Music Events

Music Events

Events in the Herb Alpert Creative Music series and other music and music related events present musical greats and vanguards, ranging from baroque to post-jazz, microtonal to Balinese court music.

April 2

Michiko Hirayama Sings Scelsi: Canti del Capricorno

The legendary vocalist Michiko Hirayama makes her first Los Angeles appearance with a must-hear performance of Giacinto Scelsi's Canti del Capricorno--the spellbinding 20-song cycle written expressly for her between 1962 and 1972. Now in her 80s, Hirayama is one of the last living links to the eccentric Italian composer and poet whose works are seldom performed live in the United States.

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April 3

Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and Ustad Aashish Khan: Classical Hindustani Music

Led by celebrated tabla exponent Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, the 12-piece CalArts Tabla Ensemble launches this riveting exploration of North Indian music with an original composition by the pandit.  The ensemble’s performance is followed by a set of exquisite classical duos by Chaudhuri and sarod master Ustad Aashish Khan.

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April 11 - April 12

Studio: Spring 2010

The ongoing series for new works and works-in-progress offers adventurous audiences the opportunity to experience original, ambitiously offbeat performances by an interdisciplinary mix of experimental Los Angeles artists. Previous editions of Studio have featured Ana Maria Alvarez, Nao Bustamante, Sheetal Gandhi, Nataki Garrett, Ayanna Hampton, Prumsodun Ok, Poor Dog Group, Wu Ingrid Tsang, and Kristina Wong.

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April 20

The California E.A.R. Unit with Sonic Boom: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music

Ulrich Krieger's latest electroacoustic version of Lou Reed's audacious 1975 double-LP guitar feedback epic is the occasion for this expertly rendered hour-plus of clangorous mayhem from the California E.A.R. Unit and Krieger's Sonic Boom outfit. The new adaptation of Metal Machine Music seizes on the complex orchestral scope of Reed's original, its modal use of pitch and rhythm, its bold yet intricate colors, and its sheer freewheeling, hard-rocking gutsiness.

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April 22 - April 24

Carl Hancock Rux: Poesia Negra: Race, Sex and the Myth of the American Mytopia

Famous for his dazzling spoken word acuity and alert cultural observation, the Alpert Award-winning poet, dramatist, fiction writer and musicmaker takes center stage in this intimate solo performance that blends paper-bag storytelling, hip-bop-fueled poetic reveries, and plenty of trenchant critical analysis on American mythologies and controversies new and old.

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April 26

Jennifer Reeves: When It Was Blue

This double-projector film performance by New York artist Jennifer Reeves pays rapturous homage to the endangered beauty of our blue planet. Reeves hand-paints frames and optically prints other images to create impressionistic textures. Composed in four parts to represent the four seasons and cardinal directions, When It Was Blue traverses the globe and its diverse ecosystems. In person: Jennifer Reeves and Skúli Sverrisson, who performs his music score live.

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April 30 - May 1

Les Espaces Acoustiques and Beyond: New Music after Grisey

Exploring both the roots and enduring legacy of spectral music, this revelatory two-night showcase opens with the first-ever U.S. performance, in its entirety, of French iconoclast Gérard Grisey's magnum opus, Les Espaces Acoustiques. The second concert follows up with works by younger generations of composers influenced by Grisey and spectralism, with recent compositions by Thierry Alla, Philippe Hurel, Kasper Toeplitz, Gérard Pesson (all from France), Rozalie Hirs (Netherlands), Andrew McIntosh (USA) and Wolfgang von Schweinitz (Germany/USA).

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May 2

CAP Youth Piano Recital

Young Angeleno pianists give an afternoon recital of classical music, jazz and pop. Ranging from elementary school students to high schoolers, all performers have studied in CalArts Community Arts Partnership (CAP) after-school and Saturday piano programs held at the Watts Towers Arts Center.

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May 5

Party for Betty!

This special concert celebrates the legacy of the late philanthropist, photographer and writer Betty Freeman, without question the most significant American advocate for contemporary classical music in the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in the early 1960s and continuing for more than four decades, she gave some 450 grants and commissions to composers such as John Cage, Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams and Pierre Boulez.

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May 9

Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra

Comprising talented young virtuosi from around the world, the resident orchestra of the Idyllwild Arts Academy is joined by Alpert Award-winning pianist and composer for the West Coast debut of Interventions, a piece for piano, electronics and orchestra. The concert also includes the world premiere of Lawrence Dillon's Schumann Trilogy, commissioned by Idyllwild and the Richard P. Wilson Fund for New Music.

