Three Dances (1952) by Harry Partch

Notes

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

We begin this evening’s concert with the Three Dances that begin the third section of Partch’s Plectra & Percussion Dances (1952). The composer warned, “It’s an amazing fact that the world of dance music, and of Latin American dance music particularly, has produced an army of purists that is equal of anything that serious classical music can offer. I say this in order to advise you that the first scene, for example, “A Decent and Honorable Mistake,” may not be recognizable to you as a samba. The second scene, “Rhythm of the Womb, Melody of the Grave,” is based on a rhythmically contrapuntal heartbeat. The third scene, “Happy Birthday to You!” begins with an African-sounding marimba and somehow gets involved with a Chinese- sounding guitar in a pentatonic melody, and so I call it an Afro-Chinese Minuet.” This last dance ends with these directions: “Slowly enough that canon TRIADS are distinct,” after which they are to be played “faster than the previous runs so that the triads are NOT distinct.” The harmonies of each of those descending triads are wildly divergent, as if the composer is pausing to reminisce about various years past, but finally admits that as a 51-year old they are, in fact, a blur.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:

Reið (Raidō)II [Ride/Journey] live at REDCAT, June, 2024

Notes

World Premiere by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

“Reið (Raidō) II is the sixth in a cycle of chamber pieces I have been composing for the last several years where each work is associated with a specific ancient Runic symbol. “Reið (Raidō)” directly translates to “ride” or “journey.” A journey on horseback is implied, but this can also be interpreted as an experience which connects this life with the afterlife, or this realm with other realms of existence or consciousness. The repetitive and percussive nature of a galloping horse is often further associated with shamanic drumming that accompanies certain primordial esoteric practices. In my work Reið (Raidō) there are 3 groupings of instruments and players, conveying three types of microtonal tunings: a Chromelodeon, tuned to a 43-note division of the octave based on ratios derived from just intonation; a piano and a harp whose standard equal temperament is tuned apart by the difference of a 7th partial of the overtone series, or approximately in equal tempered 1/6th tones; and 3 percussionists who play a variety of indefinite pitched or noise-based percussion instruments. In this dramatic representation of both an ancient and futuristic ritual, these various tunings and timbres are utilized through a carefully controlled harmonic, motivic, and formal personal language, that unifies structure and architecture with intensity and expression.”

— Jeffrey Holmes

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

This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Five Intrusions (1950) by Harry Partch

Notes

Performed by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

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

Those instruments were also explored in Partch’s chimerically titled suite of twelve compositions called Intrusions. This subset of five include his Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales that were originally for solo Harmonic Canon, to which he later added a bass marimba obligatto. Another Canon was strung and bridged in his 43-note octave from C#3-C#4 for The Wind whose hyperchromatic arpeggios hauntingly evoke two moods of that natural phenomenon that can both caress or destroy. The first text comes from the pen of Irish born poet Ella Young who lived in the Bay Area for many years, with the second from 6th century Chinese poet/philosoper Lao Tze that Partch had previously set in his 1935 memoir Bitter Music. In The Street, the chilly wind that blows over the jails and cartracks of Chicago sets the final paragraphs of Willard Motley’s 1947 best seller Knock on Any Door that describes a young Italian immigrant’s downward spiral from altar boy to criminal. And finally, Ella Young—also a Celtic mythologist who believed in fairies, pixies, and praised the benefits of talking to trees— returns to interrogate The Waterfall, curious as to why it would possibly seek oblivion after such a vivacious life in the sunlight.

— JS

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

This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:

Progressions (live at at REDCAT, June 2024)

Notes

Performed by PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, June 2024

Progressions

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

In 1942, Harry Partch gave a lecture-demonstration at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. After introducing the now famous 43-note/octave scale on his newly created Chromolodian (sic), he proceeded to submerse the students in an extraordinary ear-bending sequence of chord Progressions Within One Octave that even today are capable of jarring the most seasoned Modernist sensibilities. Apologizing in advance that these auditory experiments, “…afford a little vision into a new world of musical resources—hardly more than a glimpse through a keyhole,” they turned out to be a peek into the future, as this music would soon become the opening of his Sonata Dementia (1949), exquisitely orchestrated with the addition of six newly built instruments. This performance was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

