Posts by Richard An
DOG STAR ORCHESTRA FESTIVAL 21
There were sixteen (16) events held in the Dog Star Orchestra Festival over ten (10) days in the summer of 2025. Of those, I watched, listened to, or otherwise participated in thirteen (13) of them; you would think that gives me a uniquely qualified perspective to speak on the festival as a whole, but it turns out that a large percentage of this audience are diehards for the kind of quiet, post-Cagean music fostered (in large part) by Michael Pisaro at CalArts – several of the audience members were there for every single event.
The Dog Star Orchestra is an ensemble and a once-a-year festival of experimental music, started in 2005 by Michael Pisaro as a way of playing recent experimental music by young composers and classic pieces from the experimental tradition. Described as “messily exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times, Dog Star events happen throughout the Los Angeles area and often feature offbeat performances in out-of-the-way places, alongside more traditional concert settings. It is one of the main presenters fostering and documenting the strong local experimental music scene, as well as presenting work that would otherwise not be heard in the US.
The festival has also featured the US premieres of many works by the international Wandelweiser collective and presented seminal pieces from the American origins of the experimental school (Cage, Wolff, Feldman, Lucier, Oliveros, Tenney and so on). Initially curated by Pisaro alone, the summer festival grew from six concerts to, in 2015, fifteen concerts. Beginning in 2011 the festival began to employ multiple curators drawn from people who had participated in previous years. In most years upwards of 60 musicians participate as composers and performers. The local following for the series has also grown substantially over the twenty years of its existence.
Some of my highlights are collected below, with the notable exception of the IN REAL TIME review which is written by Violet Hill.
Jun 14, 2025 5:00 PM – WALL PIECE – LA Valley College, music school
A small ensemble will treat the west-facing wall of the LA Valley College practice room building like a graphic score and Erik Carlson will begin his solo violin piece, “Dog Star Palindrome.”
Michael Matsuno teaches at LA Valley College, and every time he enters or exits the music building, he passes by this wall, noticing its asymmetry, palette of colors and textures:
which naturally became the score for the faithfully-titled “Wall Piece”:
a performance of which was realized by a small ensemble facing the wall; the audience could choose to situate themselves anywhere. Some faced the ensemble, others chose to face the wall in tandem with the performers, as if reading along.
A composition like “Wall Piece” is predicated on a certain amount of rigidity; the score is derived from lines and shapes on a preexisting plane, and for a composer to adjust their whims would sacrifice accuracy to the original art which, depending on who you ask, is the entire point.
The success of this piece, then, lies in the details; Michael’s orchestrational decisions and the performers’ interpretative decisions compound to elicit a cohesive long-form work (clocking in at exactly an hour from the left edge of the wall to the bricks comprising the box office booth).
As of the time of the performance, the architect of the building is unknown to Michael. And, believe it or not, the design is at least partially functional; the blue sections are windows into practice rooms and faculty offices. At certain points, as Michael was measuring the walls, he’d accidentally look into one of the windows and someone’d be looking back.
Jun 20, 2025 8:00 PM – A YEAR OF DEEP LISTENING – The Battery Books and Music
readings and performances from “A Year of Deep Listening”
A series of short performances of pieces from “A Year of Deep Listening,” a collected anthology of text scores in tribute to Pauline Oliveros. My favorite was “Yeehaw * 9” performed by Mason Moy and Cassia Streb; you can probably guess what the said, nine times.
Jun 21, 2025 7:00 PM – PLACES – private address
A 24-hour installation composed by Todd Moellenberg.
in which audience members could enter Todd Moellenberg’s residence at any point during a 24 hours period to play on his piano, specific keys illuminated by a wall mounted projector based on scales derived from Markov chains. According to Todd, there was a performer seated at the piano for the entirety of the 24 hour period.
