PARTCH Ensemble
- Price
- $25*
- Genre
- Music
- Season
- Winter/Spring 2025
- DATE
- JUN 13-14
- TIME
- FRI-SAT, 8:30 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 120 minutes, with intermission
- COUNTRY
- USA
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & the CalArts faculty and staff
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About
PARTCH Ensemble—the Grammy Award-winning ensemble specializing in the music of the iconoclastic composer Harry Partch—presents a triple bill of premieres performed on Partch’s extraordinary instruments. This year’s program includes the LA debut of Partch’s five-part Summer 1955, a setting of texts ranging from Psalm 137 and Shakespeare’s “Potion Scene” to Alice in Wonderland’s Adventures, and culminating in the composer’s clarinet arrangement of Ulysses written for jazz great Chet Baker. Composer Evan Ziporyn, described as “intoxicating” (The New York Times), presents the world premiere of Earth Studies, inspired by the visionary work of the DesignEarth architecture team whose texts and images intersect with Partch’s unique soundscape. Stephen James Taylor, known for his film scores, premieres HEAVE HO, bringing together hip hop, minimalism, microtonal, and pop music with Afro-futurism.
The program includes an instrument “petting zoo”: audiences are encouraged to interact with the instruments on stage after the show.
Funny, moving, inventive and insanely theatrical…an unforgettable performance.
—
San Francisco Chronicle
This performance is supported, in part, by the LA County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan.
about the artists
PARTCH Ensemble, the Grammy Award-winning and triple Grammy-nominated new music group, specializes in the music and instruments of the iconoclastic American maverick composer Harry Partch, who created some of the most alluring and emotionally powerful music of the 20th century. He composed music for drama, dance-theater, multimedia, vocals, and chamber music—all to be performed on the extraordinary orchestra of instruments that he designed and built himself. The Ensemble has performed for the LA County Museum of Art, UCLA’s Partch Centennial Celebration, Sacramento’s Festival of New American Music, Mills College, UNM Albuquerque, the Getty Center, Repertory Dance Theatre of Salt Lake City, Carlsbad Music Festival, Jacaranda Music, Guadalajara International Book Fair, Grand Performances, Brooklyn’s Roulette, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the San Francisco Symphony, and South Korea’s Tongyeong International Music Festival. In 2004, they made their REDCAT debut premiering Harry Partch’s Bitter Music, and have returned every year since. Their collaboration with Philadelphia’s PRISM Saxophone Quartet includes Lisa Bielawa’s Emmy Award-winning opera for TV/Internet, VIREO: The Autobiography of a Witches Accuser, and the CD of newly commissioned works Color Theory (XAS Records). SONATA DEMENTIA, Volume 3 of their award-winning Bridge Records “Music of Harry Partch” series, was released in 2019, the same year they premiered the complete The Wayward, the subject of their forthcoming Volume 4 from Bridge to be released in the spring of 2025.