This performance was also made possible in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:

Scenes from Huxley’s Last Trip, live at REDCAT, June 2024

Notes

“LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip,” an opera with music by Anne LeBaron and a libretto by Gerd Stern, Ed Rosenfeld, and Anne LeBaron, charts the powerful cultural, political, and spiritual forces ignited by Albert Hofmann’s discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide. Represented by three sopranos, the LSD Trio (Love, Sex, and Death) embarks on a journey, encountering a diverse cast of characters influential in science, literature, entertainment, national security, and politics. The four scenes on this video represent about half of the opera. (For the remaining scenes, see “LSD: The Opera” on this YouTube channel.)

Performances took place at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles on June 14-15, 2024.

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

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Barstow — Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a highway railing near Barstow, California (1941/68)

Notes
  1. Today I Am a Man
  2. Gentlemen
  3. Considered Pretty
  4. A very Good Idea
  5. Possible Rides
  6. Jesus Was God in the Flesh
  7. You Lucky Women
  8. Why in Hell did you Come?

Voices ~ Boo ~ Chromelodeon ~ Diamond Marimba ~ Surrogate Kithara

Program note by John Schneider:

The legendary 1969 Columbia recording of Barstow imprinted the work in the imaginations of a generation, and like US Highball that followed, it underwent numerous orchestrations. Hitchhiker graffiti is put to music, telling the tale of eight wanderers – some funny, some sad, but always engaging when seen through the lens of Partch’s re-telling. He gives us an earthy and poignant first-hand account that is unique in the world of music, one that is sure to become a permanent part of our American cultural landscape. Taken along with the rest of his Americana from the 1940’s, Partch has created a body of work that places him shoulder to shoulder with the two best-loved storytellers of the era, John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:

San Francisco (1943/55)

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s San Francisco—A setting of the cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.

“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”

~ Harry Partch on The Wayward

Program note by John Schneider:

Setting the gliding contours of real human voices had partly inspired Partch’s famed microtonal scale, and the opening viola lines of San Francisco do, in fact, wordlessly depict the curbside sales pitch with uncanny accuracy. So accurate, in fact, that when reviewing the 1944 Carnegie Hall premiere for the New York Tribune, Lou Harrison wrote, “Mr. Partch has woven a spell of about the foggiest and dampest music I have ever heard. I got homesick”.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s San Francisco—A setting of the cries of Two Newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.

“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”

~ Harry Partch on The Wayward

Program note by John Schneider:

The text for The Letter comes from the composer’s long-lost hobo journal Bitter Music (1935-36) that he initially set to music in 1943 under the title “Letter From Hobo Pablo,” a friend whom he met at a Federal Shelter in Stockton. The 24-year old Pablo was, “… the one sensitive person I have met and the only one I can bear to talk to,” so when they are told that they must go to a work camp “…to work 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, tobacco & work clothes furnished, and $4 a month besides,” they both chose Harrington Ranch. Pablo only lasted three weeks, being expelled for drinking, but Partch was clearly pleased when he recounts the letter he received three months later, which he introduces as “Echoes from Mandolin-Face of the tooth-fretted Lips.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Ulysses at the Edge of the World (1955/62)

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s Ulysses at the Edge of the World — A Minor Adventure in Rhythm at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.

“A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”

~ Harry Partch on The Wayward

Program note by John Schneider:

Ulysses at the Edge of the World was written for jazz great Chet Baker, to be accompanied by double bass and BooBams, bamboo tubes with skin heads that inspired Partch’s own 64-note tongue drum version he called “Boo.” Sadly, Baker was too busy to premiere the piece, and a few years later Partch added a baritone sax part as he had become a fan of Baker’s duets with Gerry Mulligan. The piece was eventually recorded by another pair of players, and in the liner notes to the LP New Music for Trumpet, the composer relates:

At the time I was writing it the feeling of my hobo years was strong. As a wanderer myself (like Ulysses) I had often been asked the question, “Have you ever been arrested before?” and it struck me as very humorous to be able to ask another wanderer the same question.

