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WildUp and LACO explore the composer-curator model in a weekend of performances

Last Friday, I drove through a brisk Beverly Hills evening to get to TreePeople, an environmentalist center located deep in the Hollywood Hills. Later I would learn that TreePeople had existed for fifty years in Los Angeles, planting thousands of trees in fire-stricken areas in southern California, but it was my, and many others’ first time there. Not unlike WildUp’s previous co-productions with floating at the Audubon Center, this event placed a chamber-sized configuration of WildUp in an atypical concert setting; the audience set up chairs, blankets and yoga mats beneath trees surrounding a performance space, two chairs and a table staged against a now pitch black Los Angeles skyline. I claimed a spot on the dirt as Mattie Barbier and Ashley Walters began playing Barbier’s no dirt to call for prepared brass and cello. Alternating long tones from both instrumentalists dovetailed into one another, reveling in the delicate composite texture of hair-on-string and reed-on-brass; I hope I mentioned that Barbier outfitted their euphonium with (what looks like) a saxophone mouthpiece in place of the standard euphonium mouthpiece. Barbier’s score explored the limits of this construction, dancing on the razor’s edge of playability, each sound seemingly a Herculean task of balance as the two halves of the instrument, built without considering the other, were coerced to play together. Walters provided a dependable but equally considered counterpoint, an anchor for the more delicate brass tones to blend into. 

Mattie Barbier performed the other two pieces on the program solo: Ellen Arkbro’s Chords for brass and fixed media electronics, and a performance of Phil Niblock’s A Trombone Piece which was presented for solo trombone and pre-recorded trombone choir. The latter was offered as a tribute to the composer, as Niblock had passed earlier this month, and had had a large impact on Barbier’s music making from an early age. Both pieces were singular, loud, encompassing, and unrelenting; I (admiringly) use the word “indulgent” for this music, pieces which pick a compelling musical idea and insist on it for its entire duration. After the show a light rain started to fall, and I listened to its continuous thrum on the roof of my car as I drove home.


By Saturday, the drizzle had evolved into a downpour as I fought Long Beach traffic to get to the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) for CURRENT: [INTI]MATE, an evening of chamber music curated by inti figgis-vizueta, a composer whose recent music has Carnegie, Spoleto and REDCAT under the hands of the Attacca Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, and Andrew Yee. The program weaves together music from composers of the Latine diaspora, including arrangements of Violeta Parra’s Anticuecas, culminating in a new work from the curator herself. These were the highlights of the program; a clear love of melody is evident in the folkloric Anticuecas, and an equally strong affinity for texture and timbre are present in figgis-vizeuta, Negrón and Balter’s selections. The arrangements were clever, and the program’s structure (loosely alternating older and newer pieces) worked well. 

The presentation was marred by some other circumstances; the guitar was curiously unamplified, and the pieces with electronics were imaged oddly (they were played through small pre-installed speakers in the gallery drop ceiling). Half-concert and half-gala, quiet sections of music were interrupted by attendees getting up to get food and wine, rain-soaked shoes squeaking across the slick floor. These are perhaps the necessary growing pains of a new series foregrounding contemporary music in new curatorial models, in untraditional venues which eschew the admittedly sometimes-stifling, sometimes-confusing standard concert etiquette. Though I know I’m comparatively sensitive to extraneous noises, and some hiccups are bound to happen in any concert environment, it’s just a bit of a shame when they affect how the music is presented.

That said, both events are demonstrative of a curatorial model that I enjoy; an organization putting time and resources behind a young contemporary musician in untraditional ways. Other Los Angeles new music organizations like Synchromy and Monday Evening Concerts have done the same, to recent successes, and I hope others continue to follow suit. 

For more information about these events:

https://endless-season.wildup.org/2023-24/event/barbier-arkbro/

https://www.laco.org/events/current-intimate/

On Patience and Sustenance: Microtonal Brass Works by Ellen Arkbro and Sarah Davachi

Slow, barebones music engenders highly attentive listening. Each breath becomes a gesture and every compositional decision bears immense responsibility. In this music, details do not support a gesture: they are the gesture. So on Sunday December 17th, 2023, I was delighted to hear many of Los Angeles’ finest brass players perform a program of patiently glacial chamber works in just-intonation at Automata Theater in Chinatown.  

The program began with Ellen Arkbro’s clouds, originally premiered in 2022 by the tuba trio Microtub. The audience encircled an ensemble donning the slightly altered instrumentation of Mattie Barbier on euphonium, Luke Storm on tuba, and Mason Moy on tuba. From the first chord, the immense resonance of the two tubas and euphonium, amplified by Automata’s reverberant interior, shook my organs like Jell-O. The richness of the low brass amplified the quivering beating patterns of Arkbro’s precise overtone-derived harmonies to epic levels. For the duration of the work, it was as if I was inside of a colossal church organ. 

As compared to the pieces of Arkbro’s with which I am familiar, often based in sustenance of a single idea, clouds has a more dynamic narrative structure. Three blocky structures define the 20 minute performance: unison chords, layered harmonies with delayed entrances, and a concluding sustained drone with a shifting bassline. This coda is unique: in much of the piece, the upper two voices shift over a sustained bass pedal-point, while here, Arkbro reverses those roles. Barbier’s and Moy’s superb circular breathing brings this culminating drone to stillness, as Storm delicately places and replaces the bass. Here, Arkbro brings attention to the ability of a singular voice to recontextualize and reimagine a static harmony. A drone is perhaps less fixed than we might imagine. 

After a short break, we resituated our chairs into a multi-directional tangle to orient ourselves towards the spatially organized ensemble for Sarah Davachi’s Long Gradus (brass). Situated in the four corners of the room, the ensemble now surrounded the audience. Davachi offers some insights into the piece in her liner notes on Bandcamp. She originally composed Long Gradus for the microtonal string quartet specialists Quatuor Bozzini for the 2020 Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Utrecht. COVID delayed the premiere, which allowed Davachi the time to expand the work into its patient hour-long form. Although originally composed for string quartet, Davachi opens the instrumentation to any quartet of instruments with the ability to alter their intonation. This rendition of the piece was performed by the newly formed Diapason Brass Quartet of Nev Wendell on trumpet, Nick Ginsburg on horn, Mattie Barbier on trombone, and Mason Moy on tuba.

