities, wherever they place their throne on the femme gender spectrum. Our hope is that we can build an environment that fosters healthy dialogue and the opportunity to learn about being supportive allies for all womxn.
Could you talk a bit about how the work of the partners you’ve cultivated for it, such as the Downtown Women’s Center and Art Share, relates to the show? [this is the spot to talk up the women’s center if you’d like, glad to link to them]
As a performer and oboe player predominantly, my work does not always directly take on an activist’s function. I wanted to take that opportunity with this show and create an event for Los Angeles and ALL of its womxn.
The Downtown Women’s Center (DWC) is the only organization in Los Angeles focused exclusively on serving and empowering women experiencing homelessness and formerly homeless women. Their mission states: “We envision a Los Angeles with every woman housed and on a path to personal stability. Our mission is to end homelessness for women in greater Los Angeles through housing, wellness, employment, and advocacy.” And since Art Share has partnered with DWC before, they were able to help connect us. So far we’ve raised over $3,600 and our goal is to break $4,000 by the end of Femme Frequencies!
I knew, from meeting you through Kristen Klehr, that you had an interest in concert production and putting on shows, but have mainly heard you around town as a performer. Do you see your role running Femme Frequencies as a contrast and alternative to your performance practice, or are they two expressions of the same interest?
Performing and teaching have been my primary roles in the last few years, yes. I occasionally put on small DIY improv shows for my ensemble Petrichor, and I wouldn’t say producing is a large part of my creative practice, though it became a part of it in the process of creating this show. My common motivation has been to do what I can to help foster community, and that drove my idea for Femme Frequencies in the first place. When the inspiration behind Femme Frequencies hit, I was compelled to make it happen and so the producer hat appeared in service of this event. In the words of my co-producer Rachel: Trying to balance performance, teaching, and producing (the last of which is still fairly new) takes a lot out of you, but it is also the first time I’ve felt like I am authentically expressing myself. In each of these three vocations, I’m 100% driven by the need to curate experiences that offer a deeper level of connection and authenticity for everyone involved.
Perhaps it’s far off in your mind as this first Femme Frequencies approaches, but do you see this as the start of an ongoing series?
We’re not sure yet. After having listened to so many incredible artists, we do feel compelled to showcase them. But the long-term goal is not to have an annual celebration of womxn in music like this, but to have shows like this integrated into our music culture. Our goal is more to inspire our community to choose their collaborators from the rich well of local femme artists, and increase the likelihood of more shows like Femme Frequencies happening organically.
Where can people get more info on what you’re up to?
People can check out our Facebook event and our instagram account @femmefrequencies, where we’ve been posting all about our artists, Art Share’s gallery opening, and the other exciting facets of this show we have in store!
Anything else you’d like to add?
If there is doubt remaining for anyone about the pervasiveness of incredible fem-identifying artistry in Los Angeles, this show should do the trick. We need to have these kinds of events in order to begin tipping the scales. We need to have the voices on stage reflecting a diverse audience. We need to experience and be made uncomfortable by perspectives foreign to our own.
This festival, being 100% defined by and comprised of womxn, also provides a safe space, which is still desperately needed. This show is also a place for people who don’t regularly play with womxn to discover new possible collaborators, and a place for womxn to experience camaraderie. It is a place for all to feel inspired.
To support Femme Frequencies you can make a tax-deductible donation via Fractured Atlas at fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/femme-frequencies. Details on this Friday’s festival are at facebook.com/events/2157131481018938.
A love letter to winter in LA
As the guy who runs the concert calendar website, I’ve been in a unique position to both hear a lot of musicians and help them connect with each other. Helping deserving music get heard has always been a passion for me, so I’m starting up a series of essays that I’m calling Notes Under The Underground. I hope to capture the essence and the energy of this LA scene that is thriving yet rarely reported on, and to show the deep connections between superficially disparate segments of it. In short, I’d like to make the Los Angeles I live in, the one where musicians and listeners are open minded, free spirited, hard working, friendly and supportive of each other, and ready and willing to take risks, one that anyone reading this can find and enjoy for themselves. You can check out all of the essays in this series at newclassic.la/notes-under-the-underground.