However, the duet version did not include the previous invitation, “Trumpet can improvise here if it wants, preferably on this six-tone scale…using the same 7/8 accompaniment.” So tonight, we couldn’t resist honoring Partch’s initial intent since both of our soloists are not only recognized stalwarts of the new music scene, but also major contributors to this city’s vibrant jazz scene.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Cloud Chamber Music by Harry Partch

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performing Harry Partch’s Cloud Chamber Music at REDCAT on June 16-17, 2023.

Program note by John Schneider:

Cloud Chamber Music (1950) opens with a sonorous carillon on four Cloud-Chamber Bowls, their distinctive bell-like tones yielding to a mournful microtonal lament on Adapted Viola and Adapted Guitar. Following this, in a faster tempo, the Viola introduces the melody of “Canción de los Muchachos” of the Isleta tribe of New Mexico (a tune Partch learned when transcribing it from an Edison cylinder recorded by Charles Lummis). This is then sung by all the musicians, accompanying themselves on their instruments, except the Kithara, whose player takes up a Native American deer-hoof rattle. This ritual provokes another outburst on the Cloud-Chamber Bowls. Ben Johnston has suggested a scenario implicit in this sequence of musical events: “Cloud-Chamber Music,” he writes, “begins as a depressed reaction to a false clarion, but then seizes American Indian incentives as a reinvigorating antidote.”

Partch instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Amateur California Prune Picker (2022) — by Kyle Gann

Notes

Live at REDCAT, June 16-17, 2023

Program note by Kyle Gann:

As a long-time microtonalist, I’ve always wanted to write something for the Harry Partch instruments, so I am extremely grateful to John Schneider for offering me the chance. My idea was to prove, or perhaps I should say test, the universality of Partch’s ensemble by trying to write in a style that didn’t sound like Partch. Accordingly, I concentrated on the microtonal relationships among the various harmonies, and had to wrestle with the fact that not all of his instruments had the same pitches. After fifty years of composing, I was made to feel like a rank amateur in this totally idiosyncratic environment, and as Partch inveighed against his performers looking like an “amateur California prune picker,” I thought I should embrace the title. Were I to attempt a second essay, I would probably surrender and write “à la Harry.” — K.G.

Partch Instruments:
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The Wayward, parts 1-5 (live at REDCAT, June 16-17, 2023)

Barstow — Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a highway railing near Barstow, California (1941/68)

  1. Today I Am a Man
  2. Gentlemen
  3. Considered Pretty
  4. A very Good Idea
  5. Possible Rides
    Jesus Was God in the Flesh
  6. You Lucky Women
  7. Why in Hell did you Come?

Voices ~ Boo ~ Chromelodeon ~ Diamond Marimba ~ Surrogate Kithara

Program note by John Schneider:

The legendary 1969 Columbia recording of Barstow imprinted the work in the imaginations of a generation, and like US Highball that followed, it underwent numerous orchestrations. Hitchhiker graffiti is put to music, telling the tale of eight wanderers – some funny, some sad, but always engaging when seen through the lens of Partch’s re-telling. He gives us an earthy and poignant first-hand account that is unique in the world of music, one that is sure to become a permanent part of our American cultural landscape. Taken along with the rest of his Americana from the 1940’s, Partch has created a body of work that places him shoulder to shoulder with the two best-loved storytellers of the era, John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie.

San Francisco — A setting of the cries of two newsboys on a Foggy Night in the Twenties ~ (1943/55)

Voices ~ Cello ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II

Program note by John Schneider:

Setting the gliding contours of real human voices had partly inspired Partch’s famed microtonal scale, and the opening viola lines of San Francisco do, in fact, wordlessly depict the curbside sales pitch with uncanny accuracy. So accurate, in fact, that when reviewing the 1944 Carnegie Hall premiere for the New York Tribune, Lou Harrison wrote, “Mr. Partch has woven a spell of about the foggiest and dampest music I have ever heard. I got homesick”.

