message from the center

Welcome to a celebration of an unparalleled four decades of innovation, artistic precision and integrity of purpose from a group that has collectively and cohesively perceived the topography of modern music, its vibrant and myriad landscape of performers, composers, ideas and inspirations and has pushed its boundaries, expanding the fence line of the familiar, simultaneously creating a new landscape in contemporary music while redefining the art of the ensemble.

The enduring and utterly engaging Kronos Quartet is no stranger to this hall, nor to the public presenting arm of UCLA.

Kronos Quartet has appeared more than a dozen times as part of the performing arts program at UCLA and has appeared on the Royce Hall stage with the likes of Philip Glass, punk-cabaret progenitors The Tiger Lillies, legendary Indian singer Asha Bhosle, alongside fellow classical-music innovators Bang on a Can and more.

Kronos Quartet has been praised over the years for the inclusiveness of its repertoire, the uncanny ability of this mission-driven ensemble to be as inclusive of its audience as it is with collaborators from across the music spectrum.

Indeed, what other contemporary music program will you see this year that will include not only the trippy emotional journey that is George Crumb’s Black Angels (the piece that inspired David Harrington to found Kronos Quartet four decades ago) alongside Wagner’s classic Tristan und Isolde, plus a world premiere of a new work from a leading alternative-folk-rock guitar hero, not to mention a virtuosic moment from the woman who is making the pipa a household name in contemporary music, performing the Los Angeles premiere of a Philip Glass work.

It’s all here, with us and we couldn’t be more delighted.

This evening marks a special return to Royce Hall from Nels Cline on guitar and Wu Man on pipa. For those of you who joined us in the 2010-2011 season for the lustrous evening with Wu Man, in her first headlining Royce concert, or enjoyed Nels Cline’s major contributions to the Alice Coltrane Tribute, we thank you and glad you’re with us again.

For all of us, having these two artists perform alongside Kronos on the same program is a rare and wonderful experience not soon likely to be repeated.

One experience that we hope will soon be repeated is Saturday night’s collaboration between Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson. The fact that these two forces of nature in new music have not come together before Landfall is almost unbelievable, but it is also a powerful testament to these artists’ inherent and oft-exhibited drive to explore every possible creative collaborative path. Now that their artistic trajectories have collided we are thrilled to witness the resulting storm of energy, and hope the future holds more of it.

The stage performances we will enjoy together this weekend only tell a part of the story of these engaging and generous artists. Kronos Quartet hit campus early in the week to share thoughts and stories with UCLA students and the campus community during an informal discussion in the Schoenberg Music Library. Thursday morning the ensemble performed for 1200 middle-school children in a free Royce Hall concert titled Around the World with Kronos as part of our educational program Design for Sharing. Wu Man joined an “arts encounters” class to perform and inform a group of students from campus-wide disciplines on the beauty, mystery and possibility of the pipa.

The artists you will encounter this weekend are more than composers, more than performers. They are educators, light-bringers and way-finders, leading us to a new sensation, a new sphere of discovery in the art of performance.

We are very proud to honor them all this weekend. Welcome and thank you for being part of the celebration.

Kronos Quartet: 40th Anniversary Celebrationwith special guests Wu Man and Nels Cline

Laurie Anderson for Kronos Quartet: Landfall

Kronos Quartet with special guests

Wu Man and Nels Cline: 40th Anniversary Celebration

David Harrington ViolinJohn Sherba ViolinHank Dutt ViolaSunny Yang Cello

Steve O’Shea Lighting SupervisorScott Fraser Sound DesignerBrian Mohr Technical Associate

ProgramQuartetto per archi Krzysztof Penderecki Spectre * John Oswald Orion: China + Philip Glass (arr. Michael Riesman) with special guest Wu Man, pipa Los Angeles premiereSim Sholom + Alter Yechiel Karniol (arr. Judith Berkson) Prelude from Tristan und Isolde + Richard Wagner (arr. Aleksandra Vrebalov) Views from Here to the Heavens (for Scott Fraser) * Nels Cline with special guest Nels Cline, guitar World Premiere

INTERMISSION

Black Angels George Crumb Thirteen Images From the Dark LandI. Departure 1. Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects 2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes 3. Lost Bells 4. Devil-music 5. Danse MacabreII. Absence 6. Pavana Lachrymae 7. Threnody II: Black Angels! 8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura 9. Lost Bells (Echo)III. Return 10. God-music 11. Ancient Voices 12. Ancient Voices (Echo) 13. Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects

For Black Angels: Laurence Neff, Lighting and Stage Designer, Brian Mohr, Sound DesignerCalvin Ll. Jones, Technical Director

* Written for Kronos + Arranged for Kronos

Fri, Mar 14Royce Hall

8pm

PeRFORMANCe DuRAtiON:Approximately two hours;

One intermission

DiG DeePeR iN tHe POP-uP LiBRARYKronos Quartet: Beethoven to Bali Music Librarian David Gilbert will share a special resource guide and

items from the UCLA Collection.Royce Hall West Lobby

MeDiA SPONSORS:

GReeN ROOM SPONSOR:

Supported in part by the Colburn Foundation

John Oswald (b. 1953)

Spectre (1990)

Canadian composer John Oswald is well known for his development of “audioquoting” techniques, which have challenged contemporary notions of artistic ownership.

In 1990, Oswald’s notorious recording Plunderphonic had to be destroyed as a result of legal action taken by Michael Jackson. In 1991, a sequel was released, featuring thoroughly reworked soundtracks by musical artists as diverse as the Doors, Carly Simon and Metallica. Discosphere, a retrospective of dance soundtracks, was released in 1992 followed by Plexure, the third album of the Plunderphonic series. A retrospective CD box set of Plunderphonic works has been called “mind-numbingly amazing” by Peter Kenneth in Rolling Stone, and made Spin Magazine’s Top 10 in 2001.

A Governor General Media Arts Laureate, Ars Electronica Digital Musics and Untitled Arts Award winner, as well as the fourth inductee into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Alternative Walk of Fame, Oswald has also been nominated to third place in a list of the most internationally influential Canadian musicians, tied with Céline Dion. Oswald is Director of Research at Mystery Laboratory in Canada. More information about his current activities can be found at www.pfony.com.

Oswald composed three string quartets commissioned by Kronos in the early 1990s: Spectre (for 1001 string quartet reflections), preLieu (after Beethoven), and Mach (for string and heavy metal quartets), followed by a 4th quartet, entitled Fore. In Spectre, Oswald interweaves Kronos playing in concert with multiple overdubs of his recordings of Kronos. In this sense, Spectre is written for a thousand-member string orchestra with all instruments played by Kronos. It was the composer’s first composition for live musicians in 15 years. About Spectre, Oswald writes:

“The camera’s shutter blinks and a moment of the visual world is frozen on film. Still, there is no audible equivalent to the snapshot in the time it takes to sound. Sound takes time. Recordings of Kronos fill Spectre. Successive moments happen often at once. In concert the musicians add a final overdub to a string orchestra of a thousand and one reflections. This wall of sound of veils of vibration of ghosts of events of past and future continuously present is a virtually extended moment. An occasional freeze marks a moment’s gesture.”