Winter in Los Angeles this year has been a dreary couple of months of oil-slick streets from first rains causing more traffic than usual, wildfires destroying homes, a mass shooting (maybe two or three?), shabby-chic holiday parties with friends you rarely see, austerity measures in personal finance to recover from travel season, and staying home to catch up on Oscar contenders and year-end best-of lists, sometimes punctuated by the sunny days we use to justify via Instagram what we pay for housing. Against this grey backdrop it’s easy to imagine musical life burrowing underground for warmth like so many Seattle indie bands in basements, making plans for spring.
That’s not Los Angeles, though, or at least it’s not my Los Angeles. Politics in America being what they are, the artists and institutions here seem to take the dour weather—both figuratively and literally—as a chance to say “let’s show everyone else how this is done,” like an art-making version of the way California handles environmental regulations. Through this winter many groups in town, from the established and well funded (the LA Phil, The Industry, wild Up) to the scrappy pick up bands playing in warehouses and lofts where all the musicians take home $7, free beer, and artistic fulfillment, have put on concerts and events on a weekly basis that would be the high point of many other cities’ cultural years.
The difference here? LA’s major cultural institutions, even our civic bureaucracy, are extremely well attuned to and prepared to advocate for the underground, and underground/independent/whatever-word-you-want-to-use artists are surprisingly well organized and seem positioned to take advantage of many of the opportunities this town provides.
Let’s look at a few examples of this. Way back in November the LA Phil, with Christopher Rountree’s curation, kicked off their Fluxus Festival with FLUXCONCERT, an evening featuring the works of Fluxus composers such as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Ken Friedman (and Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, which made complete sense in context). Ken Friedman’s Sonata for Melons started the event, with watermelons being dropped off the roof of Disney Hall onto a small wooden platform covered in contact mics. The effective sound was like hitting a steel oil drum with a brick fired out of a cannon, reminding me of Pauline Oliveros’ Burst. Burst, however, doesn’t end with a tropical cocktail made out of the piece.
Inside the hall, visitors were asked to take part in Rountree’s piece Commitment Booth, in which they could make a commitment to “hear all of this as music,” or decide not to, though I think those folks are missing out. Copies of Chris Kallmyer’s DIY-style zine Jelly (Journal of Ecstatic LListening Y’all) were on hand with essays by Allison Knowles, Ryoji Ikeda, and an epic visual guide to the Fluxus movement. The concert itself vacillated between the performance art practices we’ve come to expect from Fluxus composers and their lineage (smashing a violin, bopping one’s head on a wall, all delivered with aplomb) and frankly stunning music, including a building-wide performance of John Cage’s Apartment House, 1776. The whole evening was, in short, a bold, joyous mess. Any attempts to reign it in in the name of decorum would have undercut the mission and the effect.
Compare that with what happened a few nights later in the same hall when the same organization (the LA Phil) presented Kubrick’s Sound Odyssey, a live performance of score excerpts to picture cataloguing much of the master filmmaker’s career, cleverly hosted by Malcolm McDowell. Everything about the evening was as tightly controlled as a Kubrick montage, as was necessary for the literal montage of Penderecki scores pulled from the soundtrack of The Shining, in which Kubrick had layered five pieces on top of one another. Conductor Jessica Cottis was virtuosic in her execution, and I’ve rarely felt as much energy in that hall as I did during her Also Sprach Zarathustra with the opening of 2001 projected above.
What do these evenings have in common (aside from the obvious “same hall, same band”)? It seems to me that the unifying theme between seemingly diverse programs and concepts, and perhaps the unifying theme of our scene, is complete dedication to craft and end goal and the practical resources to pull off said end goals. Kubrick is known to have funded and toured films himself and had such a complete investment in his vision that he burned the models used for the spaceships in 2001 so that no one else could make the same magic. Anyone can throw watermelons off of a roof, but the practical and craft-related skills necessary to making such an action worthy of artistic consideration (re: the contact mics, the cocktails, the schedule, the marketing, and most crucially, the genuine belief that throwing watermelons off of a roof is important and worthy of serious contemplation) only comes with deep dedication and years of practice.