The Letter — A depression message from a hobo friend (1943/55)

Baritone ~ Adapted Guitar ~ Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Kithara II ~ Canon

Program note by John Schneider:

The text for The Letter comes from the composer’s long-lost hobo journal Bitter Music (1935-36) that he initially set to music in 1943 under the title “Letter From Hobo Pablo,” a friend whom he met at a Federal Shelter in Stockton. The 24-year old Pablo was, “… the one sensitive person I have met and the only one I can bear to talk to,” so when they are told that they must go to a work camp “…to work 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, tobacco & work clothes furnished, and $4 a month besides,” they both chose Harrington Ranch. Pablo only lasted three weeks, being expelled for drinking, but Partch was clearly pleased when he recounts the letter he received three months later, which he introduces as “Echoes from Mandolin-Face of the tooth-fretted Lips.”

U.S. Highball — A musical account of a transcontinental hobo trip (1943/55)

Bass & Diamond Marimbas ~ Boo ~ BloBoy ~ Castor & Pollux Canons ~ Chromelodeon ~ Kithara II ~ Surrogate Kithara ~ Spoils of War

Program note by John Schneider:

In 1957, Partch described this final version of U.S. Highball as, “…the most creative piece of music I ever wrote, and in the sense that it is less influenced by the forms and attitudes that I had grown up with as a child and experienced later in adult life, there can be no doubt of it.” The initial version was sketched out with guitar & solo voice, followed six months later by an expanded version for voice, guitar, kithara & chromelodeon. But he soon realized that the work really needed percussion instruments, and nine years later, he created the work you hear tonight. It describes his 1941 two-week freight-hopping, hitch-hiking & pot walloping journey from Carmel, California to Chicago in search of a new life and recognition of his music:

“It was the second day out of San Francisco that I began jotting down words in this notebook: fragments of conversations, remarks, writings on the sides of boxcars, signs in havens for derelicts, hitchhiker’s inscriptions, names of stations, thoughts…These fragments ARE the text of U.S. Highball… The work falls naturally into three parts: first, a long and jerky passage by drags to Little America, Wyoming: second, a slow dish-washing movement at Little America; third, a rhythmic allegro by highway to Chicago. The one word—Chicago—is the end of the text. Instrumentally, what follows implies a tremendous letdown from the obstinately compulsive exhilaration of getting to Chicago. It implies bewilderment, and that essentially dominant question in the life of the wanderer — what next?”

But the story doesn’t end there: following the 1958 release of the recording on Partch’s own Gate 5 label, he and filmmaker Madeline Tourtelot shot a studio performance of the work, and a decade later interspersed those black & white scenes with color footage of trains, roads, scenery traversed, and even abstract art. The 24-minute art house film still makes quite an impression, and is easily viewable online.

Ulysses at the Edge of the World — A Minor Adventure in Rhythm (1955/62)

Trumpet ~ Saxophone ~ Boo ~ Bass Marimba ~ Cloud Chamber Bowls ~ Diamond Marimba ~ Voice

Program note by John Schneider:

Ulysses at the Edge of the World was written for jazz great Chet Baker, to be accompanied by double bass and BooBams, bamboo tubes with skin heads that inspired Partch’s own 64-note tongue drum version he called “Boo.” Sadly, Baker was too busy to premiere the piece, and a few years later Partch added a baritone sax part as he had become a fan of Baker’s duets with Gerry Mulligan. The piece was eventually recorded by another pair of players, and in the liner notes to the LP New Music for Trumpet, the composer relates:

At the time I was writing it the feeling of my hobo years was strong. As a wanderer myself (like Ulysses) I had often been asked the question, “Have you ever been arrested before?” and it struck me as very humorous to be able to ask another wanderer the same question.

However, the duet version did not include the previous invitation, “Trumpet can improvise here if it wants, preferably on this six-tone scale…using the same 7/8 accompaniment.” So tonight, we couldn’t resist honoring Partch’s initial intent since both of our soloists are not only recognized stalwarts of the new music scene, but also major contributors to this city’s vibrant jazz scene.

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.

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:
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Five-Corner Square (remote presentation)

Notes

Presented remotely on June 4-5, 2021

Five-Corner Square is the first in a series of planned compositional studies designed to explore the melodic and harmonic possibilities of the Mallet Trio of the Partch instrumentarium, consisting of the Bass Marimba, Diamond Marimba, and Boo (Bamboo Marimba). The Mallet Trio is a distinct voice used throughout Harry Partch’s repertoire, and having served 18 years as PARTCH Ensemble’s resident Bass Marimbist, it has brought immense joy to my life as a performing artist to engage these unique compositional moments, and so given the opportunity to create new music for the Ensemble to perform, this instrumentation was a natural fit for my compositional endeavors and a great opportunity to create new music to perform with my bandmates Erin Barnes and Nick Terry. A virtuosic tour de force, the piece is intended to light the fire of inspiration under each player, as its rhythmic complexity and statistical density only become magnified as the trio enjoins itself in its culminating counterpoint.