John Oswald’s Spectre was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Wexner Center, Canada Council and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and appears on Kronos’ Nonesuch recording Short Stories.

Krzyzstof Penderecki (b. 1933)

Quartetto per archi

Kronos revisits a group milestone—the quartet’s first ever-staged production (designed by Larry Neff), Live Video (1986)—in this reprise performance of Penderecki’s early work for string quartet. One in a series of early ’60s pieces that would garner the young Polish composer an international reputation, the Quartetto per archi overflows with musical events and textures. Layers of lightly tapping bows give way to the crackle of plucked strings, barely audible bowed harmonics, sudden low-register growls, and more. This is tantalizing music, the sound of intriguing extremes: high and low, gentle and harsh, explosive and hushed.

Penderecki also brought this fearlessly inventive approach to writing for strings to his large-ensemble works of the period, including 1959’s critically acclaimed Anaklasis (featuring 42 strings) and the harrowing Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1959-61), a ten-minute piece for 52 strings that remains one of the most popular of Penderecki’s works throughout the world. It was also with the Threnody that the composer debuted a new form of optical notation for his work. Like so many inventions, this one was born of necessity.

“I had to write in shorthand,” Penderecki says, “something for me to remember, because my style of composing at that time was just to draw a piece first and then look for pitch….I just wanted to write music that would have an impact, a density, powerful expression, a different expression….I used to see the whole piece in front of me—Threnody is very easy to draw. First you have just the high note, then you have this repeating section, then you have this cluster going, coming—different direction from the one note, twelve, and back—using different shapes. Then there is a louder section; then there’s another section, then there is the section which is strictly written in 12-tone technique. Then it goes back to the same cluster technique again, and the end of the piece is a big cluster, which you can draw like a square and write behind it fortissimo….I didn’t want to write in bars, because this music doesn’t work if you put it in bars.”

Born in Debica, near Krakow, in 1933, Krzysztof Penderecki was introduced to music at an early age by his father, a lawyer and violinist. Enrolling at the Krakow Conservatory at the age of 18, he graduated in 1958 and was soon appointed professor at the Musikhochschule.

In 1959, Penderecki’s works Strophes, Emanations, and Psalms of David won first prizes in the 2nd Warsaw Competition of Young Polish Composers of the Composers’ Union. Following the subsequent successes of Anaklasis and Threnody, Penderecki went on to compose such major works as the multiple award-winning St. Luke Passion (1966) and the opera The Devils of Loudon (1967), based on Aldous Huxley’s book of the same title. His extensive body of work now boasts four operas and seven symphonies, including 1996’s Seven Gates of Jerusalem (a.k.a. Symphony No. 7), commissioned by its namesake city for the “Jerusalem—3000 Years” celebrations.

The recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, Penderecki numbers among his most recent honors a 1998 “Foreign Honorary Membership” in the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the 2000 Cannes Classical Award for “Living Composer of the Year”; the 2001 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts; and the 2002 Romano Guardini Prize of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria.

Video by Alexander V. Nichols, Larry Springer, and Dan D. Shafer.

Philip Glass (b. 1937)

Orion: China (2004)Arranged by Michael Riesman

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble, and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts, and the landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson.

Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Symphony No. 7 and Symphony No. 8, along with Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera based on the book by J.M. Coetzee, premiered in 2005.

In the past few years several new works were unveiled, including Book of Longing (Luminato Festival) and an opera about the end of the Civil War entitled Appomattox (San Francisco Opera). His Symphony No. 9 was completed in 2011 and was premiered by the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz, Austria on January 1, 2012 and his Symphony No. 10 received its European premiere in France in 2013. Teatro Real Madrid and the English National Opera commissioned Glass’s opera The Perfect American, about the death of Walt Disney, which premiered in January 2013 while the Landestheater Linz premiered his opera Spuren de Verirrten on April 12th, 2013. Upcoming projects include a song cycle for Angelique Kidjo and the Brussels Philharmonic as well as an opera based on Franz Kafka’s The Trial for Music Theatre Wales.

Inspired by the challenge to create a work for a world audience on the occasion of the Athens Cultural Olympiad in Summer 2004, Philip Glass conceived an evening-length work that contemplates the Earth’s relationship to the constellations as interpreted by the world’s many cultures. Conceived in ten movements, the original version of Orion featured the Philip Glass Ensemble in collaboration with seven of the world’s most esteemed composer/performers who performed live with the Philip Glass Ensemble. Each guest performer was chosen for their unique mastery of a global musical tradition and worked in close collaboration with Philip Glass to incorporate their individual perspective into the composition. Wu Man was one of the seven collaborators; her section, Orion: China, was subsequently arranged for pipa and string quartet.

About the original version of Orion, Glass writes:

“Orion was commissioned by the 2004 Cultural Olympiad and premiered in Athens in June 2004 preceding the Olympic Games. For this special event I assembled a group of renowned composer/performers to collaborate with me on an evening length work that, in its multinational format, is intended to reflect the international character of the Olympiad itself. I collaborated with Mark Atkins (didjeridoo) from Australia, Wu Man (pipa) from China, Foday Musa Suso (kora) from Africa, UAKTI (multi-instrumentalists) from Brazil, Ravi Shankar (sitar) from India, Ashley MacIsaac (violin) from Nova Scotia, Canada, and Eleftheria Arvanitaki (vocalist) from Greece.

“Since 1964 I have been actively engaged in musical encounters with composers from musical traditions different than my own. I began working with Ravi Shankar in 1964 as his music assistant on the film Chappaqua. Our friendship flourished and led to a musical recording Passages in 1989. … I recently completed an opera Sound of a Voice featuring Wu Man the pipa virtuoso, which premiered at American Repertory Theater in Boston. Though we have known each other for years and often talked about working together, this has been our first opportunity to do so.

In the same way that civilizations are united by common themes, history and customs, we singularly and together are united by the commonality of the natural world-- rivers, oceans, the organic environment of forests and mountains. And the stars. Stargazing must be one of the oldest pastimes of humanity. It led to astrology, astronomy, measurement of the seasons and the very beginnings of science. I think no single experience of the world speaks to us so directly as when we contemplate the infinity of space, its vastness and countless heavenly bodies. In this way the stars unite us, regardless of country, ethnicity and even time.

Orion, the largest constellation in the night sky, can be seen in all seasons from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It seems that almost every civilization has created myths and taken inspiration from Orion. As the work progressed, each of the composer/performers, including myself, drew from that inspiration in creating their work. In this way the starry heavens, seen from all over our planet, inspired us in making and presenting a multicultural, international musical work.”

Wu Man

Richard Wagner (1813–1883)

Prelude from Tristan und Isolde (1865)Arranged by Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970)

The Kronos Quartet commissioned Aleksandra Vrebalov’s arrangement for triple quartet of the Prelude and Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (1865) for the 2012 Uppsala International Sacred Music Festival. Two aspects of that sentence give one pause. First, a gentle adjustment is needed: what we now call the Prelude was for Wagner the Liebestod or “Love-death,” while he designated the opera’s closing moments Isolde’s Verklärung or “Transfiguration.” Second, Wagner’s Tristan at a festival of sacred music?