Throughout the work, the slowly pulsing lights in Automata cast a sequence of shifting shadows on the floor: a dynamic tapestry of ghostly limbs fading into and out of existence. This seemingly inconsequential detail serendipitously focused my listening towards shadows and patterns as an essential element of Davachi’s piece. The successive repetitions constituted a cubist rendering of a phrase’s shadow, until five minutes passed and I suddenly realized that I was no longer listening to the same shadow. Breath was equally vital. An undulating textural density of sustained tones created a pointillistic tessellation: fragmented, as if by four phantom asynchronous delay pedals. Unisions felt like a happy treat, as did silences. This allochronic meter allowed this brass-quartet version to differentiate itself from the sustained string quartet version beyond timbre (as I suppose bows do not need to breathe). The ensemble’s steadfast stability in their non-vibrato longtones over the course of the hour constituted a remarkable feat of musical/physical endurance. The resonance of the space allowed for the combination tones to tickle my eardrums, especially when Moy brought in a cavernous bass note. Davachi’s commitment to deliberate change did not lead my ear to a clear resting point, but rather demonstrated a devotion to metamorphosis. There is no “home” or V-I, but rather a diasporic wandering to elsewhere. A piece like this reminds me of one of my favorite literary quotes, from Octavia Butler’s’ Parable of the Sower: “God is Change.”

Davachi and Arkbro show us that work employing the harmonies of the overtone series need not to obsess with the harmonies themselves, but rather engage the altered processes of listening that such tunings beget. These are trans-temporal works: drawing from the non-metric monophony and hocketing polyphony of plainchant, Renaissance and Baroque temperament, and the stripped down non-expressive minimalism of Wandelweiser. The night’s expert brass performers brought out every detail from this ostensibly simple music, highlighting the underlying complexity of a long-tone. I am grateful that such investigative and patient art exists to grant me the curiosity to examine the details of our world. Maybe through such thorough investigation, can we begin to rearrange those details into something new and more just.


https://www.automatala.org/

this may be the most ethically compromised review you’ll ever read: Yarn/Wire at FRANKIE presented by Monday Evening Concerts

courtesy of Yarn/Wire

Yarn/Wire is a quartet composed of two percussionists (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg) and two pianists (Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer). They presented two beautiful concerts earlier this month in large warehouse space FRANKIE in the Arts District, presented by Jonathan Hepfer and Monday Evening Concerts. 

Yarn/Wire is also my favorite chamber ensemble. I have attended their summer Institute twice. I have my own 2pno/2perc ensemble based largely on the work they’ve done, taking advantage of their large commissioned body of work. I have another mostly-piano ensemble in which ALL of the members have attended the Institute. They have played my music, and I have played theirs.

I also work (as Associate Producer) for Monday Evening Concerts, the longest running new music ensemble in Los Angeles, about to enter its 85th year, and helped produce these programs (and run live sound). I’ve known Jonathan Hepfer from our overlapping stays at CalArts, since 2017.

Though I’ve never made any claims otherwise, I feel like it’s only right that I tell you that this may be the most ethically compromised review you’ll ever read. I tend to get involved with lots of new music orgs here in Los Angeles, so to find a concert that I’m completely agnostic to is a bit of a challenge. But even so, it’s almost funny to find myself this intertwined in a production.

So, in order to ease any (assuredly mostly self-directed) claims of unfair bias, the format of this review will need to change. Instead of offering an opinion, I’ll take you through a bit of my day as I work through the two concerts.


The audience were seated in a round, surrounding the ensemble, with speakers at the perimeter of the room facing inward, and around the ensemble facing outward. The first concert began with a work by Tyondai Braxton in which (in its recorded version) it is difficult to discern who is playing what, when, and where. Its title gives you hints (“music for ensemble and pitch shifter/delay”) and when seen live (here in a rare performance and its West Coast premiere), you can see how much the electronics are playing with the ensemble – not under, or against. The program notes (which hilariously are written by me) note how the live processing fills in the gaps horizontally (hocketing against the instrumentalists) and vertically (filling in registers, especially low ones, that the musicians themselves are not playing). I love the ambiguity of what is “played” and what is processed in the recorded version of this piece, and my goal as the live sound engineer in presenting it was to try to replicate that experience for the audience that would most likely be hearing it for the first time.

After a moment for applause, the piano lids were closed with small microphones placed inside; Sarah Davachi’s “Feedback Studies for Percussion” relies on the performers’ ability to manually balance their own sounds constructed by overtone reinforcement and acoustic feedback, aided secondarily by the microphones at each instrument. The closed piano lids create an acoustic chamber, in which certain resonant frequencies are encouraged to gather by the size and shape of the open space in the pianos. This, combined with the ringing metals played by the percussionists, creates a composite mass of sound that, at its best, is just on the edge of spilling over into “too much.” The performance functions on multiple parameters of this feeling of “spilling over”; I was told, as the live sound engineer, to push the sound as loud as I could before feeding back. The performers are doing this ‘manually’ as well, using their ears and pacing sensibilities to keep the machine whirring without letting the built up energy expire or crest too quickly. There is even a physical analogue to this in the ringing metals; gongs and some other large metal idiophones have a kinetic actuation point; you hit it a little too hard, and overtones spill out of the instrument and the quality of the sound changes drastically. There is a feeling of control, balance and sustain, coupled somehow non-paradoxically with a sense of “leaning forward” through its roughly 20-minute run time.