Jun 26, 2025 7:00 PM – NEAR FIELD #1 – Automata (basement)
Brandon Auger performs a proximity-based listening event
many motor-driven sound making objects on a table in the basement of Automata; this little roll of felt spun around with its arms raised and captured my heart
Jun 28, 2025 4:00 PM – IN REAL TIME – Automata
Three abstracts from Automata (by Violet Hill)
“On Nev Wendell” – automatic impressions & granular gestures inviting sweet moments of clarity between pause & pondering…the tickle of the ear, rustling of leaves, and quiet hum of the mechanized world – a truly wonderful absence of urgency
“On Ethan Marks” – tunnel vision (enlightened) through the obsessive conjuring of events, one after the other. a brilliant refusal to acquiesce. a dedication like no other. tension is officially in season, and its inevitable tides can be observed through glimpses into the window of dark arts
“On āññā” – mechanical voices from within that challenge perception of free will. red laser lights distract and hypnotize. visuals are far from processed feelings, rather, they evoke guttural reactions. do they serve to prompt an inquiry of matrix or are we asking the wrong questions?
Jun 28, 2025 8:00 PM – AGAIN AND AGAIN – Automata
A work by Jules Evans and the Dog Star Community Choir performs rounds from Larry Polansky’s Rounds Unbound
I co-directed the second half of this concert so I won’t say too much but what a joy it was to sing rounds with a group of volunteer / mostly-amateur singers. A photo of us at rehearsal in my studio because I was too preoccupied making music to take photos at the venue (I hope Larry would be proud of me):
Jun 29, 2025 8:00 PM – THESE ARE MY FRIENDS – Automata
Compositions by Nat Evans, Jen Boyd, Anna Heflin, Ben Rempel, TJ Sclafani
One major change in the festival this year was the quality and reliability of the livestreams provided by Dog Star, through the work of videographer Chris Lascelle and audio engineer Colbert Davis. Every performance in the Automata Theater was captured and live broadcast so that those unable to attend could still watch; I was unable to attend in person, so I would not be able to tell you about Ben Rempel’s percussion trio, a luminous highlight of the day featuring Tim Feeney, Don Nichols and Ben himself. The work vacillated between modes of togetherness; at times chaotic, at times synchronized, but most frequently somewhere in the middle.
This festival is staffed by volunteers who produce the beautiful-if-unmarketable music through sheer grit. Congratulations in order for every performer, composer and staffer but especially head honcho Cassia Streb for pulling it all together.
Stay tuned for the next season.
Tyler Eschendal’s ACTIONS
This past weekend, composer / percussionist / videographer / music technologist Tyler Eschendal (together with director Diana Wyenn) presented ACTIONS, a multimedia one-man show with five primary sections named after “actions” – Arguing, Acting, Singing, Ordering, and Explaining (which can be viewed as a video series here). These movements and their corresponding actions relate to Tyler’s stutter, about which he says:
“For many years, I chose not to make music around my stutter because I didn’t understand it. I was concerned about sharing it with others because alongside harmful tropes often portrayed in media, I primarily identified as a covert stutterer: someone who purposely omits or substitutes words to avoid stuttering. I felt disconnected from the biggest constant in my world. Although the original goal of the short film series was simply to better understand my stutter, this live adaptation presents the opportunity to connect to other people who stutter across Southern California and rebuild the narrative around stuttering.”
Throughout the work, “what does it feel like to stutter” recurs as a motive; in between movements, pre-recorded video excerpts describe situations in which Tyler’s stutter interfere with his daily life, some that had never occurred to me (ever get annoyed at a robot phone operator because they can’t understand you?). Some of the “actions” describe situations that might inspire terror in a person with a stutter; “Ordering” combines the fear of stuttering and the terrors of not knowing what you want to order into a collection of nervous tics, in a work reminiscent of Thierry de Mey or Tom Johnson. Other sections describe the mechanisms one might use to circumvent their stutter, like rhythmicizing their speech to the covert drumming of their fingers. But ultimately, the 50-minute show ends with a cautiously optimistic acceptance of self, and of the stutter as part of one’s self.
There’s a lot that can go wrong in live performance. Your Max patch could fail, your spike marks on the ground goes missing, or your wireless mic pack’s batteries die after a long dress rehearsal, and not to mention all the ways in which you could fail as a performer. Lines misremembered, mallets dropped, cues missed, notes gone; I was happy to see that this performance was as smooth and well calibrated as it could have been, especially one of this size and scope. Each movement performed without a hitch, nearly all memorized, and which involved a dizzying number of the “things that could go wrong;” an overhead projector, live audio processing, live video processing, looping, percussion on ceramic tiles. All pulled together to form not only a musically variegated composition, but also a giant feat of coordination and memorization.