The idea is less far-fetched than it may seem at first glance. Wagner, after all, founded a cult (with himself as demiurge), a pilgrimage site at Bayreuth, and even a “festival-play for the consecration of a stage,” Parsifal. (“To sit five hours: the first stage of holiness!” sneered the master’s one-time acolyte Friedrich Nietzsche.) The enigmatic chord of F, B, D#, and G# in Tristan’s second measure is widely considered a musical epiphany, the moment when major-minor tonality began an irreversible slide into liquefaction—a grand narrative that abides even in our postmodern times. (Vrebalov’s arrangement, incidentally, makes use of Wagner’s own concert ending for the “Love-death”/Prelude.)

The word Verklärung offers even weightier grist for the mill. Klar in Verklärung is cognate with clear, “free from darkness.” In Christian theology, transfiguration denotes the radiant fusion of human and divine: Jesus was transfigured when “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light,” and his disciples saw him in glory conversing with Moses and Elijah. During her transfiguration, Isolde gazes upon the lifeless Tristan and sees him “ever brighter, brightly shining, borne in starlight high above.” Tristan and Isolde, though, are no Christians, and they spurn the day and its illusions in favor of night—the realm of truth and oneness and desire’s annihilation in Wagner’s reading of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Buddhist- and Hindu-tinged philosophy. Tristan shines and Isolde is transfigured because, like stars in the night sky, blackness swallows them up.

Schopenhauer may also offer a clue as to why Vrebalov chose to arrange the Liebestod and Transfiguration for both live and recorded performers. It is surely not a matter of numbers alone: the notion that Wagner wrote only ear-splitting music for bloated forces is slander, and some of the most haunting passages in Tristan and the master’s other operas comprise mere wisps of sound. In The Recording Angel, his penetrating study of phonography, Evan Eisenberg suggests that recording, which seems to give listeners access to disembodied sound, helps us to “hear what Schopenhauer heard”: to perceive music as “the true reality” and the visible world as “Maya” (illusion). The idea that music is intrinsically noumenal and immaterial is of course open to question, but Vrebalov’s arrangement, mingling musicians seen and unseen, sounds “real” and spectral, invites concert audiences to meditate on the primal mysteries at the heart of Tristan.

David Harrington, Kronos’ founder and first violinist, became mesmerized by the Tristan “Love-death”/Prelude after seeing Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia (2011), in which Wagner’s music serves as soundtrack to the end of life on Earth. He subsequently fell under the spell of a desperately beautiful performance by the New York Philharmonic under Bruno Walter that was recorded in 1943. In Harrington’s view, works such as Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, and Wagner’s song of passion (in both the profane sense of “sexual love” and the religious meaning of “suffering”) are “sacred” for their density, magnetism, and the vulnerability they convey. “No religion has a monopoly on the sacred,” he says.

Alter Yechiel Karniol (1855–1929)

Sim Sholom (c. 1913)Arranged by Judith Berkson (b. 1977)

This arrangement of Sim Sholom is inspired by a recording made by Cantor Alter Yechiel Karniol around 1913. Karniol was born in Dzialoszyce, Poland (near Krakow), and sang in Hungary in a number of congregations before being invited by the Hungarian congregation Ohab Zedek in New York City to be its cantor. He returned to Europe to officiate at the Great Synagogue of Odessa, but after the 1905 pogrom erupted he returned to the United States and eventually resumed officiating at Ohab Zedek.

Karniol was noted for his extraordinary range and his intensely emotional, improvisatory style. He made the recording of Sim Sholom that this arrangement is based on in New York for Columbia Records, backed by a male chorus. The text is the final blessing of the weekday service, which says, in part, “Grant peace, goodness, blessing, grace, kindness, and compassion upon us and upon all of Your people Israel.”

Arranger Judith Berkson is a soprano, pianist and composer who also performs as Liederkreis. Her solo record Oylam was released on ECM Records in 2010. She has performed at the New York City Opera Vox Festival, the BrucknerTage in St. Florian, Picasso Museum Malaga, Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and Joe’s Pub and the American Festival of Microtonal Music in New York. She collaborated with Kronos Quartet in 2010 in a performance of Schubert songs, arranged for string quartet and analog keyboards, and an aria from Mileva, a forthcoming opera by Aleksandra Vrebalov. In 2011 she received a Six Points Fellowship and is writing an opera about Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer for chamber ensemble, voices, organs and percussion, which will premier in New York in 2012.

Judith Berkson’s arrangement of Sim Sholom was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research & Development Fund, and is part of a five-song cycle dedicated to the memory of Harold Goldberg.

Nels Cline (b. 1956)

Views from Here to the Heavens (for Scott Fraser) (2014)

About Views from Here to the Heavens (for Scott Fraser), Cline writes:

“I first met and heard Scott Fraser play at a show featuring many ‘electronic’ musicians in what may have been 1976 or ‘77. Scott was playing ‘space drone’ guitar with lots of delay and whatnot. I was playing improvised duets with a young man named Lee Kaplan, who attempted to negotiate his Serge Modular synth monolith while I played electric guitar. I remember hearing Scott and getting his gist right away. With his round spectacles and ponytail and spacey guitar (a Strat, I think), I pegged him as a rock guitarist who, after years of Prog and Kraut Rock immersion, was becoming interested in minimalism and, well, a kind of LEGIT space rock. It was cool! We later met and re-met over and over again as our paths crossed through recording sessions and mutual friendships with many great musicians. Scott was always mild-mannered, cool, calm, collected. I recorded some memorable music in his house on Arbol in which he has his beautiful little studio. David Harrington, somehow knowing that Scott and I have this not-close but mutually warm and respectful history, asked me if I would write a piece to honor Scott on the double occasion of his 60th birthday and simultaneous 20th anniversary of working for/with Kronos. Both these actual dates have well passed, but nonetheless this piece now exists to commemorate these occasions with (I hope) continued warmth and respect.

“Section I: This composition begins and ends with an F major tonality. Banal as this may seem, it is F for Fraser. But the opening tonality in really A major over F, which thus includes both the major and minor third (if you are thinking ‘F’). This tension is intentional, and the monolithic drone power of this section is intended to present a dramatic arrival: the birth of Scott Fraser, as well as the concomitant ‘weight’ of sentient existence. It is also a reference to the aesthetic of that music I heard Scott play back in the ’70s, with some harmonic flavor or intensity added by yours truly. Though the string voicings are low in relation to the gobs of distortion the guitar brings here, I intend for it to be a bit muddy and even off-putting. The funereal tempo must be honored; though not mournful; it is SERIOUS (like Scott’s arrival).

“Section II: This section is the opposite of Section I in that it is more about interior space/reflection. Musically it is a kind of bridge to the next more indeterminate sections – a bridge from an inner sentient life to the cosmos. The last little pizzicato notes foreshadow the concluding ‘song’.

