SOUTHLAND
ENSEMBLE

EVENTS
ARCHIVE
2018/19 SEASON
SOUTHLAND ENSEMBLE x DOG STAR 15
LAND IMAGES
Friday June 14th, 8pm Automata Arts
A concert of text and graphic scores that directly engage with nature and earthly environments. Featuring the following compositions:
Kathryn Koopman - For the Beauty of the Earth
Jack Langdon - Land Images
Heather Lockie - 4 Dryads
Christian Wolff - selections from Prose Collection -
Sticks, Stones, Groundspace or Large Groundspace
This concert is presented alongside the Dog Star Orchestra’s 15th annual festival of experimental music. We are thrilled to have many members of the Dog Star Orchestra join us for our performance of Wolff's iconic prose scores.
LA PHIL NOON TO MIDNIGHT 2019
ANTHONY BRAXTON : GHOST TRANCE MUSIC
Saturday June 1st, 10:15pm BP HALL
Composition No. 23A
Composition No. 40
Composition No. 228
Composition No. 245
with special guests:
Joshua Gerowitz
Andrew Munsey
Stephanie Richards
William Roper
David Tranchina
Argenta Walther
Southland Ensemble is thrilled to share a continued exploration of selections from Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music (first interpreted by the ensemble in 2017) as a part of this year’s Noon to Midnight. Conceived as a music that develops ritualistically over time, Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music uses a mixture of traditional and graphic notation interspersed with improvisation. Ghost Trance Music as a whole consists of individual numbered compositions that can be layered or performed individually. For this performance we will be using Composition No. 228 as a ‘foundation’ on which the other compositions are layered and built upon.
Anthony Braxton is recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years, highly esteemed in the creative music community for the revolutionary quality of his work and for the mentorship and inspiration he has provided to generations of younger musicians. Drawing upon a disparate mix of influences from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen to Native American music, Braxton has created a unique musical system that celebrates the concept of global creativity and our shared humanity. His work examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation and ritual engagement—innovation, spirituality and intellectual investigation.
BALLAD OF THE STAR-EATER:MUSIC
THE MUSIC OF JOHANNA BEYER
Saturday April 6th, 8pm
Southland Ensemble presents a concert honoring the work of pioneering turn-of-the-century composer Johanna Beyer:
String Quartet IV
String Quartet #2
Have Faith
Movement for Double Bass and Piano
Music of the Spheres
Movement for String Quartet
Ballad of the Star-Eater
Percussion Op. 14
The Federal Music Project
with special guests:
Stephanie Aston, Argenta Walther & Brian Walsh
Johanna Beyer (1888-1944) was a German-American composer and pianist. She died of Lou Gehrig's disease and the majority of her work would have been forgotten were it not for the endeavors of composers and performers, notably Frog Peak, who brought her music back to life, as it were, through research and volunteer score copying.
Many of Beyer's works were never performed in her lifetime. Several of these works, including String Quartet IV and Movement for String Quartet are possible premieres, as there is little documentation of the performance of her work.
NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
Saturday February 9th, 8pm
Southland Ensemble presents a concert premiering experimental compositions generated by our first ever Call for Scores.
Erika Bell : Saint-Girons
Christine Burke : AT A STEADY CONSISTENT RATE
Jorge Delgado Leyva : Dialogos
Nicole DeMaio : Book of Hours
John Eagle : Something about my Punctuation
Nomi Epstein : all are above us
Ben Zucker : Neither/N/Nor/N
FLUXUS : LIGHT
Saturday November 10th, 8pm
Southland Ensemble opens our sixth season with our annual fluxus event, featuring George Brecht’s Candle Piece for Radios among other classic event scores. Including pieces by Robert Bozzi (1966), George Brecht (1959), Henning Christiansen (1964), Ken Friedman (1965), Alison Knowles (1965), Takehisa Kosugi, Larry Miller (1970), Yoko Ono (1955), Tomas Schmit and Robert Watts (1970).
2017/18 SEASON
BYZANTINE RITES
6-2-2018 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
“Southland Ensemble concludes its 2017/18 season with the premiere of a new work by LA-based composer Laura Steenberge:
Byzantine Rites is a new collection of pieces in which chant-inspired musical textures accompany actions performed with household objects. The title speaks in part to the borrowing of fragments of medieval Byzantine chants to form the musical materials, and in part to the use of Byzantine to refer to unnecessarily complicated procedures.
Joined by special guest Cody Putman.
RUTH CRAWFORD / RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER
4-7-2018 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
Southland Ensemble presents the music of Ruth Crawford, the forward-thinking and ultra-modern composer and that of Ruth Crawford Seeger, the American folk music specialist and renowned children’s music educator. From her iconic, forward-thinking and ultra-modern String Quartet composed in 1931, to her collection and harmonic arrangement of hundreds of American children’s folk songs, Ruth Crawford Seeger was truly an American pioneer and inimitable creative force.
The program features the following compositions:
String Quartet, Diaphonic Suite No. 1, Diaphonic Suite No. 4 and Three Songs (special arrangement by Jonathan Stehney). In addition, members of Southland Ensemble and special guests have arranged several folk songs contained in her collections Animal Folk Songs for Children and American Folk Songs for Children.
with special guests:
Jessica Basta, Natalie Brejcha, Daniel Corral, Dustin Donahue, April Guthrie, David Perryman, Kathryn Pisaro, Joanna Wallfisch and Argenta Walther
WADADA LEO SMITH
1-26-2018 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
“Ankhrasmation is a musical language as opposed to a musical notation system. […] The first part, Ankh, comes from the Egyptian cross. Ras comes from the Ethiopian head, meaning the leader. And Mas comes from mother.” WLS
Exploring WLS's notational style, Ankhrasmation, come experience our realization of his beautiful scores Pacifica and page 9 of Kosmic Music.
