Press Contact: Tamar Fortgang, Media Relations and Promotions Manager fortgang@calarts.edu / 213-237-2873 (Do Not Publish)

The Center for New Performance at CalArts (CNP), in association with the New Century Players, will present the world premiere of Vineland Stelae, a full-length structured improvisation for 30 musicians, created and composed by Sandeep Bhagwati and directed by Chi-wang Yang. Trombonist Mike Svoboda will lead the ensemble. Performances will be on Thursday, November 1-Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 8:30 p.m. at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), 631 West 2nd Street in the Disney Hall complex. Tickets are available through the REDCAT box office, 213-237-2800, or online at redcat.org.

CNP and the New Century Players invited Bhagwati to create a new piece highlighting their unique resources following the 2005 premiere of his Inside a Native Land, in which a central soloist directed small ensembles around him. Trombone virtuoso Svoboda leads the new composition, which has received significant support from the Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund of the Creative Capital Foundation, as well as from Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Villa Aurora. Svoboda will conduct an ensemble including soloists on tabla, gamelan, prepared piano, trumpet, sarode, marimba, shakuhachi, double bass flute and Ewe drums, and ensembles with Western and non-Western instruments. Soloists include virtuosos in many musical traditions, including Swapan Chaudhuri (tablas), Vinny Golia (double bass flute), David Johnson (marimba), Aashish Khan (sarode), Alfred Ladzekpo (Ewe drums), Vicki Ray (prepared piano), Rachel Rudich (shakuhachi) and I Nyoman Wenten (gamelan).

The performance will be configured in the round, with Svoboda standing in the center of the theater and conducting in a 360 degree rotation. He will be surrounded by the audience—which is, in turn, surrounded by the musicians. Svoboda will interpret the score, which includes music, text, and electronic processing, and lead the interactions among the ensembles, which will vary on a nightly basis. Director Chi-wang Yang will provide a visual landscape that theatricalizes, supports, and augments Bhagwati’s inherent musical structure. Scenic design is by Abra Brayman, lighting design is by Lap-chi Chu, and sound design is by John Baffa, in association with Fionnegan Murphy and Martin Gimenez.

Sandeep Bhagwati is a German composer and multi-media artist and the founder of two festivals of contemporary music, A•DEvantgarde in Munich (with Moritz Eggert) and KlangRiffe in Karlsruhe. He describes his work as following three separate impulses: “comprovisation,” for which he creates software-like composition frameworks for simultaneous improvisation by large groups of musicians; intercultural composition; and intermedia composition, which employs concepts from installation art, performance art and video. “For some time now, said Bhagwati, “I have been looking for an opportunity to combine all three strands in one work. The resources of the CalArts cross-disciplinary artistic culture give me the chance to braid that connection, in Vineland Stelae.” Bhagwati added that the structure of Vineland Stelae is inspired by the “Oulipian” concept of literature, developed in the 1960s, which emphasizes the use of formal constraints in literary production.

For nearly 20 years, trombonist Svoboda has been committing himself to expanding his instrument’s repertoire. From 1984–1995 he collaborated with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, premiering numerous chamber music works and the opera cycle Light. He subsequently has returned to composing; many of his own projects span the gap between the musical genres of jazz, classical music, new music, as well as satire and comedy.

Chi-wang Yang is a theater director and digital media artist. His work has been featured at the Time-Based Arts Festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Platform International Animation Festival, REDCAT, 365 Plays/365 Days at the Public Theater (NYC), New York and Edinburgh International Fringe Festivals. Training includes the SITI Company with Anne Bogart and the Kitchen Summer Institute (NYC). Chi-wang is also a founding member of Cloud Eye Control, an extra-disciplinary performance company. Chi-wang earned his MFA in Theater Directing/Integrated Media at CalArts and is a recipient of the 2006 Princess Grace Award for Theater Directing.

The Center for New Performance at CalArts (CNP), the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, was established in 1999 as a forum for the creation of ground breaking theatrical performance. Originally named the Center for the New Theater, the name was expanded in 2005 to reflect the broad range of the Center’s interests. Recent CNP projects include What to Wear, a postmodern rock opera written and directed by Richard Foreman and composed by Michael Gordon, which premiered at REDCAT last fall; September 11, 2001, by Michel Vinaver, directed by Robert Cantarella, which toured France in 2006; Macbeth: A Modern Ecstasy with Stephen Dillane, directed by Travis Preston, which premiered at REDCAT in Los Angeles and has toured to London and Australia; Bell Solaris: Twelve Metamorphoses in Piano Theater, composed and performed by David Rosenboom and directed by Travis Preston; Invisible Glass, conceived and directed by Janie Geiser; Peach Blossom Fan, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng; and the 2002 site-specific production of King Lear, directed by Travis Preston, which premiered in Los Angeles at the Brewery and was the centerpiece of the 2003 Frictions Festival in Dijon, France. CNP is headed by Travis Preston, Artistic Director; Carol Bixler, Producing Director; Leslie Tamaribuchi, Managing Director; Erik Ehn, Dean of the School of Theater; Stevan Koplowitz, Dean of the School of Dance; and David Rosenboom, Dean of the School of Music.

The New Century Players, CalArts School of Music and REDCAT resident, is a professional new music ensemble, comprising a core of renowned faculty instrumentalists augmented by guest artists, which embraces co-creative influences among new musical languages, experimental traditions, and new media, with a global view of the evolution of music. Paying particular attention to exposing audiences to the lesser known in new music, the NCP considers the evolution of contemporary composition in its whole, multi-stylistic entirety, occasionally reaching back to connect with roots in the past century, but emphasizing the full scope of current, interdisciplinary, interactive, multi-cultural developments that are clearly evident in the directions of younger generation pioneers. Over two decades the NCP has gained high international regard in many venues and worked with many renowned composers, conductors, and allied artists. More information can be found at calarts.edu.