“Section III: This is where we all get to explore and have fun while endeavoring to create sonic representations of the ethereal, of space and communication to and from worlds outside those of only planet Earth. I intuited that Scott had, at least as a younger man, given much thought and even fantasy to the ideas, theories, and facts about space. I sensed a fascination with – if not love of – things magical and/or cosmic from him early on, and these ‘phases’ intend to conjure this. The directions in Phase One intend to suggest airless or arid weightless floating mystery. There are no ‘mistakes’ possible here unless things become too dense or agitated. But pizzicato interruptions and other outbursts are encouraged as representations of the unpredictable. In Phase Two, the crinkling of plastic food wrap is meant to mimic the sound of a scratchy record spinning. The static from the guitar is meant to mimic radio

The delicacy and open-hearted fragility of the Prelude, qualities heightened in Vrebalov’s distillation of Wagner’s score, represent for Harrington “the place where we humans are in our most direct contact with the vastness of the universe, and where the resulting friction between us and the world meets the friction of the bow on the string.” Like Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Bernard Herrmann, and countless others since 1865, Kronos, Vrebalov, and today’s audiences are sure to be transformed by the blinding light and otherworldly darkness of Tristan und Isolde.

– Marion Lignana Rosenberg

Aleksandra Vrebalov (b. 1970), a native of the former Yugoslavia, left Serbia in 1995 and continued her education in the United States. She holds a B.A. in Composition from Novi Sad University in Serbia, a M.M. from San Francisco Conservatory of Music and doctorate in composition from the University of Michigan. She lives in New York City.

Vrebalov, named 2011 Composer of the Year by Muzika Klasika (for her opera Mileva, commissioned by the Serbian National Theater for its 150th anniversary season), has received awards by American Academy of Arts and Letters, Vienna Modern Masters, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Douglas Moore Foundation and two Mokranjac Awards, given by Serbian Association of Composers for best work premiered in the country in 2010 and 2012.

Vrebalov has had her works performed by the Kronos Quartet, David Krakauer, ETHEL, Jorge Caballero, Serbian National Theater, and Belgrade Philharmonic, among others. Vrebalov has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Barlow Endowment, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Merkin Hall, San Francisco Conservatory, Louth Contemporary Music Society (Ireland). Her works have been choreographed by Dusan Tynek Dance Theater (NYC), Rambert Dance Company (UK), Take Dance (NYC), and Providence Festival Ballet. Her music has been used in two films dealing with atrocities of war: Soul Murmur directed by Helen Doyle (Canada) and Slucaj Kepiro by Natasa Krstic (Serbia).

Vrebalov’s string quartet …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… was written for and recorded by Kronos for the album Floodplain. Her string quartet Pannonia Boundless, also for Kronos, was published by Boosey & Hawkes as part of the Kronos Collection, and recorded for the album Kronos Caravan. For more information please see www.aleksandravrebalov.com.

Aleksandra Vrebalov’s arrangement of the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the David Harrington Research and Development Fund.

transmission attempts/noise, and the Stroh violin and guitar are meant to pose as randomly-received music – either sent from Earth in an attempt to communicate with life forms outside of Earth, or simply randomly received on the radio one night on the beach alone while on vacation with one’s family or something... If successful or enjoyable, these two ‘phases’ could go on longer than suggested on the score.

“Section IV A: Here begins a sort of agitated and (I hope) exciting sonic pulsation/groove. Rhythmic bowing on open strings with the left hand eliciting harmonic overtones emerges out of Section III and grows in confidence/intensity. Cues to change back and forth come from Violin 1. Perhaps only 2 changes back and forth will be sufficient; this can be determined/agreed upon in rehearsal. Players are encouraged to color ‘outside the lines’ by drumming on their instruments, playing behind the bridge – whatever sounds effective and free and adds to the rush.. We are building up to...

“Section IV B, a.k.a. the ‘Mahavishnu section’: This part must be played with a combination of abandon and rhythmic confidence. It is meant to allude to a seminal ’70s ‘fusion’ band called The Mahavishnu Orchestra, though it is a mere reference. The cycled part will feature guitar ad lib, and getting back to the top of the written line will be a crucial cue! I sense that both Scott and I are happily damaged by the aesthetic of this band and this period of music history. The section ends with a loud, long-held chord that echoes the first Section, and during it I (guitarist) will do a cadenza of sounds, loops, and semi-pure mayhem, gradually bringing us down to ...

“Section V: This is a very sparse partial recapitulation of the written ensemble material from the opening Section. It is meant to sound lonely but slightly sweet. The (possibly irritating) high A and E held by Violin 1 are not to be played too loudly – this sound should be almost electronic-sounding in its purity and sonic ubiquity. It is meant to represent the persistence of sound and of people such as Scott’s lifelong absorption into the world of sound; it beckons but at times also overwhelms.

“Section VI, a.k.a. ‘Simple Song for Scott’: My fervent hope is that this moment be ever-so-slightly sweet and yet elegiac. It is simply ‘touchdown’ – landing back on Earth and/or into our body, sensing and humbly celebrating sentient being; Scott’s quiet dignity and intelligence alongside intimations of what may very well be the Divine is all life forms. Repetition, though brief, attempts to create a mild trance... The piece ends (perhaps unexpectedly) on an F Major #11 chord: the Lydian mode, the most poignant harmonic configuration I know. As my brother would write: ‘a deep bow’. To Scott Fraser.”

Nels Cline’s Views from Here to the Heavens (for Scott Fraser) was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the Angel Stoyanof Commission Fund in honor of Scott Fraser’s 60th birthday.

Nels Cline

George Crumb (b. 1929)Black Angels (1970)

Thirteen Images From the Dark LandI. Departure 1. Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects 2. Sounds of Bones and Flutes 3. Lost Bells 4. Devil-music 5. Danse MacabreII. Absence 6. Pavana Lachrymae 7. Threnody II: Black Angels! 8. Sarabanda de la Muerte Oscura 9. Lost Bells (Echo)III. Return 10. God-music 11. Ancient Voices 12. Ancient Voices (Echo) 13. Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects

Things were turned upside down. There were terrifying things in the air... they found their way into Black Angels.” —George Crumb

George Crumb’s Black Angels, inspired by the Vietnam War, draws from an arsenal of sounds including shouting, chanting, whistling, whispering, gongs, maracas, and crystal glasses. The score bears two inscriptions: “in tempore belli” (in time of war) and “Finished on Friday the Thirteenth, March, 1970.”

Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1929. He studied at the Mason College of Music in Charleston and studied for the Master’s degree at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Berlin, and received a DMA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Crumb’s music often juxtaposes contrasting musical styles. The references range from music of the Western art-music tradition to hymns and folk music to non-Western musics. Many of Crumb’s works include programmatic, symbolic, mystical and theatrical elements, which are often reflected in his beautiful and meticulously notated scores.

Crumb has been honored with festivals devoted to his music from Los Angeles to Moscow, and from Scandinavia to South America. He is the winner of a 2001 Grammy Award and the 1968 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and was named Musical America’s Composer of the Year in 2004. He retired from his teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania after more than 30 years of service. Awarded honorary doctorates by numerous universities and the recipient of dozens of awards and prizes, he makes his home in Pennsylvania. Crumb’s music is published by C.F. Peters and the ongoing series of “Complete Crumb” recordings, supervised by the composer, is being issued on Bridge Records.