Andrew McIntosh’s “Little Jimmy” closes the program, a delicately constructed piece obituarizing the trees in and around the Little Jimmy campsite in the Angeles National Forest on Mt. Islip. The field recordings used in the piece are part of the collective memory of Little Jimmy which burned in the 2020 Bobcat Fire; the psithurism here is one of few ways left to experience the trees (that word is “the sound of the wind through leaves”, a word I must have picked up from from McIntosh himself). “Little Jimmy” loves high metals and scraped stones, pairing them alternatingly with a marching 16th note piano statement, and bowed metals. The piece exists in a mirror form, at the heart of which sits a slowly-unfolding hum of bowed piano which grows over ten minutes into a roar, with Yarn/Wire wailing on bell plates and the lowest notes on the piano. After the dust settles, we think we hear birds and the wind through the trees again. The field recordings exist sometimes at the edge of audibility; before the concert, I asked McIntosh how I should balance the field recordings to the quartet, to which he said “like it’s a quintet” and walked away.


The second concert began two hours after the sunlight had left the room; the large globe lights above the audience were dimmed, the centre lights completely shut off, with four paper lanterns added surrounding the ensemble to provide local light. The atmosphere seemed to pull the audience in closer to listen to the first piece of the second program, Klaus Lang’s “Molten Trees.” This is a favorite Yarn/Wire commission of mine; superballed bass drums punctuated by antiphonal claves is just somehow a perfect sound. It begins the piece, which then gives way to a forest of triangles, then a continual exploration of sustained sounds. The warbling of a vibraphone motor, the hum of an e-bow on piano string, the hammering chords on a piano all work to create a cloth of different textures; the sections of “Molten Trees” change slowly enough to draw your attention into the details, how the rhythm of one sustain is just barely faster than the other. How the chime attacks blend together smoothly while the drier piano material continues to run on top. Somehow, in glacially moving chunks of sound, each interaction between instrumentalists creates a vibrant composite inner rhythm. Then, click, claves return. It is an unbelievably effective marker of a recapitulation; it is a little baffling at how much like “home” that material feels after listening to sound masses of different densities and textures for twenty minutes.

Sarah Hennies’ “Primers” closes both the program, and Yarn/Wire’s residency in Los Angeles. The program note, which, again, sorry, was written by me, explains: “Primers, like much of Sarah Hennies’ music of this time, is constructed in clean, discrete durational blocks which intersect, overlap, interrupt and dovetail. A hocketing musical gesture in one half of the ensemble persists, unchangingly, yet somehow still feels vibrant when the other half interrupts three minutes later. Frankly a masterwork in pacing and structure, Primers is simultaneously placid and rapid, slow and frenetic, unchanging yet continuously evolving. Primers invites both detailed listening and zoning out, and delivers a musical line which simultaneously intrigues, perplexes and captivates the listener.“ Yet another West Coast premiere (the fourth of the night), this piece was foundational to the programming of the evening since the very beginning of the production cycle; other pieces were added and stricken from the list, but Hennies was included since day one, months ago. My program note gives away some of my incredulity at the effective simplicity of the material, the piece works remarkably well; perhaps because of its simple construction, not in spite of it. The same musical material persists unchangingly for minutes at a time, giving you just enough time to wonder what’s coming next, yet still shock when it does. 

I heard a few concert-goers expound afterwards, with the recurring thought that putting Hennies and Lang on the same program may have been a programming error, and may have taxed the audience with its similarities. To me, this pairing was brilliant; both pieces share an affection for long stretches of material, registral extremes, and love of dry, percussive events. However, its shared characteristics may cloud each piece’s strong individual identities; where one stays on a single sound for minutes at a time, the other constantly morphs through added layers. Where one revels in continuous gridded rhythm, the other explores motion through dovetailing lines of music. The friction in this juxtaposition shows you how different two pieces with the same ingredients could be; the push of two opposing magnets that you know should belong together, I mean they look the same, don’t they?

pc: Jonathan Hefper

YARN / WIRE – ‘MOLTEN TREES’
​GUEST ENSEMBLE RESIDENCY

TWO PROGRAMS :
​DECEMBER 9, 2023 | 4PM and 8PM
at FRANKIE, LOS ANGELES | 300 S MISSION RD, 90033

https://www.mondayeveningconcerts.org/
https://www.yarnwire.org/

these are the tears of things…

photo credit: Violet 湯

It was merely a week ago that I made another visit to a Green Umbrella show with my husband at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I was gleaming with excitement at the prospect of being able to review the LA Phil New Music Group for the first time, especially with the traction that California Festival has gained in recent months. However, two days later, I received word that my grandmother had passed away, merely a week before I was planning to visit her in rural Taiwan. And so, I find myself writing to you from an empty cafe in Taipei, set to a gentle drizzle near my childhood home. Right now, my heart is heavy with love & sorrow, my mind racing with core memories. Everywhere I look I see her smile, I hear her voice. As an immigrant child, I cannot help but share a sliver of what I feel after missing every one of my grandparents in their final moments. Though many of you have never met her, I can only hope you will remember her as you remember your own.

As I begin to process everything these past two weeks have offered, I am having a hard time forgetting the glistening sounds of heaven in Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) written by Dylan Mattingly. From classic literary passages of The Aeneid, Mattingly was able to capture the totality of human experience through the universality of tears, illustrating the beginnings & ends of life through a palette unlike any other composer I have encountered. Written for two prepared pianos & two harps slightly detuned and estranged from one another, one could hear a powerful semblance of traditional Gamelan music through the ancient metals of gangsa & kemanak and the transcendental strings of siter & rebab. The piece began with the two pianists, Joanne Pearce Martin & Vicky Ray tiptoeing in pointillistic, Ravel-like fashion, only to be joined by Emily Levin & Julie Smith Phillips strumming low, pentatonic chords on their bright red harps, inviting us to let go of all of our inhibitions and to feel everything we are capable of ever feeling. In Mattingly’s own words, “these are not tears of sorrow – or at least not sorrow alone. These are the tears of everything, of the everythingness present in each moment, the superabundance of life’s experience, an understanding which we fear overwhelming us should we turn towards it too often. These are the tears of life’s entirety…”.

