Democracy Sessions: The Room Begins to Rise
Wild Up
- Price
- $25 + $2 Convenience Fee*
- Genre
- Music
- DATE
- OCT 11
- TIME
- SUN, 2 PM & 6 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 90 minutes
- COUNTRY
- USA
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & CalArts faculty and staff
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About
Wild Up presents the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by Shelley Washington for Wild Up musicians and The Collective Orchestra, an open-invitation community ensemble, in The Room Begins to Rise. Inspired by Émile Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence”—the energy that arises when people gather in shared emotion, attention, and action—the piece asks how music can become a practice of collective life.
Through a flexible score that combines notation, images, text, and prompts, the piece invites musicians of all backgrounds to a collaborative performance shaped by listening, responsiveness, and shared decision-making. Wild Up musicians serve as both performers and facilitators, teaching and learning the work alongside community participants. REDCAT will be reconfigured into a communal space, allowing performers and audience to occupy a shared field of resonance, proximity, and exchange—a space where music becomes a way to rehearse collective creativity, cooperation, and democratic action in real time.
Democracy Sessions returns in October 2026 for an expanded festival of music and performance taking place across Los Angeles. Building on the inaugural festival, organized by Wild Up and MOCA, presented in the days immediately following the 2024 US Presidential Election, this new iteration takes place in a moment shaped by censorship, polarization, and shifting public trust, and asks how art can function as a democratic practice—a means of gathering, listening, speaking, and acting together. Developed by Wild Up in partnership with MOCA, REDCAT, and CalArts, with related programming presented in collaboration with more organizations to be announced. Democracy Sessions 2026 is timed to align with the weeks leading up to the US midterm elections, and seeks to position music as a living civic practice and a space where free expression, cooperation, and collective action can be rehearsed in real time.
Members of the public are invited to perform in Shelley Washington’s new piece through Wild Up’s Collective Orchestra, a participatory ensemble open to volunteers of all musical backgrounds and experience levels. No prior musical experience is required, but advance registration is necessary.
Wild Up at REDCAT is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles; The Amphion Foundation, Inc.; the Performance Program of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music; and the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University.
about the artists
Called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant…fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” (The New York Times), Wild Up has been lauded as one of new music’s most exciting groups by virtually every significant institution and critic within earshot. Artistic Director Christopher Rountree started the group in 2010 to eschew outdated ensemble and concert traditions by experimenting with different methodologies, approaches, and contexts. Wild Up has collaborated with an expansive list of composers, performers, and cultural institutions. Over the last decade, the group has premiered hundreds of works with artists such as Pamela Z, Sarah Hennies, David Lang, Ted Hearne, Julia Holter, Scott Walker, Juliana Barwick, and Ragnar Kjartansson and accompanied significant stars such as Björk. Wild Up has given milestone concerts across the United States at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hammer Museum, the Broad Museum, LACMA, The Soraya, The 92nd Street Y, National Gallery, National Sawdust, Roulette, and many more. Their critically acclaimed, three-time GRAMMY-nominated Julius Eastman recording anthology has been celebrated as “a masterpiece” (The New York Times), “instantly recognizable” (Vogue), and “singularly jubilant…a bit in your face, sometimes capricious, and always surprising” (NPR).
Shelley Washington writes music to fulfill one calling—to move. With an eclectic palette, Washington tells stories focusing on exploring emotions and intentions by finding their root cause. Using driving, rhythmic riffs paired with indelible melodies, she creates a sound dialogue for the public and personal discourse. Shelley performs regularly as a vocalist and saxophonist, primarily on baritone saxophone, and has performed and recorded throughout the Midwest and East Coast—anything from Baroque to Screamo. She holds degrees from Truman State University: a BA in Music focusing on saxophone, and a Master of Arts in Education. She also holds a Master’s in Theory and Composition from NYU Steinhardt, where she studied with Dr. Joseph Church, Dr. Julia Wolfe, and Caroline Shaw. As an educator, she taught for the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program, and was acting Artistic Director for the Noel Pointer Foundation, located in Brooklyn, NY. In the fall of 2018 she began studies at Princeton University in pursuit of the PhD in Music Composition. Shelley is a founding member of the composer collective Kinds of Kings.
Photo: Courtesy of Wild Up.