About Black Angels, Crumb writes:

“Black Angels was conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world. The work portrays a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption).

“The numerological symbolism of Black Angels, while perhaps not immediately perceptible to the ear, is nonetheless quite faithfully reflected in the musical structure. These ‘magical’ relationships are variously expressed: e.g., in terms of length, groupings of single tones, durations, patterns of repetition, etc. ... There are several allusions to tonal music: a quotation from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet; an original Sarabanda; the sustained B-major tonality of God-Music; and several references to the Latin sequence Dies Irae (Day of Wrath). The work abounds in conventional musical symbolisms such as the Diabolus in Musica (the interval of the tritone) and the Trillo Di Diavolo (the Devil’s Trill, after Tartini).”

Kronos’ recording of Black Angels is available on the Nonesuch recording of the same name.

Kronos’ 2008 production of George Crumb’s Black Angels was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius, with additional support from the Williams Center for the Arts/Lafayette College. Kronos’ original staged version was commissioned by Hancher Auditorium/University of Iowa in 1988.

Laurie Anderson for Kronos Quartet:

LandfallLOS ANGELES PREMIERE

Performers

PerformersLaurie Anderson

Kronos QuartetDavid Harrington ViolinJohn Sherba ViolinHank Dutt ViolaSunny Yang Cello

Creation and Production Laurie Anderson Music and TextLiubo Borrisov erst ProgrammingBob Currie DramaturgJacob Garchik Transcriptions Laurie Anderson, Kronos Quartet and Jacob Garchik Arrangements Konrad Kaczmarek Electronics and software designShane Koss Audio rig designBrian H Scott Lighting designer

Production and PerformanceScott Fraser audio engineerBrian Mohr audio engineerSteve O’Shea lighting supervisor

Landfall was commissioned by Adelaide Festival, Australia; Barbican, London; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park; Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ); Perth International Arts Festival, Australia; Stanford Live, Stanford University; and Texas Performing Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. Additional project support was provided to the Kronos Performing Arts Association by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sat, Mar 15Royce Hall

8pm

PeRFORMANCe DuRAtiON: Approximately 70 minutes;

No intermission

MeDiA SPONSORS:

GReeN ROOM SPONSOR:

Supported in part by the Colburn Foundation

DiG DeePeR iN tHe POP-uP LiBRARYKronos Quartet: Beethoven to Bali Music Librarian David Gilbert will share a special resource guide and

items from the UCLA Collection.

Royce Hall West Lobby

aBoUt the Program

These are stories with tempos. Threaded through the stories in Landfall is an account of Hurricane Sandy that blew through New York just as I was finishing the work. I’ve always been fascinated by the complex relationship of words and music whether in song lyrics, supertitles or voice over. In Landfall instruments initiate language through our new text software erst. In addition, the conflict between spoken and written text fractures the stories as well as creates an eye/ear polyphonic structure.

The blend of electronic and acoustic strings is the dominant sound of Landfall. Much of the music in this work is generated from the harmonies and delays of unique software designed for the solo viola and reinterpreted for the quartet. In addition, there were elements of the optigan, a keyboard that uses information stored on optical discs.

–Laurie Anderson

I have hoped that Laurie Anderson would write for Kronos since first encountering her work 30 years ago. She is the master magician musician who has always inhabited those secret places where technology has personality, where “real time” is questioned and where all the elements of performance meet and combine into music. Her process is to gather and continue to gather potentially useful aspects as she sculpts a shape. Her sense of play and fun and her continuous experimenting make her the ideal chemist [or is it alchemist?] in the laboratory of music. As Laurie discovers new essential elements, the world of thought is more encompassing and shapes of the future are becoming more apparent. What a thrill it is for Kronos to join her in Landfall as we explore what emerges together.

—David Harrington, Kronos Quartet

aBoUt the artIsts

Kronos QuartetFor 40 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. The group’s numerous awards also include a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and “Musicians of the Year” (2003) from Musical America.

Kronos’ adventurous approach dates back to the ensemble’s origins. In 1973, David Harrington was inspired to form Kronos after hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels, a highly unorthodox, Vietnam War-inspired work featuring bowed water glasses, spoken word passages, and electronic effects. Kronos then began building a compellingly diverse repertoire for string quartet, performing and recording works by 20th-century masters (Bartók, Webern, Schnittke), contemporary composers (John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Aleksandra Vrebalov), jazz legends (Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk), rock artists (guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Brazilian electronica artist Amon Tobin, and Icelandic indie-rock group Sigur Rós), and artists who truly defy genre (performance artist Laurie Anderson, composer/sound sculptor/inventor Trimpin, interdisciplinary composer/performer Meredith Monk).

Integral to Kronos’ work is a series of long-running, in-depth collaborations with many of the world’s foremost composers. One of the quartet’s most frequent composer-collaborators is “Father of Minimalism” Terry Riley, whose work with Kronos includes Salome Dances for Peace (1985–86); Sun Rings (2002), a multimedia, NASA-commissioned ode to the earth and its people, featuring celestial sounds and images from space; and Another Secret eQuation for youth chorus and string quartet, premiered at an April 2011 concert celebrating Riley’s 75th birthday. Kronos commissioned and recorded the three string quartets of Polish composer Henryk Górecki, with whom the group worked for more than 25 years. The quartet has also collaborated extensively with composers such as Philip Glass, recording a CD of his string quartets in 1995 and premiering a new work in 2013, among other projects; Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose works are featured on the full-length 2005 release Mugam Sayagi; Steve Reich, from Kronos’ performance of the Grammy-winning composition Different Trains (1989) to the September 11–themed WTC 9/11 (2011); and many more.

In addition to composers, Kronos counts numerous performers from around the world among its collaborators, including the Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man; Azeri master vocalist Alim Qasimov, legendary Bollywood “playback singer” Asha Bhosle, featured on Kronos’ Grammy-nominated CD You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood; Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq; indie rock band The National; Mexican rockers Café Tacvba; sound artist and instrument builder Walter Kitundu; and the Romanian gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Kronos has performed live with the likes of Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Zakir Hussain, Modern Jazz Quartet, Noam Chomsky, Rokia Traoré, Tom Waits, David Barsamian, Howard Zinn, Betty Carter, and David Bowie, and has appeared on recordings by such diverse talents as Nine Inch Nails, Dan Zanes, DJ Spooky, Dave Matthews, Nelly Furtado, Joan Armatrading, and Don Walser. In dance, the famed choreographers Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, and Eiko & Koma have created pieces with Kronos’ music.

Kronos’ work has also featured prominently in a number of films, including two recent Academy Award–nominated documentaries: the AIDS-themed How to Survive a Plague (2012) and Dirty Wars (2013), an exposé of covert warfare for which Kronos’ David Harrington served as Music Supervisor. Kronos also performed scores by Philip Glass for the films Mishima and Dracula (a restored edition of the 1931 Tod Browning–Bela Lugosi classic) and by Clint Mansell for the Darren Aronofsky films The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream. Additional films featuring Kronos’ music include 21 Grams, Heat, and True Stories.

