Author: soundwavesnewmusic

On Wednesday May 11, at 7:30PM, Soundwaves presented composer Anne LeBaron. Her music ranges from solo harp improvisations to multimedia operas. It has been performed internationally and widely recorded. She has received Fulbright and Guggenheim grants and the Alpert Award, among other honors, and holds the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition at CalArts.

At the library she introduced performances of her work by some of Los Angeles’ most celebrated new music specialists: pianist Mark Robson, the Panic Duo (violinist Pasha Tseitlin and pianist Nic Gerpe), and the WasteLAnd ensemble, who The New Yorker’s Alex Ross recently called “one of the country’s most far-sighted” groups.

The concert featured “A – Zythum,” a piece commissioned by the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation in honor of the Oxford English Dictionary, which premiered in March at the Hammer Museum.

In March Soundwaves welcomed saxophonist/composer Ulrich Krieger to present his massive set of pieces for tenor saxophone and electronics entitled “Universe.”It has four parts, each approximately one hour long, each using a different approach to the instrument: “ReSpace” is for saxophone-controlled feedback, “RAW” for electric saxophone and pedals, “Quantum” for amplified saxophone, and “Cosmos” for saxophone alone. The first two have been recorded for a new double-CD on the XI (eXperimental Intermedia) label, whose back catalog appears on DRAM. Krieger discussed the entire series, played excerpts from the CD, demonstrated a variety of extended saxophone techniques, performed segments from the unreleased sections, and took questions from the audience.

Soundwaves invited the tuba and percussion duo Judicanti Responsura to perform in February. In commemoration of Black History Month, they presented a program entitled “Beyond Congo Square: The Month of Our People,” which included percussionist Joseph Mitchell‘s “Birmingham Sunday (September 15, 1963),” a setting of Langston Hughes’ elegy for the four girls killed in an act of race terror during the height of the Civil Rights movement, and tuba player William Roper‘s “Darkest Night – Balthazar Joins the Sacred Company,” which incorporates live performance and a recorded soundscape, imagining the evening the dark-skinned King Balthazar, bearing gifts, follows a star.

 

Soundwaves launched with an evening devoted to solo piano music from the Venice-based Cold Blue Music label, whose catalog appears on DRAM. Michael Jon Fink, Aron Kallay, and Jim Fox took turns on the SMPL Steinway, playing music by Fink, Fox, Peter Garland, Michael Byron, and Daniel Lentz, who was also in attendance and introduced his piece.

The program received a very nice review from Paul Muller on the New Classic LA website.