Thankfully that dedication and years of practice isn’t hard to come by here. As I type this from the cafe at the downtown Whole Foods I’m reminded of the time, years ago, when Archie Carey and Saul Alpert Abrams, the musician-artist-founders of Solarc Brewing, held a beer release in this very room that featured keg gamelan and amplified cactus (full disclosure–I played on that concert). Archie, a bassoonist, as well as his wife the experimental vocalist and composer Odeya Nini, are strongly connected with Rountree’s work through wild Up, and thus now connected to the LA Phil. The institutions, it seems, aren’t going around picking pieces and people they like at random or by whatever might fit on an event, but are actively trying to support the artists who have found their own ways and developed their own voices for a good long while.
Perhaps we’re focusing too much on one group of people, though as we talk about connections one may start to see that we are indeed talking about one giant, decentralized group of people. Six degrees of separation in music in LA are, in most cases, more like one or two. Returning from my holiday travel at the beginning of January I was treated to a week of shows in which every single one was a stand out—I recognize the problem with that concept—and which started to expose the scene’s connective tissue of ambitious, demanding, and unapologetic art-making by people who support each other.
This started with Monday Evening Concerts’ presentation of Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla, for four pianos, alongside composer Sarah Hennies’ Contralto, for a mixed ensemble with electronics and video. Musically speaking Gay Guerrilla hit my taste a bit better (I do like minimalism and multiple pianos quite a bit, plus some friends were back in town to play it), but both pieces showcased the endurance of the performers or composers. The pianists in Gay Guerrilla certainly went home exhausted after the large scale, cathartic soundbath they hammered out nonstop for thirty minutes, while contralto brought home the exhaustion of merely trying to get by in a rigid society as a trans person through frustratingly repetitive—I mean this as a sign of the piece’s effectiveness—videos of trans womxn’s sessions in speech therapy to learn “how to talk like a woman.” Perhaps society at large could take a hint from the success of these artistic pursuits and simply support people doing what they do, rather than focusing as hard as we do on the edges of the boxes we so often categorize people or ideas into (I’m looking your way, “classical” music).
Two nights later found me at REDCAT for Vicki Ray and Carole Kim’s collaboration entitled Rivers of Time, inspired by the Daniel Lentz piece River of 1000 Streams featured on the program and the premiere of Ben Phelps’ Sometimes I feel like my time ain’t long . Vicki is the head of performance at Cal Arts and a mainstay musician throughout the scene. Carole is a visual artist working with projections. The Lentz piece was an inverted waterfall of piano tremolo, rising from the depths of the instrument while the stage and audience were washed in compelling light from Kim. But the real story on that concert was the Phelps piece. Sometimes I feel like my time ain’t long is a massive gospel spiritual for piano and electronics. Ben had used a recording of the titular spiritual from the Lomax catalogue as the basis for a virtuosic but lyrical piano part. Each time the recording repeated it was slowed down, and each repeat was exponential, so while the first copy was perhaps less than a minute long, the final one came in around twenty. The astounding thing was how clearly Phelps expressed that idea in every part of the whole. The listening experience was like being inside of a fractal–as you zoomed in on musical gestures in the piano, you’d find more related gestures inside of them. It was like hearing on multiple time scales at once, while being warmly hugged by Ben’s traditional harmonic sensibilities and Vicki’s unquestionable performance abilities. Or like Charles Ives on LSD. It’s a major work, and one that deserves more performances and much more attention.
The same could be said of the Miller Wrenn Large Ensemble, who held their first show the next night at the mortuary, a loft space in Lincoln Heights that invites artists to try out works in progress and have conversations with focused listeners afterwards. Miller, a bassist and composer (more full disclosure: we’ve played in bands together. This “everything is connected and that’s cool” thing is kind of the point of this whole essay) came up in the jazz and improvisation world, went to Cal Arts, played in Vinny Golia’s band, recently did an improv show with the aforementioned Vicki Ray presented by Synchromy and Tuesdays at Monk Space, went to Banff to work with Tyshawn Sorey, and came home to start a few projects related to conduction, a mode of improvising as a conductor developed by Butch Morris. The guy does a lot, and it showed during that concert, which was the premiere of A Family History of Floods, a 90+ minute structured improvisation for 19 musicians.