The quartet spends five months of each year on tour, appearing in concert halls, clubs, and festivals around the world including Lincoln Center Out of Doors, BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Barbican in London, WOMAD, UCLA’s Royce Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Shanghai Concert Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. Kronos is equally prolific and wide-ranging on recordings. The ensemble’s expansive discography on Nonesuch Records includes collections like Pieces of Africa (1992), a showcase of African-born composers, which simultaneously topped Billboard’s Classical and World Music lists; 1998’s ten-disc anthology, Kronos Quartet: 25 Years; Nuevo (2002), a Grammy- and Latin Grammy–nominated celebration of Mexican culture; and the 2004 Grammy-winner, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite. Among the group’s latest releases are Rainbow (Smithsonian Folkways, 2010), in collaboration with musicians from Afghanistan and Azerbaijan; Music of Vladimir Martynov (Nonesuch, 2011), and Aheym: Kronos Quartet Plays Music by Bryce Dessner (Anti-, 2013). Music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Kronos released sheet music for three signature Kronos-commissioned works in Kronos Collection, Volume 1 (2006), a performing edition edited by Kronos; Volume 2 will be released in 2014.

In addition to its role as a performing and recording ensemble, the quartet is committed to mentoring emerging performers and composers and has led workshops, master classes, and other education programs via the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the California State Summer School for the Arts, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute, The Barbican in London, and other institutions in the U.S. and overseas. Kronos is undertaking extended educational residencies in 2013–14 at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, the Special Music School at the Kaufman Music Center in New York City, and the Malta Arts Festival.

With a staff of ten based in San Francisco, the non-profit Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) manages all aspects of Kronos’ work, including the commissioning of new works, concert tours, concert presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area, education programs, and more.

One of KPAA’s most exciting initiatives is the Kronos: Under 30 Project, a unique commissioning and residency program for composers under age 30 that has now added five new works to the Kronos repertoire. By cultivating creative relationships with emerging and established artists from around the world, Kronos and KPAA reap the benefit of decades of wisdom while maintaining a fresh approach to music-making.

KRONOS QuARtet MANAGeMeNt

Kronos Performing Arts AssociationP. O. Box 225340 San Francisco, CA 94122-5340 USA

www.kronosquartet.orgwww.facebook.com/kronosquartetTwitter: @kronosquartet #kronos

Janet Cowperthwaite, Managing DirectorLaird Rodet, Associate DirectorMatthew Campbell, Strategic Initiatives DirectorSidney Chen, Artistic AdministratorScott Fraser, Sound DesignerChristina Johnson, Communications and New Media ManagerNikolás McConnie-Saad, Office ManagerHannah Neff, Production AssociateLaurence Neff, Lighting Designer, Production DirectorLucinda toy, Business Operations Manager

Wu ManRecognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and as a leading ambassador of Chinese music, U.S.-based, Chinese-born musician Wu Man has carved out a career creating and fostering projects that give this ancient instrument a new role in today’s music world, not only introducing the instrument to new audiences, but commissioning and premiering over a hundred new works to grow the core repertoire. A Grammy Award-nominated artist, her adventurous musical spirit has also led to her becoming a respected expert on the history and preservation of Chinese musical traditions, reflected in her recorded and live performances and multi-cultural collaborations.

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Wu Man is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi and many others.

Adamant that the pipa, a lute-like instrument with a history of more than two thousand years, does not become marginalized as only appropriate for Chinese music, Wu Man has striven to develop a place for the pipa in all art forms. Projects she has instigated have resulted in the pipa finding a place in new solo and quartet works, concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as in theater productions, film, dance and collaborations with visual artists including calligraphers and painters. Wu Man’s role has developed beyond pipa performance to encompass singing, dancing, composing and curating new works. These efforts were recognized when she was made a 2008 United States Artists Broad Fellow.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied with Lin Shicheng, Kuang Yuzhong, Chen Zemin, and Liu Dehai at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. Accepted into the conservatory at age 13, Wu Man’s audition was covered by national newspapers and she was hailed as a child prodigy, becoming a nationally recognized role model for young pipa players. She subsequently received first prize in the First National Music Performance Competition among many other awards, and she participated in many premieres of works by a new generation of Chinese composers.

Wu Man’s first exposure to western classical music came in 1979 when she saw Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing in Beijing. In 1980 she participated in an open master class with violinist Isaac Stern and in 1985 she made her first visit to the United States as a member of the China Youth Arts Troupe. Wu Man moved to the U.S. in 1990 and was selected as a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 1999 Wu Man was selected by Yo-Yo Ma as the winner of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize in music and communication. She is also the first artist from China to have performed at the White House.

Wu Man continually collaborates with some of the most distinguished musicians and conductors performing today, such as Yuri Bashmet, Dennis Russell Davies, Christoph Eschenbach, Gunther Herbig, Cho-liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen and David Zinman. She is a principal member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project and performs regularly throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia with Mr. Ma as part of the project’s ensemble. Since 1993, Wu Man has also regularly performed and recorded with the Kronos Quartet, their most recent work together being the multi-media work, A Chinese Home directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. This work was inspired by a visit Wu Man made to Yin Yu Tang, the reconstruction of a Chinese village homestead at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts and is a musical and theatrical journey through different time periods of Chinese history performed with film accompaniment. In addition to playing the pipa, Wu Man worked with David Harrington on composing the music for this piece. She also sings, acts and plays percussion and an electric pipa when performing A Chinese Home.

Other recent projects have seen Wu Man rediscover, embrace and showcase the musical traditions of her homeland, projects she has dubbed “Wu Man’s Return to the East”. In September 2010 Wu Man released a new solo recording, Immeasurable Light, on Traditional Crossroads that combines reconstructed ancient pipa melodies with her own contemporary compositions. The project was a collaboration between Wu Man and University of Arkansas Professor of Ethnomusicology, Dr. Rembrandt F. Wolpert. One of Dr. Wolpert’s areas of expertise is music manuscript scrolls discovered early in the 20th century in the Mogao Buddhist Caves in Dunhuang in the Gansu province of Central Asia that contained a set of 25 pieces notated in tablature for pipa. Another is lute versions of music dating from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that had been preserved in Japan. Working together, they translated the ancient tablature to create base tunes, some existing of just a few notes. Wu Man then built upon these to create fuller tunes, with the aim of retaining the spirit of the original fragment. She also composed her own works for this recording and performed all of the layered pipa parts, in addition to singing and playing percussion.

In 2009 Wu Man was asked curate two concerts at Carnegie Hall as part of the ‘Ancient Paths, Modern Voices’ festival celebrating Chinese culture. Wu Man and the artists she brought to New York from rural China for the festival also took part in two free neighborhood concerts and a concert presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Society in Costa Mesa. Wu Man’s travels in China to find the musicians were documented on a film, Discovering a Musical Heartland – Wu Man’s Return to China and she was profiled on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The experience of visiting rural China and working with these artists, and the threat of these musical traditions disappearing, has resulted in a Wu Man forming long-term artistic relationships with the musicians.