Partch Instruments:
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Darkness Within Darkness (remote presentation)

Notes

Text: Verse One of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Featuring Matt Cook, Derek Stein, Argenta Walther, and Alex Wand

Darkness Within Darkness is a setting of Verse One of the Tao Te Ching. It is part of a series of compositions I have worked on for several years with the goal of setting to music the eighty one verses of the Tao Te Ching. My first encounter with the Tao Te Ching was in 2013 when on a music tour from Shanghai to Tibet with Wang Ping, a Chinese poet and writer. She introduced me to the book and has since encouraged my setting it to music. The piece features Harry Partch’s gourd tree, cloud chamber bowls, and adapted guitar I, as well as voices and cello. I hope to express the meaning of the text with the intonation and unique timbres of these instruments.

Verse One of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, translated to English by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.

Copyright 2011. Used by permission of Jane English, eheart.com.

Partch Instruments:
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Over the Edge of the World (remote presentation)

Notes

Live at REDCAT, June 4-5, 2021

Over the Edge of the World is a response to Partch’s own Ulysses at the Edge of the World, which i had been performing with the PARTCH ensemble several times. It poses the questions: what if Ulysses actually did go over the edge of the world? What would he have found there? At the moment the edge of the world is being researched in string theory and seems to lead into 11 dimensions. But how does traveling in 11 dimensions feel? On a technical side: the piece uses an 11-limit C-minor scale. Each of the three instruments follow its own structure, being a subset of the overall structure of the piece, using a slightly different version of this C-minor scale.

Partch Instruments:
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Mount San Antonio 1944 (remote presentation)

Notes

Mount San Antonio 1944 is inspired by a text written by Dale F. Stewart on June 27, 1944, in a notebook found at the peak of Mt. San Antonio (AKA Mt. Baldy). Stewart was at Caltech that year, and Caltech was heavily involved in the USA’s war efforts in both Europe and the Pacific. US troops had landed at Normandy only three weeks prior, and the US military would detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki about one year later (several key Manhattan Project personnel were from Caltech). Meanwhile, JPL co-founder Jack Parsons would soon leave the institution – due in part to his devotion to occultist (and mountaineer) Aleister Crowley and budding friendship with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. All of this is to say that there was probably a lot on Dale F. Stewart’s mind as he surveyed the vistas from Mount San Antonio. 

Partch Instruments:
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Additional Instruments:

feel of the needle when at last you pull the needle through it (remote presentation)

Notes

A year ago I read The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, which inspired me to propose to her a musical theater adaptation of it. Having her consent, I conceptualized it for the PARTCH Ensemble and immersed myself in the subtleties of things Partch and Japanese—both surprisingly complementary in ways well expressed by the haiku of Santoka Taneda, used here as my title.

Partch Instruments:
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Double Helix (remote presentation)

Notes

“Double Helix,” a scene from the opera LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, depicts Francis Crick and James Watson celebrating their discovery of DNA at the Eagle Pub in Cambridge, England. Crick reveals that while under the influence of LSD, he visualized the double helix structure for the first time. Patrons at the bar comment on his revelation, while LSD hovers in the background. 

In LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, iconic figures such as Aldous Huxley, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, and JFK’s mistress Mary Meyer, along with the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, represent the powerful cultural, political, and spiritual forces set into motion by Albert Hofmann’s discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD was subsequently appropriated for nefarious uses by government agencies and psychopaths, while simultaneously extolled for its powers of illumination by writers and spiritual leaders. Practically half a century had to pass before the value of psychedelics as therapeutic agents in medical and psychiatric settings began to gain traction and respect. 