I thought about Tyler’s stutter as he moved away from his first percussion setup and began monologuing. I wondered how his stutter could affect his monologue, then wondered if I should be thinking about that at all. I thought about “fluency” and its hegemony, which must mean that anything else is a failure, right? I thought about all the times I instinctively “helped” when it really wasn’t the right thing to do. In the final movement of ACTIONS, a Tyler drenched in vocoder delivers a final monologue, conflating speaking with a stutter as a “performance” and any action as “performing as yourself;” this was the gut punch that racked everything into focus. It informed the preceding 40 minutes, gave it new meaning, and extrapolated existence itself as a performance. Tyler’s understanding of self turns a technically perfect performance into an emotionally virtuosic one. Not only does ACTIONS answer “what does it feel like to stutter,” it challenges us to think on what it means to be human.
Presented by Synchromy, Music and Theater tell the story of life with a stutter in the premiere of Tyler Eschendal’s solo show ACTIONS.
Tyler Eschendal, Percussion and vocals
Diana Wyenn, Director
Elliot Menard’s UMBRA
CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE
A few weeks ago, LA Times classical music critic Mark Swed wrote about the surfeit of successful smaller scale opera productions that swept Los Angeles in February, including programs by The Industry, the LA Opera, and Long Beach Opera. I’m willing to bet, had he attended, that he would include last weekend’s production of Elliot Menard’s UMBRA at the Highways Performance Space amongst living proof that “intimacy replaces grandeur. Smaller budgets allow for bigger ideas. There is room for experimentation, immediacy and risk. Such opera can be done pretty much anywhere, indoors or outdoors, and pretty much anything goes.”
Elliot Menard’s UMBRA is an adaptation the Orpheus myth; as much is made clear in the first act where, immediately following an overture, the as-yet-unnamed Elliot sheds headdress and garb to reveal a plain black outfit, where she reveals (in the only English for the duration of the work) that, though everyone knows the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, what happens afterwards is not often considered. It is also revealed here that the myth allegorizes the story of Elliot’s childhood friend, who passed away at the age of 20 from suicide.
From here, the singers and ensemble (flute, cello, occasional electronics and pianist doubling as conductor) launch into an hour of nearly continuous music, which precipitates one of my only complaints about the production; it is difficult to understand the nature of each of the five or so sequential opera chorus movements when they’re presented one after another. It’s a well-known feature of the opera form that a moment in time can be suspended as long as is musically necessary, after which a resumption of plot could be expected; as UMBRA continued and continued and continued, the programmatic connection to the Orpheus myth became less clear, whether with intent or otherwise. I do partially chalk it up to my own lack of familiarity with the L’Orfei of antiquity, but I figure the lack of supertitles or translated text in the program notes would make it difficult for most patrons to follow. As the piece develops in subsequent productions, I could see it pull towards either direction; give us a chance to understand what each song / scene represents in the Orpheus myth, or swing even more opaque and do away with the introduction entirely. There’s nothing wrong with adapting the story with ambiguity, but to preface the show with “this is the Orpheus myth and it’s also about my friend” may ask the viewer to clue into aspects of a plotline that isn’t represented in an obvious manner.
As promised, that was my primary complaint with UMBRA; the music is well composed and tightly performed (with a staggering portion of it memorized by Menard herself), and the spare materials are smartly utilized. Microphones stands emerge from the curtain as props before they’re plugged in to amplify the chorus – the flautist at one point dances around the stage (while still playing) before retreating to the corner – a ceremonial cloak, once disrobed, is used as a rug for the next scene – both flute and cellist adopt percussive roles to replace a percussionist proper. As far as low-budget opera productions go, it’s hard to imagine it getting much better than this. With a small team and tight quarters, Menard and team manage to pull off an admirable feat – a tightly produced and beautifully performed work.
Umbra is developed in collaboration with and directed by Héctor Alvarez. This staged workshop production also features the work of music director Daniel Newman-Lessler, associate director and producer Rory James Leech, costume designer Ashley Snyder, assistant costume designer Nishtha Tyagi, lighting designer Claire Chrzan, and performers Nelle Anderson, Isabel Springer, Carmen Edano, Shannon Delijani, Karolina Kwasniak, Livia Reiner, Emma-rose Bauman, and Marly Gonzalez.
https://www.highwaysperformance.org/events/umbra-2025-03-22-20-00
newclassic monthly #6: past, present, future
if these photons are hitting your eyes, chances are you’re an angeleno, an artist, and someone who’s been somehow affected by the recent fires in Altadena and the Palisades. hopefully you’re reliably housed, employed, and unharmed but there are too many friends for whom that is not the case. i’m leaving links at the bottom of this write-up for folks in our community who still need our help.
