REDCAT 2021: Partch Premieres (remote presentation)

Partch Premieres
Remote via REDCAT, Los Angeles
June 4-5, 2021

Five-Corner Square by T.J. Troy

  • 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.

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Darkness Within Darkness by Alex Wand

  • 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.

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Over the Edge of the World by Ulrich Krieger

  • 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.

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Mount San Antonio 1944 by Daniel Corral

  • 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. 

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feel of the needle when at last you pull the needle through it by Daniel Rothman

  • 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.

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Double Helix – from the opera LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip by Anne LeBaron

  • 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. 

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Listening to Lu Tzu by John Schneider

  • 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.

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Castor and Pollux (1952) 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.”

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