This opera is currently in development, with initial support from Opera America’s Discovery Grant. Additional excerpts from the opera have been performed with the PARTCH Ensemble at REDCAT, the Wallis Annenberg Theater, and the Schindler House. The libretto is by Gerd Stern, Edward Rosenfeld, and Anne LeBaron. 

Partch Instruments:
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Listening to Lu Tzu (remote presentation)

Notes

PARTCH ENSEMBLE: PREMIERES Six World Premiere compositions created in 2020/21 as part of PARTCH Ensemble’s Commissions Project Text: Li Po (China, 701-762c.e.), trans. David Hinton Partch’s Adapted Guitar II sounds rather like an ancient Chinese ch’in, the venerated table zither strung with 7 silk strings, said to be the favorite of Confucius. Its sliding notes, harmonics, and subtleties of expression, famously inspired several millenia of evocative repertoire. In this modern setting, the large 1” plastic dowel used to stop the strings is—at one point—used as a bow to recreate the wind singing through the pines that Li Po so elegantly conjures in this medieval paean to the power of music. Text: Li Po (China, 701-762c.e.), trans. David Hinton.

Partch Instruments:
Additional Instruments:

Castor and Pollux (remote presentation with choreography by Sarah Swenson)

Notes

World premiere choreography by Sarah Swenson

Performed by Cheryl Banks-Smith, TamsinCarlson, Queala Clancy, Tori Cone, Miranda Cox, and Sarah Swenson

Perhaps the only ‘triple exposure’ in music history, Partch called this infectious dance music, “A tribute to the twin stars of luck. Atonal-dynamic dithyramb. A ritualistic ecstasy…In Castor each of the first three sections requires pairs of different instruments and dancers, all three of which have identical measure patterns, but not necessarily the same rhythms. Number 4, then, is the total of these, played and danced simultaneously. Thus, three different compositions become one composition—the “Delivery,” the logical result and the sum total of the factors that make it inevitable. Pollux follows the same plan: Numbers 5, 6, and 7 combined to result in Number 8.”

Partch Instruments:
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Dark Brother

Notes

Music by Harry Partch (1901-1974)
Final two paragraph’s of Thomas Wolfe’s “God’s Lonely Man.”

Performers:
Alison Bjorkedal – Kithara I
Vicki Ray – Chromolodeon
Derek Stein – Adapted Viola
T.J. Troy – Bass Marimba and Voice
Video captured and edited by Video Angel Productions
Audio recorded by Chris Votek

Presented by Jacaranda Music Series, First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica, CA, November 9, 2019.

World Premiere of “Future Lilacs” (2016) by Ken Ueno

Notes

Color Theory Concert: PRISM Quartet and Partch

Ken Ueno: My work, “Future Lilacs,” metaphorically connects to color theory in blending different temperaments. It is the scientific reduction of sounds to a common denominator (thinking in terms of frequencies rather than scales) that helps me with this approach, which I consider a Newtonian way of rationalizing the ineffable.

June 12, 2016

Co-Presented by PRISM Quartet and Roulette

O Frabjous Day

Notes

PARTCH Ensemble performs “O Frabjous Day” on June 20, 2015

Set to poem of the same name, by Lewis Carroll

Music composed by Harry Partch

Live at the REDCAT Theater, Los Angeles, CA

Instruments:
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Ulysses at the Edge of the World

Notes

Harry Partch’s Ulysses at the Edge of the World, originally written for jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and subtitled “A Minor Adventure in Rhythm,” also exists in multiple versions. In its 4th and final incarnation, the composer joined trumpet and baritone sax to honor the popular Chet Baker/Gerry Mulligan duo [he was a fan], replacing the initial double bass part with the Bass Marimba. Syncopations and time signatures of five and seven easily predate Dave Brubeck, culminating in a pithy punchline that features a cop arresting the titular homeless Greek hero for vagrancy.

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Castor & Pollux, live at REDCAT, 2008

Notes

Performed by Partch Ensemble on May 31, 2008

A wild ride in Disney Hall as Music of Microtonal Composer/Inventor Harry Partch Is performed on amazing Instruments by PARTCH, an acclaimed ensemble Under the direction of John Schneider, -Noted Musician, Educator, Founder of Microfest, He hosts the KPFK weekly Radio Show “Global Village” and also hosted the “SOUNDBOARD TV series.

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