A LOOK BACK
after an initial wave of immediate cancellations (from venues as small as the Sierra Madre Playhouse and as large as the Walt Disney Concert Hall) concerts series cautiously came back to life in late January as we began to readjust to life post-disaster. Monday Evening Concerts, which postponed their mid-January pair of Steve Schick performances (part of a season-long partnership celebrating MEC and Steve’s 85th and 70th years of existence, respectively), began their 2025 with a premiere by Tyshawn Sorey. Tuesdays @ Monk Space postponed their January Wendy Richman / Alex Elliott Miller show for later this season, and began the year proper with the music of Wadada Leo Smith in February.
Long Beach Opera‘s season-long exploration of Pauline Oliveros kicked off with EL RELICARIO DE LOS ANIMALES at the Heritage Square Museum.
Trade School, a new venue in Altadena, survived the fires but has had to shut their doors temporarily to smoke remediate, and relocated their February events to Oracle Egg and RASP. Tapetail also moved events to Oracle Egg before returning their usual home at Automata.
A LOOK AT MARCH
the calendar has been updated with all the usual suspects’ March events (if you don’t see yours on there, submit here). of particular note are the series of Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and REDCAT.
Chat Pile’s coming to Zebulon and clipping‘s new album comes out mid-March if your proclivities lean that way. Other records you can pick up (some in time for Bandcamp Friday) include Wovenland 3, Curator of Domestic Life, Reflex City Mangling, The Music of Anthony Braxton (by Steve Lehman), Parlando, SOVT, Pictures of the Warm South, Polsky West, and a special Women of Noise release for wildfires relief (check instructions in description, donate don’t buy. thanks Kevin, Jack and Matt). I’ll throw my own music in here, Ben Richter’s Dissolutions Seedlings released in January on Sawyer Editions (thanks Kory Reeder).
you may be stoked to hear Edition Wandelweiser has begun a digital migration to Bandcamp, also thanks to Kory Reeder. EW has not had a reliable digital streaming/purchase option (the records you’d find online were uploaded by the artists themselves, not the imprint), so this is a big deal for lots of us.
A LOOK FORWARD
the Ojai Festival just put its Series Passes up for sale (this year directed by Claire Chase). the Big Ears Festival, though not in Los Angeles, is this month and features too many musicians in the purview of this publication to name, and is the only festival of its type that I know of. TIME:SPANS (in New York in August, line up announced in April) is similar in size but not in scope.
both the Dog Star Festival and High Desert Soundings have opened and closed their submission windows, boding well for their summer and fall activities (again, respectively). the HEAR NOW Festival begins at the end of this month, opting this year for three concerts, one concert a month.
also wanted to shout-out Synchromy as a place to share new music events every month, and Mel’s List for Melissa Lai’s own list of events (we have a narrow overlap of events, so go check them out to expand your interests).
FROM THE EDITOR (NO ONE ASKED)
my last two months were strange; immediately before evacuating my home in Pasadena during the Eaton fires, i drove to my studio and grabbed my computer, every hard drive with old concert footage, my shimedaiko (the most expensive instrument I could carry in one hand) and the bars off my vibraphone (my most recent large purchase). i stayed at my dad’s for a few days, without power, then returned to Pasadena. i showered when the city advised us not to use the water (we’ll see the ramifications of that in a decade or so i guess). my home and and studio were safe, but the Pasadena Waldorf School, where I’d worked as Percussion teacher and occasional Choir accompanist, lost their primary campus.
i took a day trip to san diego to see neko3 at UCSD; on the way a rock kicked up behind a truck and hit my windshield, spraying bits of glass onto my clothes, creating a tiny hole through which you could hear the air whistle.
two weeks later, the historic rainfall in LA caused the perfect conditions for cars on the 134 to hydroplane and spin out, one of which was mine. i hit a pillar, somehow avoiding both personal bodily harm and hitting anyone else. my car was in the shop for a week, after which I drove without a functioning seatbelt for another week while they found a replacement belt. i wore a cross body bag across my shoulder to ward off anyone on that side of the law.