And as these tears continue to unfold & unravel, more of our collective experience continues to reveal itself through the organic fraying of microtonality found in nature. Our bodies gently ascend into the twilight, while our ears quietly submerge into a toy piano lullaby. Martin & Ray do a marvelous job at hypnotizing & pacifying the crowd like the dream mobile I once had under my crib, only to be awakened by a sudden recall of the very beginning, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the promise of peace in the afterlife. As Levin & Phillips renter the scene, they build into an immovable mass of sound, steadying with lifting volume yet tangling itself with polyrhythmic complexity. Finally, the last chord strikes, as if we have reached the end of time, a new beginning, and our ears are coated with the everlasting reverberation of heaven’s gates, a moment of nirvana that can only be experienced in the acoustic & visual spectacle that is Disney Hall. 

Before the audience has long to think, our ears perk up as like meerkats to the sound of little branches splitting in the quiet. Like most pieces, our percussionists Matthew Howard & Joseph Pereira are placed in the back of the ensemble for Sketches of Chaparral, composed by my wonderful colleague M.A. Tiesenga, but it is no coincidence they are the first & last to be heard in this piece. We see Vimbayi Kaziboni on the podium motion to them with not much else happening, encouraging us to the edge of our seats. Though I’m well acquainted with this music (Tiesenga has composed a piece for me in the past) I truly did not know what to expect. We start to hear those same ordinary branches ruminating, coalescing with metal, accompanied by gristly sul ponticello gestures from Ted Botsford on the bass. Our attention is redirected to indeterminate wind gusts in the form of air shooting through woodwind instruments, a recall of the psithurism I used to experience on long picturesque walks with my grandmother. We are treated to fleeting overtone glimmers, like morning sunlight peaking through leaves, brushes rubbing on the head of a bass drum, with wood knocks & sounds of bowed cymbals scattered all across. As a fearless multidisciplinary artist, Tiesenga has this uncanny ability to turn something as mundane as a branch into a motif, a bush into a concept, a biome into a hand-sketched graphic score, and an intangible feeling into a masterclass in chance music.

Growing up in a place like Taiwan, I was surrounded by nature that was incredibly vivid & larger than life. The landscape was luxuriously saturated from rain, forests as dense as the weather, with delicious tropical fruits found in abundance. So when I moved to the states, I too had my reservations on the biodiversity of California’s chaparral landscape, one that I have now come to  love. It is true that these bushes of great variety, seemingly ordinary, are the ones that protect us from the constant threat of wildfires and preserve the delicate balance going as we struggle with climate change going forward. As Kaziboni calmly takes us through numbered sections of the graphic score like a wise steward of the land, we are offered glimpses of the multifaceted character of the chaparral biome through the deliberate choices of each individual sound maker. I can think of no better way to highlight California Festival than this heartwarming homage to nature and the indigenous land that provide us all with everything we could possibly need and so much more.

Perhaps the most interesting component of this experience is the pleasant coexistence of aleatoric gestures with beautifully written solo melodies that hint at the cultivators of this land. Though conflict is natural, we can really feel the harmonious relationship between living beings and their respective surrounding through expressivity of solos from Bing Wang on the violin, Robert deMaine on cello, to Catherine Karoly on flute. While these solos were played in a virtuosic manner, they were still highly attuned to the sounds & gestures of the environment around them, never to disturb or disrupt. This is a masterful reflection that is seldom offered in a place like this. From the stillness of the desert to the magic of the night, the turmoil of our climate to the contemplative nature of California’s history, Tiesenga wears their heart on their sleeve with an exquisite premiere of Sketches of Chaparral.

Writing this has been nothing less than transformative for me as I embark on a new journey of healing. Through the lessons of intention & care from Tiesenga to the wisdoms of life & embrace from Mattingly, I can only hope to see the many truths that will reveal a path forward. And for you, not only do I wish you could hear the sounds that remain, I hope you will have the chance to say all there is to say to those you love dearly. these are the tears of things…


Chaparral and Interstates: New Music from California

LA Phil New Music Group

Nov 14, 2023

Walt Disney Concert Hall (111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012)

LIFE CYCLES – Friday Night at High Desert Soundings

photo: Violet Tang

Living and working in Los Angeles is no easy feat for anyone, especially for young musicians like myself. This fall, it has been incredibly difficult for me to find any time for a small change of pace, so I decided to look elsewhere, well beyond the city. Friday the 13th had been circled on my calendar for a while – it was meant to be a weekend I could escape the routine with my husband & my girlfriends, but instead, the world saw a steep and frightening descent into darkness as we journeyed into High Desert.

Suddenly, with horrors of genocide looming over our heads, music became secondary. The four of us were reminded of how privileged we are, to be traveling in love & safety at a time like this. We felt a sudden wave of helplessness, being so far removed from the dire situation in Gaza. Seeing many of my colleagues gather in modest comfort, in a place like Twentynine Palms, and seeing artists from all walks of life come together at The Palms for High Desert Soundings to experiment with the healing powers of silence & noise gave me a sense of (re)new(ed) purpose. I have put this review off for far too long, having recently been perturbed with waves of grave inhumanity and sternly occupied with my personal, unrelenting activism against the ongoing apartheid. I have finally decided – this is the only way forward for me.