At times meditative and lyrical, with vertical chorale harmonies reminiscent of Messiaen, and at times violent in the way that only free jazz can be, the piece smoothly transitioned between musical subgroups, with noise/jazz/punk/something band with saxophones Off Cell occasionally taking lead for extended sections, and a solo bass cadenza that made me wish improvisation was still the norm among concerto soloists. A Family History of Floods was a serious musical accomplishment–and just a first run through in a room full of friends.
Perhaps the feeling of a room full of friends is the elusive thing I’m really trying to capture here. The night after Miller’s show a couple of other composers and I went to go hear wild Up’s show with Nadia Sirota at the ACE hotel. We knew it was some sort of live taping for Nadia’s new podcast and that Caroline Shaw and Andrew Norman were involved, but not much beyond that. The set up was a lot like a late night talk show: a living room with Nadia in an armchair (a mid-century modern armchair, of course), Caroline and Andrew on the couch talking about what they think about when they compose. Wild Up served up live examples and accompaniment, with a particularly sensitive take on Shaw’s looping four chord music the she said she’d developed on the road with Kanye, and the tightest performance of Andrew Norman’s Try I’ve yet heard.
Following the show the band and as many people as they could invite headed over to Mikkeller DTLA for drinks, and after wild Up’s recent return from tour it felt a bit like high fiving friends on what they’d built (in cases of high fives, it was exactly that). Here was Chris Rountree, the guy I mentioned at the beginning running a Fluxus festival for the LA Phil, reveling in the ongoing national success of the group he started in an Echo Park rec center with a bunch of musicians and a credit card. I have every expectation that before long we’ll be seeing Miller’s projects on the same major stages as the so called next generation fills in at the DIY venues and rental spaces all over town.
The thing that makes me constantly happy about all of this, and that I hope to leave you with, is how much the people in our scene love their work, are open to helping each other out, and how welcoming they are. When I first moved back to Los Angeles, knowing zero musicians in town, I cold emailed some artistic planners at the LA Phil and got not only a response, but an invitation in for coffee to talk about music. Along these lines, wild Up now runs a happy hour every couple of weeks at Highland Park Brewery in Chinatown (facebook event here), and even if you’ve never met any of them I can guarantee you they will be happy to see you. The same seems to be true of everyone in the audience or onstage at any Tuesdays @ Monk Space show, or Monday Evening Concert (founded by Stravinsky, still open to young upstart composers), or People Inside Electronics, or the blue whale, or Late Breakfast, or Triptronics Research Institute, or Art Share, or Basic Flowers, or Battery Books…this list could continue almost indefinitely.
One word that gets tossed around a lot to describe our city is “decentralized.” Geographically this may be accurate—artists have long been troubled by the lack of an obvious gathering place, and I will take any excuse I can get to link to this map—though the social geography says the opposite. To that end, I’d argue that a huge network of diverse musicians who have all found their own ways to negotiate this artistic megalopolis have found each other, and by working and playing together are in fact a centralizing force in the music scene in LA. It works because, in the words of James Murphy, “they’re actually really, really nice.” As listeners, and as people, we all get to reap the benefits.
Thanks, LA. I love you. See you at a show,
Nick
WasteLAnd talks with Stephanie Aston, Dustin Donahue, Nicholas Deyoe, Katherine Young, and Allison Carter
Here at New Classic LA we love it when musicians and composers talk with each other about their work. In what is becoming an ongoing series, flutist and wasteLAnd executive director Rachel Beetz had time to speak with the performers, composers, and poet involved in their concert this Saturday at 8pm at Art Share. Tickets and details are at wastelandmusic.org. Here’s Rachel:
Happy Valentine’s Day!
wasteLAnd’s upcoming concert on Saturday includes collaborations and realizations of some quirky and weird love songs. We’re featuring Stephanie Aston throughout the program, including a premiere by Nicholas Deyoe. I asked some questions of composers Katherine Young and Nicholas Deyoe, performers Stephanie Aston and Dustin Donahue and the author of the text of Deyoe’s new work, Allison Carter. We hope you can join all of us to celebrate all of the weird types of love this program has to offer!
