REDCAT 2024: LSD Ride

June 14-15, 2024

Three Dances (1952) HARRY PARTCH

  • Samba—A DECENT AND HONORABLE MISTAKE
  • Heartbeat Rhythm—RHYTHM OF THE WOMB–MELODY OF THE GRAVE
  • Afro-Chinese Minuet—HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

Reið (Raidō)II Ride/Journey JEFFREY HOLMES

First Performance

Progressions HARRY PARTCH

  • Intro + Progressions Within One Octave (1942)
  • Sonata Dementia: Abstraction & Delusion (1949)

Five Intrusions (1950)

  • Study #1 Olympos’ Pentatonic
  • The Wind (Ella Young, Lao-tze)
  • Study #2 Archytas’ Enharmonic
  • The Street (Willard Motley)
  • The Waterfall (Ella Young)

— I N T E R M I S S I O N —

LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip—selected scenes ANNE LEBARON

Librettists: Gerd Stern, Ed Rosenfeld, and Anne LeBaron

  • Scene 1: Huxley’s Last Trip—Part 1
  • Scene 3: Double Helix: Soliloquy No. 1 (a twisted example…)
  • Scene 6: Three Lunches: Soliloquy No. 2 (Finnegan’s Wake)
  • Scene 8: Mary Meyer and JFK

The Cast (in order of appearance)

  • Aldous Huxley SCOTT GRAFF
  • Laura Huxley; LSD Trio (Death) AUBREY BABCOCK
  • LSD Trio (Love); Jackie Kennedy ANNA SCHUBERT
  • LSD Trio (Sex); Marilyn Monroe NELLE ANDERSON
  • James Watson; John F. Kennedy DOMINIC DELZOMPO
  • Francis Crick; Timothy Leary TODD STRANGE
  • Albert Hofmann; Marshall McLuhan JON KEENAN
  • Anita Hofmann; Mary Meyer MARIA ELENA ALTANY

The program includes an instrument “petting zoo”: audiences are encouraged to interact with the instruments on stage after the show.

PARTCH Ensemble and Del Sol Quartet premiere “One-Footed” by Taylor Brook

Notes

Live at REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles on June 17, 2022.

Program note by Taylor Brook:

The title of this work refers to a fascinating chart in Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music: “The One-footed Bride.” Resembling the outline of a foot, this chart marks out just intervals and their inversions along either side of a central axis. In this chart, one finds diatonic interval regions associated with expressive qualities; seconds and sevenths with “approach,” thirds and sixths with “emotion,” perfect fourths and fifths with “power,” and the tritone region with “suspense.” While highly subjective, there’s a certain intuitive sense to these pairings. Even more fascinating for me was how Partch fits his 43-note scale into a diatonic structure. What this suggests is that we might understand the many intervals of Partch’s scale as shadings within each region. This became the foundation of my piece, One-footed: an exploration of the expressive potential of thinking about pitch and interval in this way. The instrumentation for One-footed combines a string quartet with many of Partch’s famous instruments. As a composer writing in 2021 I enjoy the legacy of composers like Partch and Ben Johnston, where performers like the Del Sol Quartet now deeply understand just intonation, and I see the PARTCH ENSEMBLE as a whole new type of orchestra that can finally be bridged to as a result. One-footed was written for the combined forces of Del Sol Quartet and PARTCH Ensemble in 2020-2021.

This performance was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.