I shall begin with Life Cycles, by Stephanie Cheng Smith, one of the headliners of Friday night, and certainly the most appropriate set for the long days our civilization faces ahead. Part of an ongoing sound installation, Stephanie has amassed in her own words “eighty-four cicada apparati separated into seven broods, installed long term as an accelerated representation of overlapping periodical life cycles of different broods and species of cicadas.” And to High Desert, she carried only less than a handful cicadas with her. Accompanied by the faint crackle of firewood and the lovely smell of sand & smoke, her cicadas were as cryptic as the desert animals themselves, joining the little grey moths dancing above our tables in glistening twilight. It was truly a quiet meditation, a gentle reminder for us all to breathe deeply with love & intention. A contrast to some of the more provocative noises we have heard tonight, Stephanie’s work gave us a glimpse at how interconnected we are with the environment around us, and how everything we know is precious simply because it is impermanent. Indeed, it is true that annual cicadas are species that emerge asynchronously every year. Before emerging from darkness to find their mates with song, their life cycles can vary from one to seventeen years living as underground nymphs. We must remember, as the limits of music technology continue to defy all odds in a post-Cageian, postmodern musical landscape, nature will only continue to journey alongside us, surprising us with an honest reflection of our own organismic values and behaviors.

To send us off into the stars of the night, Technical Reserve returned us to a jarring, industrialized reality. A trio of two laptops & one pedaled-up cello, Hunter Brown, Dominic Coles, and TJ Borden threw an eclectic & original vernacular at us – one that no one was ready for. With shades of Morton Feldman’s late cello works and the subtle foreshadowing of the implications of artificial intelligence, Technical Reserve tautly flexed their outstanding expertise in an astonishing, semi-improvised set. Around midnight, it seemed as if we were launched into an immersive historical survey, illustrated by paradoxically paired genres of structureless free jazz and rigid serialism. Through jurassic growls, explosive feedback, silences of space, and instruments of war, the trio suggested that what makes us unique as human beings is our unwavering curiosity. At this point, the outdoor classroom that is the quaint courtyard of The Palms were now littered with stimulated, engaged minds, with Bach, Coltrane, and Stockhausen acting as our instructors on behalf of the trio sitting in front of us.

The road ahead is long, and our humanity is being put on full display. We must continue to lead with hope & fight urgently for freedom. Our resiliency will show not only through activism, but also through the thread of all humanities – in literature & the arts. High Desert Soundings has given me an important moment to breathe and a second chance to do what is right in fighting with courage for human rights. I am most certain many of those in attendance returned home feeling the very same.


https://www.highdesertsoundings.us/

“Clouds” emerge and dissipate throughout Monkspace 

credit: Tyler Eschendal (video still)

On October 10th 2023, I found myself at Monk Space attending my first concert presented by People Inside Electronics (PIE). The concert was the premiere of a new fifty minute piano piece “Songs and Clouds” written by Matt Sargent and performed by Andrew Anderson. While this was my first experience at a PIE event, this is far from my first time hearing Matt’s music performed. I first met Matt during my undergraduate studies at The Hartt School in Connecticut. I took a few electronic music classes with him and soon after we developed a professional relationship performing and recording each others music.

One of the pieces I’ve worked on with Matt is his piece “Third Illumination” which was recorded and premiered by my percussion duo with Katie Eikam, desoduo. “Third Illumination” is part of Matt’s “Illumination Series” a series which uses a generative score that creates materials for the performer to read in real time. This generative score creates a unique performance and allows a variance to exist in each performance. The generative score is also the basis for “Songs and Clouds;” in the moments most closely resembling music from the Illumination series, a lush bed of sustained harmonic material from the electronics underlines the piano, in which it gently sits and emerges through small melodies and additive patterns.

However, as the materials present themselves and disperse over the course of the performance
it becomes clear these processes are unique to “Songs and Clouds;” this is a different harmonic one, one which deserves its own moniker, rather than sharing a name with the aforementioend Illumination Series. Several years ago I saw Matt’s piece “Separation Songs.” also at Monk Space, as part of Cold Blue Music’s release of Matt’s album of the same name. “Separation Songs” uses musical material from the New England composer William Billings’ Songbook. The use of the Billings material, though most heavily utilized in to “Separation Songs,” is subtly present here in “Songs, Clouds.” The result of employing these songs as melodic material in this generative process is a harmonic landscape that, emotionally, borders on sentimental, but has an underlying complex process that unfolds melodies which keeps the listener present.

In addition to being a composer, Matt Sargent is also a performer. This week I’ve had the chance to see him perform several times on pedal steel guitar. I couldn’t help but notice that Andrew and Matt have very similar presences as performers. Both of them, but especially Andrew, present information matter-of-factly. In Andrew’s performance of “Songs and Clouds” there are no extra performative movements or gestures beyond what is needed to showcase the material, in the most efficient manner possible. The music and the material speaks for itself through Andrew’s mastery as a performer. Andrew’s touch is subtle and delicate. His control over the dynamic possibilities of the piano allows him to glide freely
from section to section. His execution in differentiating the rising melodic lines while delicately playing chordal clouds at a softer dynamic are paramount to the success of the piece.

This was the season opener for People Inside Electronics and if so this was an incredibly strong start. If this is the direction PIE continues to go in, then this will certainly be far from my last PIE concert. I eagerly look forward to whatever they plan on offering to the concert goer next, as well as seeing what will come next from Andrew and Matt.


https://www.mattsargentmusic.com/
https://andrewandersonpiano.com/
https://peopleinsideelectronics.com/

M A Harms and Matt LeVeque confront perfection and intimacy in “i am no longer afraid to run”

photo credit: Jack Herscowitz

On Friday September 22nd 2023, composer/percussionists Matt LeVeque and M A Harms premiered their co-composed evening length piece, i am no longer afraid to run, at the Automata Theater in Chinatown. This highly personal 45 minute video/performance piece juxtaposes LeVeque’s live percussion playing with Harms’ text/video manipulation to present a collaged portrait of two idiosyncratic artists/people. 