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May 16

Ring Festival LA: Considering Wagner

As part of Ring Festival LA, this night of contemporary music and film unfolds in four acts that touch on different aspects of the Richard Wagner's life, work and place in history: his musical and theatrical innovations, his über-expressionist concept of art, his preoccupation with Norse-Germanic mythology, his outsize personality, specific passages in his operas, and--not least--some of the ways in which creative practice has developed since his time.

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June 2 - June 3

Partch: Even Wild Horses

Outfitted with an amazing array of custom-built microtonal instruments, the ensemble directed by John Schneider continues its ongoing survey of the profound music of Harry Partch. The group's performances at REDCAT this year include Partch's Even Wild Horses--Dance Music for an Absent Drama and Cloud Chamber, his friend and fellow maverick Lou Harrison's Canticle #3, the West Coast debut of Anne LeBaron's Southern Ephemera, and Madeline Tourtelot's Rotate the Body in All Its Planes.

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June 6 - June 7

Studio: Summer 2010

REDCAT's series for interdisciplinary experimentation continues with a curated program of six new works and works-in-progress by Los Angeles dance, theater, music and multimedia artists.

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Past REDCAT Music Events

March 4 - March 5

CEAIT Festival

The genre-bending festival from the CalArts Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology returns with two concerts that each run from abstract reveries to flat-out sonic raucousness. The first night features John Wiese, founding member of the concrète grindcore band Sissy Spacek, Peruvian-born avant-garde turntablist Maria Chavez, and composer Marcus Schmickler, of Pluramon pop fame. The second night of the fest continues with electronics and laptop interpenetrations by Better Than Future, a multimedia performance by Steve Roden, and a smashing finale courtesy of Bloody Claws, aka Carla Bozulich.

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February 5

Yamaha Pianos All-Star Revue

With a program ranging from Romantic literature to new music to contemporary jazz, this spirited acclamation of virtuosic piano playing recognizes Yamaha, the world’s largest musical instrument manufacturer.

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January 29 - January 30

Steve Horowitz and the Code Ensemble

The 14-member Code Ensemble delivers an exciting and imaginative contemporary rethink of David Shire’s classic crime-jazz score for the 1974 N.Y.C. subway caper movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, accompanied by a projection of a provocative film by Jane Brill. Also: Horowitz's ensemble also mashes up musical tropes from science fiction films in Invasion from the Chicken Planet.

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January 27

SCREAM Festival

Global music forms meet the digital surge of the 21st century as the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra, directed by Ajay Kapur, convenes an international lineup of musicmakers, engineers and digital artists who use custom-built robotic instruments and new and expressive interfaces in live music performance.

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November 18 - December 13

Joey Arias and Basil Twist: Arias with a Twist

LATE NIGHT SHOWS ADDED 12/5 & 12/12!

In this deliriously madcap fantasy revue, the soaring song stylings of drag diva Joey Arias are surrounded by an eye-popping theatrical extravaganza conjured by a team of puppeteers directed by the legendary Basil Twist. Celluloid dreams, macabre nightmares and bizarre premonitions take the audience on a breathless ride.

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November 11 - November 14

Anna Halprin/Anne Collod & guests, with Morton Subotnick: parades & changes, replays

Improvising around a set of movement and music scores, dancers dress and undress, carry out everyday tasks, invent gestures, and disappear inside swirling rolls of paper in this full-scale reconstruction of Anna Halprin’s game-changing 1965 work parades & changes, a landmark of postmodern dance featuring music performed live by Morton Subotnick, the electronica pioneer who teamed with Halprin on the original.

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November 6 - November 8

Ramayana: An Indian Epic

An ensemble of 25 gamelan players and 14 dancers enacts an exquisite Balinese adaptation of the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu dance drama of lust and abduction, of war and faith, filled with characters who look like birds, monkeys and warriors but who may turn out to be kings and gods.

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November 1 - November 2

Studio: Fall 09

The ongoing series for new works and works-in-progress offers adventurous audiences the opportunity to experience original, ambitiously offbeat performances by an interdisciplinary mix of experimental Los Angeles artists. This edition of Studio features work by Rae Shao-Lan Blum, The LippyLu's, Prumsodun Ok, Armen Ra, UEM with Jasmine Orpilla, and Kendra Ware and Billy Mark.

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October 30 - October 31

The Golem

Celebrate Halloween with one of the earliest and surely creepiest horror films in cinema history, the 1920 touchstone of Expressionism which tells the Eastern European Jewish legend of the Golem, featuring live music by a cast of tricked-out ghouls under the direction of Brian LeBarton, best known as Beck’s prodigious music director.

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October 28

The Claudia Quintet

The brilliant New York band led by drummer and composer John Hollenbeck recasts jazz in shimmering new shapes inflected by classical minimalism, new music, progressive rock and post-rock casting propulsive grooves, catchy melodies and improvisation that is nothing short of telepathic.

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