Wu Man’s exploration of matching the pipa and Chinese music traditions with music from other cultures has continued when she was asked to curate, perform and produce new recordings as part of the acclaimed 10-volume Music of Central Asia CD-DVD series co-produced by the Aga Khan Music Initiative and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. She has recorded a CD and DVD with Tajik and Uyghur musicians that will be released by Smithsonian Folkways in early 2012, with tours of Central Asia and the U.S. to follow.

Wu Man has performed as soloist with many of the world’s major orchestras, including the Austrian ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Moscow Soloists, Nashville Symphony, German NDR and RSO Radio Symphony Orchestras, New Music Group, New

York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Her touring has taken her to the major music halls of the world including Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Great Hall in Moscow, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Opera Bastille, Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls and the Theatre de la Ville. She has performed at many international festivals including the WOMAD Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, Festival d’Automne in Paris, Henry Wood’s BBC Promenade, Hong Kong Arts Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Le Festival de Radio France, Lincoln Center Festival, Luminato, NextWave!/BAM, Ravinia Festival, Silk Road Festival, Sydney Festival, Tanglewood, Wien Modern and the Yatsugatake Kogen Festival in Japan.

Wu Man has recorded for various labels, including a recording of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera with the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch, a solo recording, Wu Man – Pipa From a Distance for Naxos, and two recordings with the Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma for Sony Classical. Recent recordings include: Off the Map with the Silk Road Ensemble on World Village and In A Circle Records; Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic with the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch; Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago featuring Wu Man’s Grammy-nominated performance of Lou Harrison’s Pipa Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the CSO Resound label; and the Grammy-nominated recording of Tan Dun’s Pipa Concerto with Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists on Black Onyx. Wu Man has also released a CD of world music entitled Wu Man and Friends on the Traditional Crossroads label that blends Chinese, Ukrainian, Ugandan and Appalachian music; and she is featured on a recording of Orion with the Philip Glass Ensemble for the Orange Mountain label. In 2005 Nonesuch released an homage to the composer of classic Bollywood songs, Rahul Dev Burman featuring the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, singer Asha Bhosle and tabla player Zakir Hussain called You’ve Stolen My Heart, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album

Nels ClineGuitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career – spanning jazz, rock, punk, and experimental – is well into its fourth decade, with over 160 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Born in Los Angeles, Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

Beyond Wilco, he leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn), and plays with Fig (a collaboration with Yuka Honda), BB&C (a trio with Tim Berne & Jim Black), Pillow Wand (a duo with guitarist Thurston Moore), and a new duo project with jazz guitar prodigy Julian Lage. A few of the other musicians with whom he has performed and/or recorded include: Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Yoko Ono, Jeff Gauthier, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, Vinny Golia, Marc Ribot, Tinariwen, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Lydia Lunch, and Lee Ranaldo. The new album by The Nels Cline Singers, Macroscope, will be released in 2014.

for LanDfaLL

Laurie AndersonLaurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned — and daring — creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater and experimental music.

Her recording career, launched by O Superman in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave and Life on a String (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multimedia stage performances such as Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world.

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance the End of the Moon. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high-definition film, Hidden Inside Mountains, created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008 she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece, Homeland, which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June 2010. Anderson’s solo performance Delusion debuted at the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad in February 2010. In October 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janiero. In 2011 her exhibition of new visual work titled Forty-Nine Days In the Bardo opened in Philadelphia, and Boat, her first exhibition of paintings, premiered at the Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York. She has recently been appointed as a three-year fellow at both EMPAC, the multi media center at RPI in Troy, NY, and PAC at UCLA. Anderson lives in New York City.

Liubo Borrisov is a bricoleur working with digital, electronic and organic media. In his works, he explores the interface between art, science and technology. His multimedia installations, performances and digital video paintings have been featured internationally, including the New Interfaces for Musical Expression, ICMC and SIGGRAPH conferences, the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, NYC and the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.

He received baccalaureate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Caltech and a doctorate in Physics from Columbia, where he also studied electro-acoustic music at the Columbia University Computer Music Center. He holds a masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU’s Tisch School, where he was a Global Fellow in the performing arts. He has taught at Harvestworks, the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and is currently an associate professor at Pratt Institute’s Department of Digital Arts, Brooklyn.

Robert Currie is an artist living and working in New York City and Ann Arbor Michigan. He is currently making a double chorus piece in the form of fifteen sonnets about pronouns.

Jacob Garchik, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and arranger, was born in San Francisco and has lived in New York since 1994. At home in a wide variety of styles and musical roles, he has become a vital part of NYC’s downtown and Brooklyn scene, playing trombone with the Lee Konitz Nonet, Ohad Talmor/Steve Swallow Sextet, The Four Bags, Slavic Soul Party, and the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble. Since 2006 Jacob has contributed dozens of arrangements and transcriptions for the Kronos Quartet of music from all over the world. His arrangements were featured on Floodplain (2009) and Rainbow (2010). His solo cd The Heavens: the Atheist Gospel Trombone Album (2012) has received wide acclaim.

Konrad Kaczmarek is a composer, musician, and programmer whose music combines live audio processing and improvisation, drawing from his diverse musical and technical background. His freelance work programming and performing have taken him to the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway, The New Zealand International Arts Festival, The Whitney Biennial Performance Series, the Next Wave festival at BAM, “Works and Process” at the Guggenheim, Bargemusic, The Stone, Joyce SoHo, and the 92nd Street Y. He received a B.A. in music from Yale, a MMus in electronic music composition from University of London, Goldsmiths, and is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in composition at Princeton.

Shane Koss, born and raised in rural Maryland, twiddled and fiddled his way through Berklee, Los Angeles and London to find himself in NYC where he now stays up way too late making strange noises and beating his computers into submission. The latter has helped him design studios and performance rigs both stateside and abroad.

Brian H Scott is a New York based lighting designer. Most recently he designed an Installation Project by Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory entitled the event of a thread. As a member of SITI Company he has designed lighting for Cafe Variations, Trojan Women (After Euripides), Antigone, American Document in collaboration with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Under Construction, WhoDoYouThinkYouAre, Hotel Cassioepia, Death and the Ploughman, bobrauschenbergamerica (Henry Hewes Design Award 2004), War of the Worlds Radio Play, and Macbeth. As a member of Austin, Texas based Rude Mechanicals he has designed light for numerous projects including Lipstick Traces and Method Gun.

aBoUt erst

Erst is a custom-built software which enables musicians to interact with text systems, extending the language of musical performance into the realm of narrative. Composers can configure deterministic relationships or design probabilistic connections between musical and visual events. Musical gestures can activate the visual bringing text to life by sampling words, phrases, timings, alphabets and symbols.