As a composer myself, I understand how tempting it can be to write a piece drawing from personal experiences, but then hide any semblance of intimacy behind layers of instrumental abstraction. LeVeque and Harms do no such thing, instead ripping their hearts out live on stage and laying them bare in the lines and spaces of candid iPhone notes. Text drives the piece’s narrative, as Harms intermittently live-types diary-esque revelations on an unadorned Google Docs file. The text is honest and direct: no pussyfooting. Both artists share their struggles with perfection, performance, and identity without the promise of an epiphany. These entries slowly elucidate context for the piece’s origins and for LeVeque’s and Harms’ relationship. We learn that the piece has changed drastically over the course of collaboration, bringing our attention to the tumultuous compositional process that composers far too often romanticize. In fact, relationships, both interpersonal and internal, provide the thematic backbone for much of i am no longer afraid to run

As friends and collaborators, each composer has had a profound impact on the other. LeVeque’s solo practice revels in the singularity of an idea, taking a sound and magnifying it under a microscope. Harms, on the other hand, indulges the maximal: grotesquely beautiful bodies of noisy garbage allow them to sculpt a space for themself. But rather than stagnate in this seemingly oppositional binary, these artists establish a truly hybrid practice in which each of their subjectivities shine. Harms makes this evident through their live layering of pre-recorded samples of LeVeque, accompanying his live performance. They layer LeVeque’s entire practice onto itself; a live vibraphone playing a dyad blends seamlessly with multiple digital vibraphones as multiple time-spaces coalesce. LeVeque’s instrumental choices are clearly guided by an intense relationship with each instrument, one that Harms twists and contorts into a shared vision. But LeVeque still stays true to their artistic ethos, always reeling Harms back towards singularity. Bound by the limitations of the other, their practices melt together into a gooey soup: deliciously decadent and sparse. Such fusion is essential to the piece, as i am no longer afraid to run questions binaries between the physical and virtual, between past and present, and between each artist’s personal understanding of identity and gender. 

Every detail of the piece feels personal. The directness of Harms’ frantic google searches and file directory scrollings question the cold sleekness of conventional video and audio cueing. These barebones hyperrealistic transitions make it clear that there is nothing perfect or pristine about vulnerability. LeVeque’s playing investigates every ridge in their honey dipper mallet and every micro-indentation in their vibraphone: a realization of a hyper-focused performance practice. Even their shadow, occasionally cast over Harms’ words, feels like a clash of subjectivities with LeVeque’s presence felt in Harms’ text. The ending of the piece, in which both Harms and LeVeque perform a vibraphone and marimba duet over LeVeque’s heartfelt iPhone note, signifies a gratifying hug between the two.

Harms and LeVeque set the bar for work which is wholeheartedly honest: never dangling the possibility of some great revelation but instead pulling a curtain back on the facade of grandiosity. Maybe none of us really know what we are doing. And only by recognizing that anxiety, can we truly begin to do the work that we feel is necessary. 


Matt LeVeque // M A Harms

INSATIABLE SCISSORS, ANTI-ART, & PINBALL MACHINES – A Remembrance of Clarence Barlow

photo credit: Violet Tang

What seemed to be another Tuesday night turned into an honorable celebration of the remarkable life of Klarenz Barlow. Through fun, quirky snapshots of his ever evolving musical works, his varied research interests in technology & language, and of course, his hilarious fascination with the infinite ways to spell his own name, it was hard not to feel the warmth & impact he has left on our community. It was only fitting that this celebration coincided with the opening night of the tenth anniversary season of Brightwork’s Tuesdays @ Monk Space, now a storied institution in the LA new music concert scene. A joint curatorial effort between Shalini Vijayan of Brightwork newmusic and Barlowe protégés Brandon J. Rolle and Nick Norton of Ensemble Barlow, eager attendees were presented with eight, drastically different works that served to give only a glimpse of the diverse compositional ideas Barloh was capable of.

Let’s start with Four ISIS Studies, the elephant in the room and perhaps the most sonically strange piece on this colorful program. In 2005, Barlö quietly published an essay on Intra-Samplar Interpolating Sinusoids (ISIS), the perfect example of one of those little research interests I had mentioned earlier. Stemming from a substantial branch of his studies from the tree of Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as the many long summers he had spent at Darmstadt developing their computer music program, this audio analysis-synthesis algorithm became a way of thinking for Barlow. In his first study, Für Gimik: Vortag über ISIS, our ears were coated with percolating computer sounds reminiscent of the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Played in a quadrophonic array, the audience experienced a recording in german set to a Space Mountain ride of thrilling sine-tone runs. With Eleven Steps In Staying a Kingly Dream, our setting turned into an abstracted alternative of the MLK Speech, accompanied by bubbling hyperpop noises and interrupted by jarring beeps. In the third study, Untitled/Oil on Metal, Wood, we felt gentle tension from a low rumbling underneath a myriad of industrial sounds. Lastly, in Ceci nest pas une oeuvre d’art, we were presented with anti-art from another extraterrestrial, organismic instrument that could’ve been dreamt up by Sun Ra himself, serenading us with indistinct lyrics & pleasant backup harmonies generated from the robotic algorithm.

Fast forward to Pinball Play, a mesmerizing piece written for four soprano Bohlen-Pierce clarinets. But for this concert, we were gifted with Brightwork staple Brian Walsh who covered the jobs of four clarinetists on his very own (with the help of Nick Norton once again manning the electronics). Playing to a click, Walsh manages to sound even better than four live clarinetists would, as his playful gestures cascade off of pre-recorded sounds with impeccable timing, creating an inescapable atmosphere of a masterful merry-go-round. 

