The Koan Quartet is joined by clarinettist Katie Porter to present Jürg Frey's Quintet, Clarinet and String Quartet and Morton Feldman's Clarinet and String Quartet.  

“Silence requires one decision - sound or no sound. Sound requires a great many more decisions. These shape the sound and give it its quality, feeling and its content. Thus silence, in its comprehensive, monolithic presence always stands as one against an infinite number of sounds or sound forms. Both stamp time and space, in that they come into appearance, in an existential sense. Together they comprise the entire complexity of life.”  - Jürg Frey, from The Architecture of Silence

Towards the latter part of his life, Feldman became increasingly interested in the patterns of Coptic Rugs as an influence on his music. There is a phenomena in rug making called abrash where there is a natural color variation due to the use of vegetable-based inks made in small batches. Feldman explores his fixation on abrash through the imperfect stillness designed in Clarinet and String Quartet. Patterns and shapes appear and are repeated with miniscule differences in strict, grid-like scoring. The musicians see slow, abstract rhythms fit into various stretched durations, repeated sometimes four to five times. Feldman designs these complex musical patterns to naturally vary from one another to avoid the music sounding “too perfect.” As listeners, the result is peaceful, ominous, introspective, and unsettling; distant passing storm clouds.   

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Admission: $15 at the door (no one turned away for lack of funds)

December 20-21, 2019 – 7:00-11:00pm each day

Celebrate the Winter Solstice with wasteLAnd by visiting their 2-day festival with food, drinks, live performances, and Rachel Beetz’s massive sound & light installation, The Winter Stars. Los Angeles’ most exciting and innovative performers, improvisors, and performance artists from 7:00-11:00 each night. Sets include:

Michael Dessen

Go By Land

Walsh Set Trio

Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs

Chris Williams & Patrick Shiroshi

STIGMA FOG SAINT

Carolyn Chen  

wasteLAnd

Tickets: One night $25 / Both nights $40 – student tickets available at the door

Parking is free in the lot across Hewitt St. from ArtshareLA

Purchase Tickets HERE

Southland Ensemble: The Koan Quartet & Christine Tavolacci present works by Carolyn Chen for string quartet, bass flute, speakers, and singers — exploring nature and how we invent it. Human voices converse with the voices of machines and objects to investigate ways to rearrange furniture in a small space.

First commissioned by Southland Ensemble as a companion piece for David Tudor’s Rainforest IV, Other Forests is a string quartet played occasionally with mobile transducers, surrounded by resonating everyday objects. Instruments alternate between their traditional musical identity and their physical reality as sonorous objects, projecting collected sounds of the local environment, real and fictional rainfall, and explanations of imaginary trees. How to assemble a features six readers presenting assembly instructions with different goals in overlapping, sometimes conflicting patterns. In breathe out clouds, the bass flute acts as a resonating chamber for talking and singing, reworking patterns of words and musical motives from Hildegard’s Antiphon no.44.

Carolyn Chen: Momentum (2012) 

Carolyn Chen: breathe out clouds (2012) 

Carolyn Chen: How to assemble a (2012) 

Carolyn Chen: Other Forests (2015) 

Admission: $25 / $15 Students Purchase Tickets Here

Synchromy is once again teaming up with Viola-Vocal-Tube ensemble Spacepants to present Dance of the Spacepants Fairies, a fundraiser prom that will rival your blurry adolescent memories, mainly because at this one you won’t have to hide your booze. Spacepants will be setting the mood with witty banter and intermittent performances, DJs will provide dancing all night long, and there will be photobooths, food and drinks, fortune tellers, raffles prizes, and much much more. Bring your fake ID, and get your date now before they ask your best friend.

General admission includes dancing, food, and fun. $20 online, $30 at the door.

Buy Tickets HERE

“An instantaneously recognizable masterpiece.” – The New York Times

A hallucinatory cinematic fever dream, Dawson City: Frozen Time tells the bizarre true story of some 533 silent film reels, dating from the 1910s and 20s, that accumulated at the end of a film distribution line in northwestern Canada and which were miraculously discovered some 50 years later, in 1978, buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool, deep in the Yukon permafrost. Filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia, The Miners’ Hymns, The Great Flood) deftly combines excerpts from this remarkable collection with historical footage, photographs, and original interviews, to explore the complicated history of Dawson City, a Canadian Gold Rush town founded across the river from a First Nation hunting camp, and then traces how the development of that town both reflected and influenced the evolution of modern Cinema.

Combined with a powerful, evocative score by Alex Somers ( Captain Fantastic; Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Honey Boy), orchestrated and arranged by Ricardo Romaneiro, Dawson City: Frozen Time is a triumphant work of art that spins the life cycle of a singular film collection into a breath-taking history of the 20th century. This film presentation will be accompanied by a live performance of the score by L.A.’s contemporary ensemble Wild Up and a woman’s choir from Tonality.

Tickets and information HERE

Join Southland Ensemble as we begin our 7th season with our annual Fluxus event! This year we will be presenting an event highlighting the witty and whimsical compositions of Fluxus co-founder Ben Patterson (1934-2016). 

“What I try to do is open people’s minds, ears, and eyes, not necessarily with shock technique, but with surprises and unexpected things so they become more aware and sensitive to the world around them.” (Ben Patterson)

OVERTURE

A SIMPLE OPERA

BOLERO

VARIATIONS FOR DOUBLE BASS

SIGNATURE NO. 1

TRAFFIC LIGHT

Tickets: $15 / $12 student

Purchase HERE

Facebook Event HERE

www.southlandensemble.com

MONO comes to Los Angeles as part of their 'Beyond The Past' 20th anniversary tour. The Tokyo, Japan based 4 piece Instrumental Rock band MONO was originally formed in 1999. Their unique approach of blending orchestral arrangements and shoegaze guitar noise in their music has been held in extremely high regard. They will be joined in performance by Wordless Music Orchestra.

Tickets available HERE

Jonsi & Alex Somers perform the Riceboy Sleeps album for the first time with the Wordless Music Orchestra and Choir on a 10th anniversary tour in intimate theaters across North America. Conducted by Robert Ames + Orchestral Arrangements by David Handler.

For more information, visit www.wordlessmusic.org

Synchromy, Autoduplicity, and Boston Court Pasadena present Game Night, an evening of musical games and games that make music. The concert features music that reimagines games, including world premiere performances of works by Los Angeles-based composers Carolyn Chen and Isaac Schankler. With everything from pattycake to trivia, and team huddles to video games, the audience will find themselves both observing and interacting with Game Night, connecting us to the community play creates.

Tickets: $30 general / $25 seniors / $20 students

Purchase Tickets by phone at (626) 683-6801 or online at www.BostonCourtPasadena.org. 

For more information, visit bostoncourtpasadena.org

Description:2+2 = 2? Or 4? Or possibly 5? In Aperplicity, Aperture Duo (violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell) and Autoduplicity (cellist Jennifer Bewerse and flutist Rachel Beetz) join forces for an evening of musical chairs and dueling duos presented by PIE. Autoture, Rachnea, Jennrianne, Linachriafer…what happens in the mixup? Viola jokes, word games, youtube videos, and amplified chalkboards. Join the confusion and find out for yourself!

PROGRAM 

Viola Joke by Alex Temple

Time With People, Op. 1 by Tim Parkinson

Speech Suite by Todd Moellenberg (world premiere)

Wash Me Whiter Than Snow by Jennifer Walshe

I Delayed People’s Flights By Walking Slowly In Narrow Hallways by Mayke Nas and Wouter Snoei

Tickets: General $20 / Seniors and Students $15

Purchase Here 

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