LAuRie ANDeRSON WORLDWiDe tOuR RePReSeNtAtiON:

Pomegranate Artswww.pomegranatearts.cominfo@pomarts.com

Director Linda BrumbachAssociate Director Alisa e. RegasGeneral Manager Kaleb KilkennyDirector of Booking Julia GlaweAssociate General Manager Linsey BostwickOffice Manager Susannah Gruder

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:Canal Street CommunicationsCooper Holoweski, Studio Managerwww.laurieanderson.comstudio@difficultmusic.com

tuNe-iNFeStiVAL L.A.

cap.ucla.edu/tuneinla

eighth blackbirdStill in Motion

imani Winds featuring Simon Shaheen:

Zafir

etHeL featuring Kaki King: ...And Other Stories

an evening with yMusic

tHu-SAt, MAR 27-29Royce Hall

Schoenberg Hall

CAP UCLA celebrates award-winning ensembles that are changing the landscape of

contemporary music one note at a time.

GuARDiANBaret C. Fink

CHAMPiONDr. Audree V. FowlerDeborah IrmasRenee & Meyer LuskinGinny ManciniDr. Richard S. RossDr. & Mrs. Armin SadoffRalph & Shirley ShapiroDiane Levine & Robert WassRon WatsonWerner & Mimi Wolfen

BeNeFACtOR AnonymousDean V. AmbroseGail & James R. AndrewsBarry BakerHelen & Peter BingMary Farrell & Stuart BloombergValerie & Brad CohenDr. Ellen Smith Graff & Mr. Fred CowanThe Feintech Family Sandra B. Krause & William B. FitzgeraldEliane Gans-OrgellFariba GhaffariDr. Allan Swartz & Roslyn Holt SwartzDiane KesslerJohn LiebesJoanne & Joel MogyEdie & Robert ParkerJohn & Kathleen QuisenberryJaclyn B. RosenbergGene & Maxine RosenfeldAlan M. SchwartzAnne-Marie & Alex SpataruDeedee Dorskind & Bradley Tabach-BankJoyce Craig & Beryl WeinerPatty & Richard WilsonKaryn Orgell WynneMarcie & Howard Zelikow

PAtRONAnonymousBarbara AbellDrs. Helen & Alexander AstinAnna Wong Barth & Scott BarthDr. Lee & Ann CooperJay & Nadege CongerMarina F. DayDr. Bruce & Barbara DobkinLaura DonnelleyMary & Robert Estrin

Patricia & William FlumenbaumDr. Irene GoldenbergDr. Jerry Markovitz & Cameron JobeDr. Lewis & Sandra KanengiserJoseph P. KaufmanRobert & Milly KayyemJoanne KnopoffDr. Sheelagh Boyd & Larry LayneRonald L. Johnston & Joan LesserSusan & Leonard NimoyClaude PetiteAstrid & Howard PrestonDr. William J. ResnickRonnie RubinCynthia Chapman & Neil SelmanMan Jit & Srila SinghSaletta SmithLester & Carolyn SteinCarol & Joseph SullivanDr. Elwin V. Svenson & Ann SvensonSue & Doug UpshawMichael Sopher & Debra VilinskyCarol & Arnold VinsteinStephanie Snyder & Michael WarrenJudy Fiskin & Jon WienerCarla B. Breitner & Gary Woolard

SuStAiNeRAnonymous (3)Robert C. AndersonKathleen Flanagan & Keenan BehrleJames BlakeleyStephanie Delange & David BodyDr. & Mrs. Thomas BrodMatthew Michael & Laurence ChryslerCity National BankRoberta ConroyHelene & Prof. Edwin CooperJennifer & Royce DienerLinnea DuvallRose & Al FinciSandra & Neil GafneySanford & Pat GageLori & Robert GoodmanStanley & Linda GoodmanJackie & Stan GottliebPattikay & Meyer GottliebAnn & William HarmsenLois HaytinHanna HeitingLisa & Steven HiltonSusan & David HirschTim Scott & Nancy HowardFiona & Michael Karlin

Tamara Turoff KeoughAliza & Michael LesserSusan LevichBea & Leonard MandelMel & Margalit MarshallMerle & Gerald MeaserSandra J. Klein & Donald McCallumPhylis NicolayevskyMichael & Suzanne ScottGil & Joanne SegelMuriel & Neil ShermanLaurie & Rick ShumanJennifer SimchowitzJudith TaylorDonna L. Dees & Timothy P. TobinAlice & Norman TulchinWilliam TurnerJoan & Joe WertzDr. Albert & Marilouise ZagerStuart & Carol Zimring

PARtNeRAnonymousLeslee Hackenson & Roger AllersSylvia & Joseph BalbonaGil Valenzuela & Randy BarbatoSusan & Stephen BaumanRosanna BogartRonald & JoAnn BusuttilDr. Fereshteh & Khossrow DibaDr. Paul & Patti EisenbergOlga Garay & Kerry EnglishBillie & Steven FischerSherry & Matthew FrankRose GilbertCaryn Espo & David GoldJudy Abel & Eric GordonCarol & Irving GreinesLinda Essakow & Stephen GuntherDr. Robin Garrell & Dr. Kendall HoukMarti KoplinMorelle Lasky LevineBernard & Peggy LewakKaren & Peter LockePauline & Roger MayerLeslie MitchnerDr. Jeffrey & Jacqueline PerloffMargaret QuonLynda & Stewart ResnickDr. Ari & Mrs. Ann RosenblattBernard “Bud” Heumann & Patricia RosenburgLinda McDonough & Bradley RossRoth Family FoundationRita Rothman

The boards of CAP UCLA and Design for Sharing would like to thank all the members who have made a choice to join them in supporting arts education and the art of performance at UCLA.

This listing represents memberships from November 1, 2012-January 15, 2014. If you have questions or would like further information on how you can support CAP UCLA please contact Yvonne Wehrmann at membership@cap.ucla.edu or (310) 794-4033.

John Schwartz Martha Kauffman & Michael SkloffDr. Christopher & Glennis WatermanSamantha & John WilliamsSteve & Jan WinstonArline Zuckerman

ADVOCAteAnonymousDr. Yoshio & Mrs. Natsuko AkiyamaMimi & Sherman AndelsonDr. Scott & Digna BeasleyLinda Engel & Alan BenjaminBunny Wasser & Howard BernsteinDonna & Richard BesoneMarjorie BlattStephanie & Harold Bronson Margot Rogers-Calabrese & Joseph CalabreseStephen DavisVanessa & Brian DokkoLorenzo DoumaniThe Edlow FamilyDavid & Linda EllisWilliam EscaleraJohn FellowsBeverly & Chester FiresteinPeter Weiner & Margaret GallegosAbner & Roslyn GoldstineDeborah GluskerDavid GrayLinda & Jerry JangerKerry KorfMarilyn K. LevinHon. Sherrill D. LukeKarin & Herbert MachlederMichael & Phyllis MarksLaura & James MaslonLaurie McCrayPaulette & Ronald NessimSarah & William OdenkirkAnne OsbergJoseph & Marjorie PerloffLinda PetersonSolomon Riley, JrNancy & Brad RosenbergCaron & Colin SapireIna SinsheimerKimiko & Harry StavrosMary Lou SteinmetzRobert SuiterRobert UhlNancy & Alan VoorheesHarold WilliamsBonnie & Paul Yaeger