Ted Hearne's "The Source" in Los Angeles and San Francisco

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 17, 2016, 11:41 a.m.

"A 21st-century masterpiece. Remarkabe and essential. It does what great art should: It pushes you to think and feel about the world in new ways."
— The New York Times

Ted Hearne's ambitious opera project, The Source, will see its West Coast Premiere in an upcoming tour to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Originally commissioned and produced by Beth Morrison Projects, The Source explores the identity of Chelsea Manning, the source of hundreds of thousands of leaked texts given to WikiLeaks, through "an assemblage of Twitter feeds, cable news reports, chat transcripts, and classified military video." Hearne's powerful work positions four singers around the audience, surrounded by a four-channel video installation, with an ensemble of seven players.

Featuring vocalists Mellissa Hughes, Samia Mounts, Isaiah Robinson and Jonathan Woody, The Source's West Coast tour will premiere at LA Opera on October 19th; the production will move to the San Francisco Opera's SF Opera Lab on February 24th. 

Ethan Iverson interviews Alvin Singleton on "Do The Math"

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 11, 2016, 1:52 p.m.

(photo: Alvin Singleton, left; Ethan Iverson, right)

Alvin Singleton, who recently celebrated his 75th birthday year with a portrait concert at Roulette, has been interviewed by pianist and composer Ethan Iverson on his blog, Do The Math. Calling Singleton "one of the most important living American composers," Iverson queries Singleton about his influences, collaborations, commissions, performances, and more.

One of the most extensive and thorough interviews with Singleton ever published, their conversation traces Singleton's musical life through his early days in Brooklyn, his training in New York and at Yale, his experiences with other major composers and performers, and the preservation of his unique compositional voice in the face of countless 20th-century aesthetic movements. 

(video: Argoru IV; Stephanie Griffin, viola)

Along the way, Singleton covers a large sampling of his works over the years, including the Argoru series, Be Natural, Mestizo II, In Our Own House, Inside-Out, Shadows, Secret Desire to Be Black, and many other works published by Schott Music. Discussing his recent work for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Different River, Singleton and Iverson had the following exchange: 

EI: Different River is an orchestral work for Atlanta that has various strong thematic characters. When there are big blaring major triads next to more conventionally advanced modernist harmony it is rather shocking.

AS: Well, the piece itself is the river. And as river flows, the scenery changes. But it’s still the same river.

EI: A metaphor for American music, perhaps!

Be sure to check out the full interview at Do The Math.
 

New Works by Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon at the LA Phil

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 29, 2016, 12:04 p.m.

(photo: Kate Soper: © The New Yorker; Mario Diaz de Leon: © Katrin Albert)

The Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella series has become a vital part of America's New Music landscape, commissioning and featuring composers and performers from around the country. On Saturday, October 1, Green Umbrella presents a "composers-as-performers" concert, featuring World Premieres of new works by PSNY Composers Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon, along with PSNY composer Timo Andres performing a new work written for him by Ingram Marshall.

Soper will perform her new work, The Ultimate Poem is Abstract—written for soprano and ensemble—alongside the LA Phil's New Music Group, conducted by John Adams. This work questions the relationship between voice, text, music, and abstraction, setting texts by Soper, Wallace Stevens, and many other contemporary writers in a work that points toward vocal experience over vocal description. To get in the spirit, check out a performance of Soper's Cipher with the composer joining recent PSNY Greenroom artist violinist Josh Modney:

Diaz de Leon's new work, Lightmass, for brass ensemble and electronics, is a three-movement work that turns these two concepts—light and mass—into a descriptive and narrative musical dialectic. The three movements are inspired by urban spaces and architecture; in Diaz de Leon's words, "outward manifestations of inner experience, a living building as a divine body." Listen to a performance of de Leon's Trembling Time II by the Talea Ensemble: