The Living Earth Show Perform Knight, Andres on New CD

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 22, 2013, 5:31 p.m.

Adrian Knight and Timo Andres are among several composers whose works have been recently recorded by The Living Earth Show, a San Francisco-based duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andrew Meyerson. Their new CD, High Art, was released on Innova on November 19th, and includes Knight's "Family Man" and Andres' "You Broke It, You Bought It." Already well-reviewed by the SF Examiner and written up in the San Fransisco Classical Voice, the album is The Living Earth Show's recording debut; they have performed the works of Knight, Andres, and others across the country since 2012. Check out the video for "Family Man" below: 

Knight's works on PSNY for guitar include "Bon Voyage" (three guitars) and "Daedaldualism" (guitar, synthesizer, and electronics); other electro-acoustic works include "The Tears" (harp, live electronics) and "Vain Attempts" (piano, electronics). Andres' works on PSNY with percussion include "Crashing Through Fences" (piccolo, glockenspiel, two bass drums) and "Trade Winds" (bass clarinet, piano, percussion, string quartet).  

Hannah Lash's "Total Internal Reflection" Now Available

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 12, 2013, 8:56 p.m.

New from PSNY: Hannah Lash's string quartet, Total Internal Reflection. Co-commissioned by the Great Lakes Chamber Festival and the Aspen Music Festival for the Jupiter Quartet, this work highlights Lash's unique musical language, using a metaphor borrowed from physics to describe the composer's intertextual encounter with the past. In physics, "total internal reflection" occurs when light is reflected back onto itself, failing to penetrate the border into another medium's boundary. Like this phenomenon, Lash views her composition as a kind of light source, reflecting back upon itself through the dense medium of the string quartet repertoire. Though Lash avoids direct quotation, her work approaches the history of the musical form with her own language.

Listen to the work here:

Christopher Cerrone's "Invisible Cities" in LA's Union Station

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 28, 2013, 4:28 p.m.

Invisible Cities, an opera by Christopher Cerrone, has gained a lot of press attention since its October 19th premiere-- including a review in the LA Times, television, blog and radio coverage, and hundreds of photos on Instagram. Produced by The Industry and the LA Dance Project, Invisible Cities is being performed in Los Angeles' historic Union Station, with the sound of the orchestra and singers sent to wireless headphones, which are distributed to the audience and provided by Sennheiser. 

During the seventy-minute work, two hundred audience members are given headphones and allowed to roam the train station, which in addition to the opera's eight singers and eleven instrumentalists, is also open to the commuting public. Based on Italo Calvino's novel of the same name, the opera explores Marco Polo's travels to lands of increasing virtual potential through conversation with Kublai Khan, a magical realist imagining of the limitless possibilities afforded by travel, both real and imaginary. Set in a regional center for inter-city travel, Invisible Cities blurs the line between personal and collective reality, taking over the audience's sense of hearing while leaving the rest of their body to explore a space both real and imaginary at the same time. 

Cerrone's music, with its inward focus, use of electronics, and deep sense of magical reality, is a perfect fit for this production, which embodies and aesthetic developed in other works like The Night Mare and How to Breathe Underwater. Other works, such as Hoyt-Schemerhorn and Harriman, both for piano and electronics, lend themselves to headphone listening: using field recordings and other techniques to evoke a sense of place, they position the listener both within the composition's imagined space and without it, an ephemeral, un-rooted experience similar to that of experiencing Invisible Cities.

The opera’s run was extended by five performances, all of which sold out, but two shows have been added for Sunday, November 3, including a free performance. Be sure to keep an eye out for audience members' social media on Instagram, Vine, and Twitter. Also, check out this documentary by Artbound for a behind-the-scenes look at this production of Invisible Cities.