Program:
Manoalchadia – Chaya Czernowin
Love Letter – Liza Lim/Dustin Donahue
and I am responsible for having hands (five Allison Carter songs) – Nicholas Deyoe (world premiere)
Cellogram – James Tenney
Folk Songs – Luciano Berio
Master of Disguises – Katherine Young
RB: Stephanie, this concert involves a huge range of vocal colors! Can you talk a bit about how you’re approaching each different style? Are there connections between pieces in your approach at all?
Stephanie Aston: A lot of what I do is based on not just the indications given by the composer, but also the text. The text I sing in Manoalchadia is very aggressive for the first two thirds of the piece, so everything I do, be it low notes in full chest register, vocal fry, breathy singing, etc. has an aggressive and raw feeling behind it. Later in the piece the text becomes loving rather than aggressive, so everything I do comes from a gentle place.
Deyoe’s settings of the Allison Carter texts are very much in his style of setting text. There’s an ease of production and moderation of sound, in a certain sense. I have “poco vib” or “no vib” written in several times because nothing should be taken to excess; it’s just a clear beautiful ringing sound. In a way that allows me to bring out the nuances of the text as they come by and respond to them uniquely each time I sing it.
Young’s piece has mostly extended techniques until the end. It feels like an arrival piece of sorts because there was a time when I couldn’t do a tongue trill. The piece gives you hints along the way. Then at the end, when the text is fully there, it still isn’t, because it’s quiet and divided. I have the vowels and Leslie has the consonants.
The Berio Folk Songs have a wide variety of texts, so each movement has its own character. I try to keep my approach simple, thinking of how someone in the countryside of each piece might go about singing it and just try and have some fun.
RB: Dustin, Liza Lim’s Love Letter for solo hand drum asks the performer to “write a letter to your beloved” and “translate the letters of each word into rhythmic information.” Could you describe your encounter with this process? Was there anything that was particularly challenging in realizing this piece?
Dustin Donahue: The open-ended nature of this brief score was particularly daunting. There is no suggested process for translating letters into rhythmic information – this must be a system of my own design. As a first step, I created my text, where my own “love letter” runs in counterpoint with texts by Margaret Atwood and Simone de Beauvoir which were read at my wedding.
Emphasizing the score’s instruction to make rhythms from letters themselves, I explored a range of coded methods for translating individual letters into sounds; these, at first, included standardized practices like Morse code and ASCII, all of which felt impersonal and mechanical. Ultimately, as I analyzed and copied these texts, I became enchanted by the sound of handwriting. This was an intimate, highly personal method of producing sounds from letters; I recorded myself writing each text, and then transcribed in meticulous detail the exact rhythms of my writing and the articulations created with each stroke. In my performance, these rhythms and articulations are reproduced on the frame drum not with the intent of imitating the sound of writing, but instead to create a new kind of percussive language based upon the idiosyncratic movements of the hand in writing.
RB: Katherine, Could you talk a bit about the connection of the tape players to Kelly Links’ “The Girl Detective?” To me, with the idea of searching, it reminds me of old times looking for a particular song on a tape and having trouble if the tape wasn’t in a clear spot to begin with.
Katherine Young: Absolutely – I had the same association from my childhood in mind – looking for that one particular spot on a tape that you remember… and then there were for me, those special investigations when you never find what you’re looking for. It’s like that part of the song never existed, or maybe it only existed in your imagination.
For me, the tape recorders could also signify searching in terms of research, the way people used to conduct interviews with small tape recorders.
But at some point, the machines stopped being directly related to the story, and I was just interested in the sounds they made. I love the whirring and murmuring of the rewind and fast forward and the percussive clicks and clicks of the eject.
These sounds then became the basis for the instrumental sounds. The percussive tape recorder sounds, in particular, they circle back and inform how I treated the text when it is finally sung completely, breaking up the attack of the sound (word) and the sustain and splitting it between the two voices. To me this displacement relates to the ideas of elusiveness in the text.
RB: What other ways does this piece “search?”
Katherine: In my experience, playing many extended techniques in a woodwind instrument feels like a form of searching. Unstable multiphonics and the overblown squeaks are very hard to find and control. They will be a little different every time. These are my favorite kinds of sounds – the ones that surprise you!
RB: Allison, Nick has written a lot of music with your text at this point! Have you had text set before? Has it changed your approach? How has that shaped your approach to writing or your creative process?