Finally, Ensemble Barlow closed the program with Sachets des ciseaux Insatiables, with Brandon J. Rolle at the podium. The last time this piece was performed at REDCAT was the only time Rolle’s mother had ever seen him conduct. This work exemplifies Barreleaulx’s signature outlook on his compositional style – he never once concerned himself with writing experimental music for the sake of sounding modern. The first movement opens up with a wood block ostinato, followed by wind players expanding the palette in the style of jazz you would find in a typical American film noir. Here, Sarah Wass shines on the flute, and once again, Brian Walsh opens up the dynamics of the movement with pentatonic flourishes on the clarinet. As we attacca into the second movement, we find ourselves a blank canvas, waiting to be colored. In an unexpected turn of events, those melodies have now been abused by Barlovicus algorithms, dotting an impressionist painting you would find in a typical modern museum. Here, Nick Terry demonstrates his brilliance with a traditional four-mallet grip, spanning the entire width of the marimba and hitting obfuscated passages with ease. In the finale movement, we face descending lines of brooding character, building tension towards the very end. And as we approach the coda, we are entranced by a slow, melancholic dance. The trumpet melody rests in a major tonality while the clarinet & flute layer minor lines, creating a polytonal texture, but only so he could end the entire piece with a cute, storybook “V-I” finish.

At the end of this profound night, we are left with more questions than answers…how will Barlow’s sounds permeate through contemporary canonical literature? How will his legacy carry on in his work, his pedagogy, his research? How will we remember his warm personality and uncanny ability to bring people together? No doubt, the forces of nature at Brightwork & Ensemble Barlow would respond – some questions are better left unanswered.


Curated by Brandon Rolle and Nick Norton, this evening is dedicated to remembering beloved composer Clarence Barlow through his music and writings.

The program will include a varied retrospective of Barlow’s works including quarantasette estratti da un vicolo ludofilo, ISIS studies, Sachets des ciseaux insatiables, KLAVIERSTÜCK Für Luise, Pinball Play, Für Simon Jonassohn-Stein, and Fantasy Prelude Miscibly Interfused.

The entire audience is invited to stay for a post-concert reception to share memories and celebrate Clarence.

8:00pm. Tuesday Sep 12, 2023 at Monk Space (4414 W. 2nd Street Los Angeles, CA 90004)

https://brightworknewmusic.com/

Meredith Monk and the Bang on a Can All-Stars present an unforgettable evening at The Ford with MEMORY GAME

photo credit: Anuj Bhutani

On a perfectly mild LA night, the stage at the Ford is bathed in blue light and awaiting the entrance of the legendary Meredith Monk and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The All-Stars enter and, without any pause, launch into the first song of MEMORY GAME, Meredith Monk’s 2020 album featuring her vocal ensemble as well as the All-Stars, with arrangements by Bang on a Can founders Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and David Lang, as well as veteran All-Star member Ken Thomson and Monk herself with Allison Sniffin (Monk Vocal Ensemble member). Like most of the pieces to follow, “Spaceship” (arrangement by Gordon) begins with gently repetitive ostinati by Thomson and pianist/keyboardist Vicky Chow. The way the ensemble blends and trades their ostinati is beautifully characteristic of Gordon’s orchestration style, and reminds this writer of his “Gene Takes a Drink” (also written for the All-Stars) at more than one moment.

As thunderous applause breaks out, Monk, dressed in all red, enters the stage with her vocal ensemble (Theo Bleckmann, Allison Sniffin, and Katie Geissinger). She introduces the next set of songs from her 1983 sci-fi opera “The Games,” which she wrote in West Berlin while hearing missiles firing overhead just before the Olympics. Monk explains the piece is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the survivors are either on a spaceship or possibly another planet, and have rituals to remember “Earth culture.” As the piece is about “the aesthetics of fascism”, this post-apocalyptic society also features a leader who seems like a rockstar but is actually a dictator (portrayed by Theo Bleckmann on stage).

This becomes perfectly clear during The Gamemaster’s Song, during which Bleckmann’s character slowly descends deeper into caricature through increasingly comic choreography over carnival-esque instrumentals. Bleckmann’s portrayal is so convincing it becomes easy to forget for a large portion of the piece that this character is a dictator, until three-quarters of the way through when Bleckmann slowly introduces a degree of audible menace into the otherwise cartoonish vocalizations meant to lure unsuspecting citizens of this surviving society.

“Migration” follows with a stark change of mood, introduced by the vocal ensemble and Chow in firmly minor territory and wordless “wahs,” before Arlen Hlusko renders a beautiful cello melody that makes the melancholy feeling complete. Eventually, Bleckmann speaks about pre-apocalyptic Earth and those who lived there, comparing those humans to these in a new society. As a testament to the inevitable displacement of peoples due to fascism/dictatorships, “Migration” is deeply effective and is both the most somber and the most moving piece on the program.

The rest of the Games set is no less stunningly executed by this group of legendary musicians in variable ensemble configurations, before Allison Sniffin and Vicky Chow deliver a sort of nonsense aria for voice and electric piano; this is “Waltz in 5s” from “The Politics of Quiet” (arr. Sniffin and Monk). “Waltz” is the second most somber piece next to Migration, and though wordless, Sniffin’s soaring and rich voice fills the air with nostalgia. Before “Tokyo Cha Cha” from Turtle Dreams Cabaret (arr. Sniffin), Monk explains this song was written after her first trip to Japan, during which she expected to be deeply inspired by
the ancient Japanese culture she always loved, but instead found herself fascinated by the techno-futuristic culture of Tokyo. The song slowly builds from just “s-s-s-ch-ch-ch-“ vocalizations by the vocal ensemble to unapologetically fun grooves carried by the entire ensemble, complete with shakers, relaxed guitar by veteran All-Star Mark Stewart, vocalists chanting “let’s cha-cha, you happy, let’s cha-cha, all happy…” and fittingly adorable choreography. At this point, it becomes hard to believe Monk is 80 years old, as she sings and moves with such passion and ease around the stage.


“Totentanz” from Impermanence (arr. Lang) is only the second piece that allows the vocalists to take a break, as the All-Stars delve into the rock groove-oriented and syncopated arrangement by Lang featuring Stewart playing a rock kick drum as well as guitar. The last official piece on the bill (and album) is “Double Fiesta” from Acts from Under and Above and immediately begins with an incredible show of vocal fireworks from Monk as she leaps from register to register with acrobatic precision on a myriad of syllables one could believe were improvised, if they weren’t also the same on album recording. By the end of the song, after Monk has told us a story about meeting “a very nice girl”, the band is rocking out while the entire vocal ensemble slowly enters the stage and starts dancing; it is near impossible to not have a smile plastered on your face (assuming you haven’t already audibly laughed multiple times).