somewhere in the middle of all this, my students from the Pasadena Waldorf School, for having lost their campus in the Eaton Fire, were tapped to sing at the Grammys for the Quincy Jones tribute. serendipitously, the Palisades school selected was the Palisades Charter High School, whose choirs are directed by my friend Allison Cheng, where I’ve guest lectured on electronic music / recording engineering, and for whom I’ve written two pieces.
during these two months, i attended events by Monday Evening Concerts, Piano Spheres, KODO at the Walt Disney, Automata @ Oracle Egg, Trade School @ RASP, Mingjia Chen + NOW at 2220, Tapetail back at Automata, Tonality + Kronos at the Wallis and some I’m likely forgetting.
sometimes it’s a drag going out to events and though i’m typically allergic to the kind of saccharine togetherness spiel that usually goes where this sentence currently exists but i had to admit it was nice feeling a sense of community after all that happened to us.
please submit your events to our calendar
🍉
please donate to:
Erin Barnes, Nic Gerpe and Juhi Bansal, An Perry, Steve Lehman and family, Bobby Bradford, William Roper, Bennie Maupin and family
nc.la at Noon 2 Midnight
As luck would have it, at least three of our writers independently ended up at the LA Phil Noon 2 Midnight marathon festival last weekend, and a fourth (Violet Dream) performed as part of the Isaura Quartet (my favorite complete set of the day). Huge congrats to Violet, and here are some of our highlights:
Richard An: Vicki Ray has known and worked with Annea Lockwood for decades, and it is perhaps due to that familiarity that produces an intense, fiery performance of Lockwood’s Jitterbug, with a skillful combination of intention and ease. Wesley Sumpter was once a Resident Fellow at the LA Phil and now performs regularly with the orchestra as a de-facto member of the percussion section; at scarcely 30 years old, Sumpter steps up to the task of matching up with these two fixtures of new music in Lockwood and Ray. A luxurious field recording of natural sounds provide a bed of material on top of which Ray and Sumpter are free to trade gestures. A masterful performance, and my favorite of the roughly 6 hour span that I was present.
Jack Herscowitz: Among the highlights of the day was saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson’s solo set for saxophone and electronics, Unusual Object: which shares the same name as his most recent solo album. Johnson’s prodigious playing and pedalboard mastery commanded the attention of the entire lobby, stopping departing concert goers (from the recently finished Doug Aitken, Lightscape premiere) dead in their tracks. The smile and awe painted on my face throughout Johnson’s set is a testament to the magic that everyone in that room surely felt. And that delicious harmonizer pedal…
Anuj Bhutani: I’ve wanted to see Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra for a long time, and seeing them close out the main stage felt like the perfect first experience, as their very presence on the stage felt poetic after the day’s programming. From the very first solo to the riotous ending with the entire audience clapping along with the on-stage dancers, PAPA had the audience totally enraptured.
newclassic monthly #5: november 2024 – the “scene”
The “scene” I’m referring to is the one directly served by this website; the contemporary classical / experimental new music community of Los Angeles. It is the scene in which I found many of my friends, which produces the music I’m most passionate about, both of which I’m trying to serve with my work, including this website, my new music series, my ensemble, my studio, and my non-profit organization.
In order to better understand my place in the community, I’m reading a couple things about “the scene;” Michael Matsuno’s “New Music Ambassadors to the World: A Biography of the California E.A.R. Unit”, Andrew Kluth’s “A Study of the Los Angeles DIY Experimental Music Scene: Reflections on the Promise of the Possible” and the book pictured, Dorothy Lamb Crawford’s biography on the series formerly called Evenings on the Roof, now named “Monday Evening Concerts.” The thoughts below reflect an incomplete reading of the material, yet were/are crucial in shaping these thoughts into, ideally, something actionable. As I keep reading, I find myself thinking about certain aspects of “the scene.”
This calendar directly serves the visibility of events in the contemporary classical / experimental sphere in order to, in broad strokes, get more people to these shows. Given the ad hoc, DIY, underfunded and volunteer nature of these events, there is no central repository or database for these kinds of things in Los Angeles. Most new music series don’t have 10 month “seasons” laid out by August. This calendar is not and can not be a perfectly updated source of all these events, especially given the “rhizomatic” nature of the communities of Los Angeles (this word is used by Kluth in his dissertation and I quite like it).