Allison Carter: Yes! I love that Nick has composed multiple pieces using text I have written. His music teaches me about the text and sort of opens up the perimeter around the text. Like – oh, yes, it can sound like that! It can feel like that! It can be about… something like that! I have had text set before. Several years ago Gabriel Kahane composed music using my work. The experience of hearing how the text is met and built on by a new composition opens my mind to new directions the writing could go, almost as though the music turns the light on in an adjacent room. Hearing the text sung also confirms and pushes some elements of my writing process, like always editing out loud.
RB: Allison Carter, the author of the poetry you set in “and I am responsible for having hands” mentioned that this piece really captures the ambience or aura she had while making these works. You also seem to capture and feed off of skills of specific players. Can you talk a little bit about how these worlds collide into this piece? How did you consider the text and then the players while composing this work?
ND: I was really touched (and relieved) when Allison said that in rehearsal last night. I wasn’t setting out with the assumption that I fully understood the essence of what Allison was feeling when she wrote those words, but was responding to what they made me feel. Reading Allison Carter’s poetry resonates with me because her words elicit in me the same difficult-to-define emotions that are driving a lot of the music that I write.
When setting the words into a vocal line, I try to respect what is printed as much as possible. Punctuation, grammar, space on the page, and line breaks all guide how I pace the text. I don’t repeat words, I don’t change orders, and I don’t intentionally distort anything regarding the words. My aim is to present the text in the way that most closely resembles how I read it and then to create a musical context around it. For Allison to say that this piece has captured the aura that she was feeling when writing it makes me feel even more connected to her words, because my goal with the musical setting is to capture my own emotional state reading the words. It feels very personal to me. This is definitely related to the way that I like to work with performers. When I write music for you, Ashley, or Stephanie, the process becomes so rooted in our histories with each other. The whiskies and teas we drank together, the times we’ve spent sitting in a room and exploring sound with each other, the experiences we’ve had performing in ensembles together. I’m not writing for flute, cello, and voice. It’s for Beetz, Walters, and Aston. It’s about the way you interact with each other, how you sound as individuals, and the smartass remarks you make in rehearsals. This is the first time I’ve composed music for Alison Bjorkedal, but having her as a part of this ensemble has felt completely natural. After our experience of preparing Tenney’s massive Changes for six harps in 2017, Alison has felt like a good friend and a similar musical spirit.
Working with Allison Carter’s poetry makes me feel closer to her on a certain level, but also makes me feel like I understand myself a little better. I feel the same way working on a project like this with close friends. The openness and honesty present in these collaborations deepens my connection to all of you, but also sparks a self-reflection that continues to define who I want to be as an artist. And I am responsible for having hands is a cycle that engages poetry with an uncanny resemblance to my inner thoughts and is composed for some incredible friends. This is music designed to be created with people I love.
Vicki Ray talks Rivers of Time
On Wednesday night pianist Vicki Ray and visual artist Carole Kim combine forces at REDCAT for two huge new works for piano, electronics, and projections. The evening includes the world premiere of Ben Phelps’s exponentially expanding Sometimes I feel like my time ain’t long, based on the Alan Lomax recording of the eponymous tune. Also featured is Daniel Lentz’s Yellowstone-inspired River of 1000 Streams, which was named a top recording pick of 2017 by Alex Ross in The New Yorker.
Vicki has been a major player in the LA scene for years as a pianist, improviser, composer, and teacher. With all she does I’m glad she had a few minutes to answer some questions about this show. Tickets and full details are available at redcat.org/event/vicki-ray-and-carole-kim-rivers-time.
Rivers of Time focuses on two “monumental” new works. How do you approach large scale pieces, as both performer and concert programmer?
In terms of programming it really depends on the piece(s). Usually with one long work I’ll put something contrasting on the other half of the concert like miniatures or just feature the single work itself. But this concert is different. Each piece is almost exactly a half hour. They seemed like perfect book ends. And then there is the thematic linkage between the pieces in terms of their focus on time. So it seemed a natural pairing. As a performer my approach has to vary depending on the demands of the piece. Ben’s piece is very rigorous – it is extremely mercurial and there are many fast shifts of tempo and mood. It’s technically virtuosic. A lot of the challenge is about knowing what’s going to happen next. Daniel’s piece is equally demanding but in a completely different way – it uses an almost constant tremolo which can be really exhausting for the body. So I had to work up to complete run-throughs of it…sort of like training for a marathon. With this piece it’s about staying relaxed (well, when isn’t it?) and keeping the long arch of the piece always in the forefront of my mind.