As the first in a series of encores, Monk offers “Panda Chant” with the entire ensemble standing in a line, singing, stepping in rhythm, and clapping, which the audience absolutely goes wild for. She then proceeds to the hilarious “Education of the Girlchild” in which she very convincingly adopts an old crone voice to portray an old woman bargaining with death and boasting about still having her “pens, mind, money under the bed, telephone, allergies…” among other things. The final encore consisted of a true Monk solo called “Insect Descending”, which she wrote while in New Mexico during the 70s. As if the audience wasn’t astonished enough already by the seemingly inexhaustible catalog of vocal sounds Monk has access to, “Insect Descending” really does sound just like what it’s called, and proved to be a hilarious and succinct treat to this tight 75-minute program that left the audience uplifted and energetic; an experience we won’t soon forget.


MEMORY GAME is both a look back at a pivotal point in Meredith Monk’s storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music—under the guidance of an indefatigable master—can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. For this journey, Monk and her ever-versatile vocal group join forces with Bang on a Can All-Stars, whose “lean, emphatic, and muscular execution suits the precision of Monk’s writing perfectly” (The Wire).

8:00pm. Thursday Aug 31, 2023 at The Ford LA (2580 Cahuenga Blvd E, Los Angeles, CA 90068)

https://www.meredithmonk.org/

https://bangonacan.org/

https://www.theford.com/

GHOST GUN, VIOLA JOKES, & FOLGERS IN YOUR CUP – A Night of Clever Storytelling with Aperture Duo

In the quiet aftermath of Hurricane Hilary, an adventurous crowd gathered at the intimate Monk Space in Koreatown, fresh out of unexpected hibernation. In return, they were gifted several memorable stories in the form of spiritual guidance from Adrianne Pope & Linnea Powell, the two cornerstones of Aperture Duo.

On the menu were two brand new specials commissioned by the duo and workshopped with the composers in recent weeks, starting with Thomas Kotcheff’s delightful Obbligato String Music No. 1: Allegretto in G Minor. Much more than an appetizer, Thomas masterfully weaves together a series of discordant ideas from vastly different genres, taking the audience for a whirlwind of a journey. One could quickly discover tasteful moments of microtonal dissonance between the violin & viola, as well as between live sounds & pre-recorded samples. Through Aperture Duo’s confident approach to tackle everything from recreating classical standards to accompanying altered versions of the Folgers jingle (a musical stunt that has unsurprisingly generated over $40,000 for the coffee company), we can now begin to see the bigger picture that is the clever collage of eons of compositional techniques and motifs, melting together into a beautiful, hot mess. In a way, the true meaning of obbligato is reinforced by this mesmerizing work, contributing to the inextinguishable lineage of canonical literature while effectively challenging the notion of what is considered pure or fixed in the classical genre. It is through this strange paradox that Kotcheff was able to keep the audience deeply engaged in a dizzying fashion, as we felt the tension of all of his conflicting melodies spiraling into instability, only to find itself pieced together again.

The entrée of the night is most certainly their second commission, Jessie Marino’s incomparable Murder Ballads Volume I: Sister Sister. A departure from her usual works, these ballads showcase a stunning tapestry that revealed the unbreakable trust Pope & Powell hold for one another. Much of the night encouraged Aperture Duo to sing their soulful hearts out, but through these vulnerable, haunting ballads, the two performers were compelled to melt their voices & instruments into a powerful quartet of bagpipe & storytelling. A strong parallel to Kotcheff’s earlier work in the program, Marino continues to explore the concept of time through meaningful libretto meant to stand as timeless. In both the first and last ballad of this four-part song, O Death and Ghost Gun, Marino lit an angry flame under us with her unfiltered, fed-up emotions reflecting on the living state of profitable, senseless violence that is the American gun problem. In a country where we have experienced over 400 mass shootings this year with over four months left, at a terrifying pace greater than two mass shootings a day, the powerful composite of folk harmonies, vivid thoughts, painful overdrive, and screeching feedback left a stinging taste in the mouths of many. While O Death touched upon the national bitterness over the unfair immunity of police brutality, Ghost Gun properly detailed the grave threat of endless violence we face at every corner of our neighborhood, without fail or warning. The inner ballads, Edward and Twa Sisters, are no less powerful than the former, serving as a shocking reminder that while murder isn’t new, its dirty cousin, systemic violence, is a unique weaponized threat to modern society. In Edward, we find an old English elegy full of regret & sorrow, while the tale of Twa Sisters is based on an actual 17th century murder ballad of a girl drowned by her jealous sister. In Marino’s version, however, it isn’t the jealous sister who descends into murder, but rather, the bloody violence of Johnny, transforming into a hexed act that persists to haunt him until the very end. I believe this particular distinction falls in line with the rest of the ballads, emphasizing the radical normalization of systemic violence enacted by people in positions of privilege and power.

From Kotcheff & Marino, we are faithfully presented with the reality of the myriad of pertinent challenges we are facing in an unprecedented climate. From Pope & Powell, we learn that these very real challenges can be faced head on, with limitless imagination. And to the devout followers of Aperture Duo, I believe they are venturing into a new and inimitable realm of contemporary classical excellence.


Join Aperture Duo (Adrianne Pope, violin and Linnea Powell, viola) in an evening of boundary-pushing new music featuring world premieres by Berlin-based composer Jessie Marino and LA-based composer/pianist Thomas Kotcheff. Join LA’s own Aperture Duo as they explore the shiny, surreal, and sometimes scary depths of chamber music for violin and viola.

7:00pm. Tuesday Aug 22, 2023 at Monk Space (4414 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90004)

https://www.apertureduo.com/