Los Angeles sprawls, and the venues which host these events are spread apart and can be difficult to get to. Even those on the east side that are relatively well served by the Metro are difficult to find; the original building which housed the wulf had patrons “buzz unit 203” to enter, a similar sign you’ll now see taped to the lobby entrance of Oracle Egg, a space which serves a similar function, crowd and location since the wulf‘s closing (less than two miles as the crow flies).
2220 Arts & Archives, one of the larger and better funded venues of this type has no signage on the outside; its main parking lot still references the Bootleg Theatre, a previous venue at the same location which closed in 2021. Betalevel is infamous for its directions asking patrons “to take a right at the dumpster” to find the venue. My own studio doesn’t do much better; despite the label on the door, the address you type into GPS takes you to the taqueria it shares the building with, leading many patrons to knock on their kitchen access door instead of mine. Koreatown’s Monkspace, the Arts District’s FRANKIE and DTLA’s Coaxial have no signage at all. At least half of these venues have no designated parking lots. Non Plus Ultra doesn’t even have an address.
Some of this is, undoubtedly, pragmatic; Automata fits 50 if you’re lucky, Betalevel is a basement, and I cap attendance in events in my studio at 35. Keeping the active community small means that the events will likely never need to relocate from their current small, inexpensive homes and can continue to present events at a low cost. It also means that the people who do attend will be kept safer. Introducing friction, or at least, not taking steps to alleviate the difficulty of getting to, finding, and attending these events, seems to intentionally cap the active community at a certain amount.
There are very valid criticisms to this; we joke amongst ourselves about playing to the same room of 20 people, and so many new pieces are played once and never again. We believe in this music, but documenting and archiving these events are a low priority for many of those who run it, so the only people who will hear a spectacular piece of music are the 30 people who were there.
But at the same time, is this something that needs a solution at all? The often inaccessible (read: noisy) aesthetics of this music itself eschews broader commercial appeal, so certainly no one’s going to get rich off of ticket sales. An underground scene, by definition, doesn’t attempt to appeal to the widest audience, it serves a counter-culture. This music historically functions outside of (American) university and institutional oversight, though 50 years of CalArts musicians and recent Noons tos Midnights might argue otherwise. And the standout music of an underground scene will find its broader audience anyway; you can listen to Hanatarash on Spotify, for fuck’s sake.
There are other things we should undoubtedly improve first (not all venues are ADA compliant, and most of the music is, to put it one way, Eurological). The very purpose of this calendar seem to point towards inviting broader audiences, but I am just as complicit in “gatekeeping” as much as anyone. Last month, a musician rented my studio for a (private) event and asked why I didn’t put out a sandwich board so that people could find the studio easier. I felt the instinctive pull towards saying “the people who want to find it, will” and that didn’t really sit right with me.
To be clear, I love playing in living rooms, or in venues where there are more people on stage than there are in the audience. The fact that most of these people are my friends mean that I always have someone to talk to at these events. But as someone who is, like all of you, a person in this community, I feel like I have a duty to make sure new people hear this music. I am continually trying to make that happen; to that effect, check out the calendar and attend events in November and bring a friend. 🙂
Further (related) reading in Marianna Ritchey’s “Composing Capital,” Michael C Heller’s “Loft Jazz,” and more.
newclassic monthly #4: october 2024 – what we’ve been listening to
Jeremy Rosenstock’s anti-crystalline (2024, Falt)
Jeremy Rosenstock’s anti-crystalline, released digitally and on tape via Falt, amplifies the ghostly static hidden within deceptively voiceless volcanic materials. The tape features a composition on each side: “anti-crystalline,” a three-movement percussion trio for snare drums and obsidian as the A-side, and “post-crystalline,” a patient and coarse electronic track as its B-side. In “anti-crystalline,” Rosenstock employs the snare drum for what it is: a resonator. Yet, this transparent approach begets a beautifully opaque result, clouding scraped obsidian in a gossamer mist reminiscent of electronic processing. These electro-acoustic phantoms float naturally into the record’s electronic B-side, a brain-massaging realization of where our imaginations had wandered during “anti-crystalline.” The silences throughout the A-side remind us to listen just a little bit closer to the ostensibly static materials around us. So hold up that rock a little closer to your ear; you might be surprised with what you can hear.
