Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
A concert featuring the works of revolutionary Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg in his exiled home Los Angeles showcased his challenging and revolutionary oeuvre, channeled through classical forms such as fugues, sonatas, and waltzes.
Lou Harrison: A World of Music is an intimate portrait of an eclectic composer who traded a fast-paced New York career for a remote cabin in the woods. Harrison, a polymath, iconoclast, writer and activist, embraced artistic playfulness over the business of composing. Experimenting freely with western, eastern and custom made instruments, Harrison forged a new course for 20th century music.
Just Intoned tunings sound off, with a 2009 tribute to slain microtonal guitarist Rod Poole, from SASSAS at the Schindler House, Los Angeles.
Partch broke with European tradition and forged a new music based on primal integration of sound and speech, using self-designed instruments tuned with natural acoustic resonance or just intonation. The result was a beautiful sound and vision with “magical purpose.”
“Dream” (1948) was written for Merce Cunningham’s dance, minimal fixed tones of sustained resonance, influenced by Balinese Gamelan and divinations through the I Ching.