The Interior Castle
Wild Up
WORLD PREMIERE
- Price
- $25 + $2 Convenience Fee*
- Genre
- Music
- Season
- Winter/Spring 2026
- DATE
- JUN 6
- TIME
- SAT, 8 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 90 minutes, no intermission
- COUNTRY
- USA
- Program
- Download Program Notes (PDF)
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & CalArts faculty and staff
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About
GRAMMY-nominated orchestral collective Wild Up presents The Interior Castle, an evening of ecstatic and contemplative music inspired by visionary women, most of them cloistered, who span centuries of artistic and spiritual inquiry. Structured in ritornello form, the program centers on four works by Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, alongside new music by LA-based experimental vocalist and composer Eliza Bagg—including the world premiere of an original work and two reimaginings of the medieval abbess and polymath Hildegard von Bingen’s visionary chants. The program concludes with a world premiere by Wild Up member M.A. Tiesenga, inspired by St. Teresa of Ávila’s mystical treatise The Interior Castle. The program reclaims devotional music as a site of radical interiority and resistance to external forces. Through mazes of sound and reflection, The Interior Castle honors nuns, mystics, and seekers who turned inward to challenge the norms of their time and remake the world. Their restlessness endures today, recalling that an interior life can shape a collective one when listening becomes a form of devotion and attention a means of liberation.
This performance is sold out. A standby line for any unclaimed or released tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at the REDCAT Box Office two hours before showtime. Availability is not guaranteed, and all tickets will be sold at standard pricing.
Wild Up at REDCAT is supported in part by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, The Amphion Foundation, Inc., New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2025-26, the Performance Program of The Aaron Copland Fund, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund at Columbia University.
PROGRAM
Emahoy Tsege Mariam GEBRU: The Mad Man’s Laughter
Hildegard VON BINGEN: O presul vere civitatis arr. Bagg
Eliza BAGG: The True City (World Premiere)
Emahoy Tsege Mariam GEBRU: The Song of the Sea
Isabella LEONARDA: Sonata Quinta
Isabella LEONARDA: Sonata Decima
Emahoy Tsege Mariam GEBRU: Ballad of the Spirits
M.A. TIESENGA: The Interior Castle (World Premiere)
Emahoy Tsege Mariam GEBRU: The Homeless Wanderer
about the artists
Wild Up is an LA-based orchestra collective that uplifts people and projects leading the way for music-making today. Called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant … fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” (The New York Times), Wild Up has been lauded as one of 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. After a decade and a half of rampant creativity and curiosity, Wild Up is the ambassador of West Coast music. The group has collaborated with a wide range of composers, performers, and cultural institutions, premiering and creating hundreds of new works. They partnered with the LA Phil and REDCAT to present a two-month-long festival and gallery exhibition To The Fullest: The Music of Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman, accompanied Björk at Goldenvoice’s FYF Fest, sung into a Picasso with Pamela Z at LACMA, and created Democracy Sessions—playing against growing autocracy with Raven Chacon, Ted Hearne, Chana Porter, Ursula K. LeGuin, Harmony Holiday, Saul Williams, and Karlheinz Stockhausen at MOCA. They premiered David Lang and Mark Dion’s Anatomy Theater at LA Opera, often collaborated with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and performed scores for Under the Skin by Mica Levi and Punch-Drunk Love by Jon Brion at the Regent Theater and Ace Hotel. The group has been lavished with praise by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, Pitchfork, and many more publications and critics.