Jack Herscowitz
Cassia Streb and Tim Feeney – Betwixt (2024, Harmonic Ooze Records)
I’ve heard Tim and Cassia perform together a number of times in LA, scraping and bowing and stacking and activating small objects on a table. This record is a culmination/combination/realization of their continued work together over a year or so, and I’m excited to hear that my favorite material (throwing keys on the floor) made the cut. Very lowercase (RIP Steve Roden) but that doesn’t mean it’s quiet; once you’ve acclimated to a single scraping sound, a box of ball bearings rattling feels gigantic.
Richard An
Marnie Stern – This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It & She Is It & It Is It & That Is That
Not exactly a new release, but someone recently recommended going through Zach Hill’s enormous discography and clicking a random thing to listen to, which is how I landed on this album. Since then (two days ago) I’ve worked through nearly her entire excellent discography but there’s nothing quite like how this album opens. Comparisons to Deerhoof and the ILYs are obvious but true; also Melt-Banana and Pom Poko.
Shreddy, mathy, guitary.
Richard An
newclassic monthly #3 (2024-25 Los Angeles season preview!): september 2024
the monthlies will be bi- until richard’s morale work ethic improves (sorry!!)
it’s press release season! i’ve asked the nc.la writers to talk about of some of the upcoming concerts they’re excited about. L.A.’s social and cultural diversity extends to the kinds of music you can hear, even within the relatively narrow genre specializations of nc.la, so there’s something for everyone’s brand of “weird” music.
Jack Herscowitz: Los Angeles always provides in its breadth of musical offerings. Among my most anticipated concerts are: the legendary composer Annea Lockwood at Zebulon 9/13/24, psychedelic noise duo Yellow Swans at Zebulon 9/29/24, Chicago-based composer/sound artist Olivia Block at 2220 Arts and Archives 10/12/24, Tuesdays at Monk Space presenting the music of composer/trumpet Wadada Leo Smith on 2/11/25, and rumours of a to be announced performance of Sarah Hennies’ Thought Sectors via Monday Evening Concerts. (note from the editor: keep your eyes peeled, this information is out soon)
Anuj Bhutani: I can’t wait for LA Phil’s “Noon to Midnight: Field Recordings” curated by Pulitzer-Prize winner Ellen Reid, which is also part of the Getty’s landmark PST Art festival happening all year long. The festival promises “live performances and art installations activating every corner of the Walt Disney Concert Hall campus” with an emphasis on field recordings, along with food trucks and a beer garden! (note from the editor: Anuj is being humble, he has a show on Tuesdays at Monk Space coming up in April!)
Mason Moy: The last time I was at 2220 Arts was to see Baltimore-based justly-intuned math-rock hyphen-friendly band Horse Lords. I will be returning on October 12 to see Olivia Block perform music from her most recent release, The Mountains Pass. I’ve been lucky to experience some of her multi-channel work, but excited to see her perform live with Jon Meuller and Paige Naylor.
Richard An: It goes without saying that I’m stoked for Monday Evening Concerts‘ 85th and Piano Spheres‘ 30th seasons, both of which are celebrating their milestones with big concerts, commissions, and guest artists. High Desert Soundings always deserves some attention (their opening/fundraising event is tonight). The LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight is back, as mentioned by Anuj, and is also hosting an Unsuk Chin-curated “Seoul Festival;” I myself only recognize a few names on this list, so it’ll be good to become acquainted with a community of composers and new music performers that I’m not familiar with.
thanks for reading! here are some cats i hung out with recently
newclassic monthly #2 (a letter from the editor): july 2024
i like setting expectations at an achievable level; i think i did that here by starting a monthly series then promptly forgetting to do the second month. sorry!
i just flew back from new york where I attended a music educator conference, and in 10 days I’m heading back out to massachusetts to attend the Bang on a Can Summer Festival; it’s an unusual amount of summer activity for me, since the last time i flew on a plane was in 2019. since i spent a lot of time on planes and in airports, I’ve been checking out a lot of new releases, so I decided to write up a series of mini reviews; new-ish releases in the contemporary-classical/improvised/experimental sphere that you should be aware of. not strictly ordered but the ones at the top are great.