What really excites me about this Wednesday night’s concert at REDCAT is the opportunity to share Ben Phelps’ new work Sometimes I Feel Like My Time Ain’t Long. It has been a total pleasure to learn this piece, or I should say continue learning this work. Like all great pieces it has layers to uncover and explore and everytime I sit down to work on it I find something new. Technically and musically it’s incredibly satisfying. The way Ben exponentially expands the piano part in correspondence with the time-stretched folk tune is ingenious. But rather than be some kind of purely cerebral exercise the totality of the piece is quite mystical and haunting. I feel very honored to get to give the premiere and I hope to play it many more times.
Could you discuss your collaboration with Carol for this project?
I started hearing about Carole’s work years ago when she was at CalArts. And then shortly after that she did some work with my brother, Scot, up in Montana. He was raving about her work and I saw some clips from the evening that blew me away. Finally here in Los Angeles I had several opportunities to see her work, most notably at an Open Gate Concert with some stellar improvisers. What impressed me was how she is able to join the musical conversation by weaving visuals into the texture without dominating it. It’s incredibly unique and thoughtful. Elegant. For this concert she’ll be projecting onto scrims that envelop the piano.
Your career as a soloist, collaborative pianist, improviser, composer, teacher is, to put it mildly, wildly diverse. How do your various musical practices inform each other? Is balance a challenge, or are they more like different aspects of the same work and interests?
I don’t really see it “various musical practices.” When I was a kid I played pop music, I sang in choirs, I acted in plays, I wrote little tunes, I improvised, and I learned classical pieces. They weren’t all squared away in separate boxes. So I’ve always been that sort of player even though there was a long stretch during my college years where a lot of the improvising and composing got put on a back burner. I feel much more creatively energized when I can work both as a creator and a re-creator.
You began in Los Angeles as a graduate student at USC. You’re now the head of keyboard studies at Cal Arts. To some extent, I view these schools as existing on completely opposite ends of the musical spectrum, at least aesthetically. Could you comment a bit on this dichotomy in the LA scene, if it even is one?
I can’t really comment on USC. I graduated from there a million years ago and I’m sure it’s changed since then. But what I do know without a doubt is that I wouldn’t be the artist I am if it weren’t for my years at CalArts. The place has had an enormous impact on me. My colleagues and my students are so gifted and interesting that I often feel like a permanent student rather than faculty. I’m so grateful to be a part of it. It continues to stretch and challenge me every day.
How has the new music scene in Los Angeles changed over your career thus far? I know we’re quite proud of ourselves in recent years, with good reason, and wonder if that has always been the case or if this is the renaissance it seems to be.
It’s definitely a great city to be in right now if you’re into new music! There’s so much going on and yes, much more than when I first arrived in the 80’s. Back in the 80’s and 90’s there was the EAR Unit and Xtet. The Green Umbrella concerts were always great. And the Monday Evening Concerts were there too of course! And there was always something interesting going on at the Schoenberg Institute at USC. Also there used to be those fantastic soirees at Betty Freeman’s house…wow…those were incredible evenings. But in terms of the number of groups playing and the diversity of musics being offered right now – it’s fantastic. I just wish we had a few more good, small to mid-size venues that were dedicated to new music (AND had a good piano…!)
What was your favorite concert you’ve attended or played on in the past year?
Oh that’s too hard! But the first thing that comes to mind is hearing Andrew McIntosh’s piece Shasta on the Green Umbrella. Just gorgeous. [editor: I too have that piece near the top of my list.]
What’s next for you after this show?
Next up is Feldman’s For John Cage with violinist Tom Chiu and dancers Oguri and Roxanne Steinberg. I’m really looking forward to it! February 26 on Piano Spheres.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I just want to thank YOU and all the folks at New Classic LA for what you do!!
Tickets for Rivers of Time are available at redcat.org/event/vicki-ray-and-carole-kim-rivers-time.