Tag Archives: LA Phil New Music Group

BRYCE DESSNER’S TRIPTYCH PREMIERE

In TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER), composer and guitarist Bryce Dessner of The National has collaborated with playwright Korde Arrington Tuttle, the LA Phil New Music Group, Roomful of Teeth, videographer Simon Harding, lighting designer Yuki Nakase, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation for an musical-visual investigation into the ways the photographer’s works “compel an audience’s complicity and characterizes them in the act of attention.”*

Tuttle’s libretto integrates the poetry of Mapplethorpe detractor Essex Hemphill and advocate Patti Smith, and the featured vocalists for this world premiere are Isaiah Robinson and Alicia Hall Moran, the latter of whom will perform later this week in Carrie Mae WeemsPast Tense at the Theatre at Ace Hotel.

TRIPTYCH is directed by Kaneza Schaal and conducted by Sara Jobin. Music direction is provided by Brad Wells.

BRYCE DESSNER

TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER)*

Tuesday, March 5, at 8 pm.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

111 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Bryce Dessner, photograph by Shervin Lainez; Robert Mapplethorpe, Dorothy Dean, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; Korde Arrington Tuttle, courtesy of the artist; Robert Mapplethorpe, Alistair Butler, 1980, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Images courtesy LA Phil and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

YOUNG CAESAR AT DISNEY HALL

The 100th-birthday celebrations of the late avant-garde composer, painter, essayist, pacifist, and early civil- and gay-rights activist Lou Harrison continue. This week, the LA Phil presents a rare, one-night-only performance of Harrison’s 1971 opera YOUNG CAESAR—directed by Yuval Sharon and conducted by Marc Lowenstein—at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

1967, the Summer of Love, was a turning point in Harrison’s life. San Jose State invited him to join their faculty—providing a level of financial security Harrison had not previously enjoyed—and he met Bill Colvig, a musician and brilliant instrument-maker. Lover, best friend, collaborator, it was Colvig who suggested a same-sex theme for Harrison’s opera project, and the composer chose young Gaius Julius Caesar’s love affair with Nicomedes, the Orientalist king of Bithynia. The LA Phil production, part of their Green Umbrella series, stars Adam Fisher in the title role, Hadleigh Adams as Nicomedes, and Bruce Vilanch as the narrator.

Harrison had studied and absorbed his close friend Harry Partch’s theories about Just Intonation—a tuning system of corrected intervals and precise pitch. Since YOUNG CAESAR would incorporate world music from the East as well as the West, for its creation Harrison and Colvig built a gamelan of tuned metal slabs, dubbed “Old Granddad.”

YOUNG CAESAR (libretto by Robert Gordon) will be performed by the LA Phil New Music Group and experimental opera company The Industry. The choreography for this production is by Danny Dolan.

YOUNG CAESAR, Tuesday, June 13. Sold out.

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, Music Center, downtown Los Angeles

See: laphil.com/lou-harrisons-capital-cs

(From top): Bust of Lou Harrison by Bruce Kueffler, Adam FisherHadleigh Adams, bust of Julius Caesar, bust of Nicomedes.

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