Tashi Wada – What is Not Strange?
instrumental, art pop/post rock, slowly evolving textures while somehow largely inhabiting the 4-5 minute “song” track length. the synth work is awesome, particularly on track 2 “Grand Trine.”
Yarnwire – Currents Vol. 9
the yarnwire currents series showcases their incredible body of commissions over more than a decade, including and especially the layered textures in “Pitiless as the Sun” by Jordan Dykstra, which draws comparisons to the yarnwire commissions from Klaus Lang and Øyvind Torvund, which are also personal favorites. nothing is bad on this album, nothing is less than great, even.
Leilehua Lanzilotti – the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky
wollschleger’s on my mind since i just performed’s scott’s “american dream” last month but the parts i love about these pieces remind of the writing in “american dream;” repeated gestures at varying tempi, pitch bent percussion, teasing unisons with strings, and glacially paced piano. the muted flowerpot(?) on “sending messages” is incredibly captivating; i could listen to that alone for 45 minutes.
Scott Wollschleger – Between Breath
tasty string writing and terrifying trombone sounds. after living inside his “american dream” i’ve come to know scott’s musical language pretty well, “Between Breath” seems to “run” more, with fewer interruptions between sections
Caroline Shaw / Sō Percussion – Rectangles and Circumstance
pretty nice; scratches the ‘tigue’ itch (i miss you tigue)
tristan perich – Open Symmetry
it does what you’d expect a tristan perich piece for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics to do. if you’re not into it, it can feel same-y. if you’re into it like i am, it’s exactly what you want.
and here are some releases i didn’t get to, but will this coming month; i do have at least another 12 hours on planes to look forward to
Sarah Hennies – Motor Tapes
fuubutsushi – meridians
rhodri davies – Telyn Wrachïod
lucy liyou – +82 K-Pop Star
SAWYER’s newest batch
chris cohen – paint a room
thanks for reading!
newclassic monthly #1: may 2024
dear nc.la readers,
hello! trying out a new monthly write-up of some of our favorite listens for the previous month; some are new releases, some not.
Leslie Ting – What Brings You In (2024, People Places Records)
a dutiful introspection of self through a vicious swirl of suspension & outpour, pressed in a rare format of both stereo & binaural versions; eventually, it paralyzes into a stasis of vulnerability & honesty, which we could all use a little more of in this moment…this album isn’t quite a substitute for therapy, but it’s close.
Violet Tang
Alessandro Rovegno – Everything Loose is Traveling (2024, self released)
Alessandro Rovegno’s, Everything Loose is Traveling re-appropriates nostalgia as a tender ephemerality: forgoing romanticized mush for glitchy field recordings, stuttering synths, and fragmented melodies. The past is neither idealized nor lost, but a phantom stream flowing alongside the present. Rovegno invites us to take a dip under a mid-September’s sun.
Jack Herscowitz
Shuttle358 – Field (2018, 12k)
Recently, I’ve been relistening to an old favorite of mine that I hadn’t spent time with in a long while. I first discovered “Field” by Shuttle358 (aka Dan Abrams) while working a summer job at the UT Austin library back in 2018, just by chance. It’s one of my all time favorites. Each track sounds quite simple at first blush, but every time I sit down and really listen closely, there’s always something new to discover. He creates these simple yet intricate worlds of sound that you can dive into and get completely lost in if you wish. My favorite track from the album is “edule”. It’s a bit of an oddball, because Shuttle358 takes a synth solo about halfway through. An interesting oddity that doesn’t really occur much in the rest of his body of work.
Eric Lennartson
Erykah Badu – But You Caint Use My Phone (2015, Motown and Control Freaq)
I’ve been hooked on “but you caint use my phone” (mixtape) by erykah badu ever since I saw it in a Kyle Abraham piece last month at the Music Center. It’s such a fascinating, fun, and groovy concept album.
Anuj Bhutani
I recently met the producer who did the Atmos upmixes for a bunch of Frank Sinatra recordings, and they are unbelievable sounding. I was into Sinatra as a teenager, and it’s been rad to revisit these songs. Start with Come Fly With Me, and get yourself a pair of headphones that can handle binaural properly before you do.
Nick Norton