State of the Art: HEAR NOW @ CA Fest
$25 ($20 senior, $15 student w/ID)
- Brightwork Ensemble
- Lyris Quartet
- HEX
- Yevgeniy Milyavskiy, piano
- Joel Balzun, baritone
- Donald Crockett, conductor
Nina Shekhar — rockabye-bye (2020; an Ursula C. Krummel commission)
Michael Roth — KYRIE-MERCY-ANA M (2007, revised 2020; texts by Alice Ripley)
Arash Majd — Continuum: Cause and Effect (2022; an Ursula C. Krummel commission)
Isaac Io Schankler — Artifacts (2017)
Hugh Levick — Inspired by Doubt (2021; world premiere)
Peter Knell — Arkhipov Arias (2022; selected from the opera)
Kay Rhie — Threshold (2018)
HEAR NOW is honored to be part of the CA Festival's celebration of contemporary classical music being written and performed in our state. Our concert, "State of the Art: HEAR NOW at the CA Festival," will take place Friday, November 17, 2023 at 8pm, at the Colburn School's Thayer Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
The program will include two HEAR NOW Krummell Commission pieces: Nina Shekar's Rock a Bye Bye and Arash Majd's Continuum: Cause and Effect. These pieces will be performed by two of HEAR NOW's resident ensembles: Lyris Quartet and the Brightwork Ensemble. The third of our resident ensembles, HEX, will sing Michael Roth's KYRIE – MERCY – ANA M.
The HEAR NOW / People Inside Electronics collaboration, which dates back to 2014, is represented by HEAR NOW Asssociate Artistic Director Isaac Schankler’s Artifacts.
Moni Jasmine Guo's Fallen Skin, Flying Wings dates back to our 10th Anniversary Festival in 2021. This was an all-virtual festival, with seven video concerts made possible by our friend and board member, Dennis Dreith, who donated his studio in Woodland Hills for the recordings.
Peter Knell, an Associate Artistic Director of HEAR NOW, is the composer of the extraordinary opera ARKHIPOV from which we will hear several excerpts on tonight’s program. Hugh Levick's piece, Inspired by Doubt, spotlights the explosive and mesmerizing talent of pianist, Yevgeniy Milyavskiy.
The program wraps up with Kay Rhie's Threshold. In 2019, we invited the French ensemble TM+ under the direction of Laurent Cuniot to participate in the festival with a concert of music by LA composers, and Threshold was one of the pieces TM+ magnificently performed.
About HEAR NOW Music Festival
Founded in 2011 by composer Hugh Levick and cellist of the Lyris Quartet Timothy Loo, the HEAR NOW Music Festival's mission is to promote the breadth and diversity of concert music being written by composers living and working in the LA area by presenting concerts and informative activities of high artistic quality to the public.
https://www.hearnowmusicfestival.comAbout California Festival
A statewide music initiative showcasing the most compelling and forward-looking voices in performances of works written in the past five years.
https://www.cafestival.org/About Brightwork Ensemble
Sarah Wass, flute |
Brian Walsh, clarinet |
Shalini Vijayan, violin |
Joo Lee, cello |
Aron Kallay, piano |
Yuri Inoo, percussion
About HEX
Described by the L.A. Times as "a luminous ensemble of singers," HEX is an award-winning contemporary vocal sextet based in Los Angeles dedicated to performing new works that reimagine the expressive potential of the human voice. Our group features critically-acclaimed singers who have been featured soloists with LA Opera, LA Philharmonic, Long Beach Opera, The Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Industry Opera. HEX has performed with Brightwork Newmusic, theatre dybbuk, and the Resonance Collective, and at venues such as the Broadstage, Meng Concert Hall, Tuesdays@Monk Space, HEAR NOW Music Festival, Sound and Fury Concert Series, Master in the Chapel Series at First Lutheran Church in Venice, and N.E.O. Voice Festival.
https://www.hexensemble.org/About Joel Balzun, baritone
About Donald Crockett, conductor
Los Angeles-based composer and conductor Donald Crockett has received commissions from a wide spectrum of organizations including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Composer-in-Residence, 1991 – 97), Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hilliard Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Xtet, the San Francisco-based chamber chorus, Volti, the Guitar Foundation of America, and the University of Southern California for its 125th anniversary, among many others.
Featured projects include: an all-Crockett orchestral disc released in May, 2015 by Boston Modern Orchestra Project on BMOP/sound, commissions from New Music USA for SAKURA cello quintet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and Oberlin Conservatory for And the River, a concerto for duo pianists and chamber orchestra, Aspen and Oberlin for his Violin Concerto, the Harvard Musical Association for violist Kate Vincent and Firebird Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and JFNMC for his Viola Concerto, a chamber opera, The Face, based on a novella in verse by poet David St. John, a consortium commission from twenty-two college and university wind ensembles for his Dance Concerto for Clarinet/Bass Clarinet and Wind Ensemble, and commissions for new string quartets from the Dilijan Chamber Music Series in Los Angeles and the Caramoor Festival in New York.
The recipient in 2013 of an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for outstanding artistic achievement, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, Donald Crockett has also received grants and prizes from the Barlow Endowment, Bogliasco Foundation, Copland Fund, Copland House, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA and many others. His music is published by Keiser Classical and Doberman/Yppan and recorded on the Albany, BMOP Sound, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, Innova, Laurel, New World, Orion and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels.
A frequent guest conductor with new music ensembles nationally, Donald Crockett has been very active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, and most recently the Jacaranda concert series in Santa Monica. In 2022, he returned for his sixth season leading the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble for the opening weeks at the Aspen Music Festival. As conductor of the USC Thornton Symphony’s annual New Music for Orchestra series, Donald Crockett has premiered over 150 new orchestral works by outstanding Thornton student composers. His recordings as a conductor can be found on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM and New World labels. Deeply committed to education, Donald Crockett is Professor and Chair of the Composition Program and Director of Thornton Edge new music ensemble at the USC Thornton School of Music, as well as Senior Composer-in-Residence with the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.
http://www.donaldcrockett.com/Thayer Hall at The Colburn School
200 S Grand AveLos Angeles, CA 90012
United States
https://www.colburnschool.edu/calendar/locations/thayer-hall/