We will be joined for this performance by special guests Casey Butler, Corey Fogel, Josh Gerowitz, and Dave Tranchina.
FLUXUS : CONSTRUCTION
12-9-2017 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
flux: to affect, or bring to a certain state by subjecting to, or treating with, a flux. "Fluxed into another world"
"humorous, monostructure, insignificant, unpretentious, unprofessional (anyone can do it)" - George Maciunas
a piano, hammer, nails, violins, radios, overtones and orange paint.
Southland Ensemble performs a conglomeration of event scores by Yoko Ono, György Ligeti, George Maciunas, Allison Knowles, Robert Bozzi, Philip Corner, Tomas Schmit and more.
WERDER/FREY
10-29-2017 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
für sich, klar und sachlick. einfach. / to itself, clear and objective. simple.
-Manfred Werder, stück 1998
String Quartet No. 3 – Jürg Frey
stück 1998 – Manfred Werder
60 Pieces of Sound – Jürg Frey
The music is silent, but not absent. It is not speechless, and it also does not move with virtuosity bordering on silence. The music gets its vitality and its radiance, not from gesture and figuration, but in quiet presence – everything is there: colours, sensations, shadows, durations.
-Jürg Frey
2016/17 SEASON
anthony braxton
GHOST TRANCE MUSIC
4-28-2017 ArtShare LA
Southland Ensemble presents an evening of Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music. Written between 1995 - 2006, Braxton created over 100 of these compositions that serve as pathways between different notation systems and musical idioms.
Composition No. 228
Composition No. 245
Composition No. 358
with special guests:
Corey Fogel, Chris Foss, Andrew Munsey, Leah Paul, Kathy Pisaro, Stephanie Richards, Dave Tranchina & Argenta Walther
JACKSON MAC LOW
1-28-17 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
Southland Ensemble presents the chance poetry of Jackson Mac Low. Mac Low’s dedication to systems of composition - which included chance, indeterminacy, and simultaneous performance - allowed him to create works of extreme openness. His poems represent a moment in poetry where truths of authorship were called into question and the very boundaries of music and poetry were pulled taut.
54th Light Poem: For Ian Tyson
the 5th biblical poem
Is That Wool Hat My Hat?
Young Turtle Asymmetries
Asymmetries
MAURICIO KAGEL: REPERTOIRE
11-18-16 The Command Center
Southland Ensemble presents selections from Repertoire (1967-70), a collection of event scores by German-Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel. One of his most radical, anti-institutional works, Repertoire is a farcical deconstruction of object, sound, theatre and music all at once.
John Cage 1975-77
10-23-16 Human Resources LA
Telephones and Birds (not Birds, but Water)
Child of Tree
Branches
Cheap Imitation for violin solo
2015/16 SEASON
SOUNDINGS
7-15-2016 Human Resources LA
Southland Ensemble presents a concert of music from the early issues of Soundings Press, an important and influential journal of experimental music published by composer Peter Garland from 1971- 1990. Program will feature compositions by:
JOHANNA MAGDALENA BEYER
JOHN DINWIDDIE
JAMES FULKERSON
STEPHEN L. MOSKO
JAMES TENNEY
RAINFOREST
4-15-2016 UCSD Conrad Prebys Music Center
presented by Springfest
RAINFOREST IV (1976) - David Tudor
OTHER FORESTS - Carolyn Chen *World Premiere
RAINFOREST IV
RAINFOREST
4-2-2016 NEIGHBORHOOD CHURCH OF PASADENA
presented by People Inside Electronics
RAINFOREST IV (1976) - David Tudor
OTHER FORESTS - Carolyn Chen *World Premiere
RAINFOREST IV
EARLE BROWN: FOLIO
1-30-2016 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
FOLIO:
October '52
November '52
December '52
'53
June '53
4 SYSTEMS
COLLABORATIONS 1.2: EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC YEARBOOK
12-19-2015 ARTSHARE L.A., LOS ANGELES
Time With People - Tim Parkinson *US premiere
I DIDN'T REALLY PREPARE FOR THIS BUT PROBABLY THAT IS BEST - Kara Feeley
MUSIC OF ALVIN CURRAN & FREDERIC RZEWSKI
12-4-2015 ARTSHARE L.A., LOS ANGELES
Alvin Curran - VSTO
Frederic Rzewski - Les Moutons de Panurge, Coming Together and Attica
MUSIC OF CRANE, SKEMPTION & HUGHES
9-25-2015 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
Catch - Howard Skempton
Estonia - Laurence Crane
A Reward is Given for the Best Inframammary Fold V. 5 - Sarah Hughes
Come back to the old specimen cabinet John Vigani, John Vigani pt. 3 - Laurence Crane
COLLABORATIONS 1.1: SHIM & STABLER
9-10-2015 CURVE LINE SPACE, LOS ANGELES
IN ZWEI TEILIEN - Kunsu Shim
HART AUF HART - Gerhard Stabler
]and on the eyes black sleep of night[ - Gerhard Stabler
luftrand - Kunsu Shim
X - Gerhard Stabler
2014/15 SEASON
FLUXUS:1960'S
7-24-2015 ARTSHARE L.A., LOS ANGELES
SOLO for violin, viola, cello or contrabass - George Brecht
Constellation Number 4 - Dick Higgins
Symphony No. 2 , fluxversion 1 - George Brecht
Symphony No. 3, fluxversion 1 - George Brecht
Orange Event Number 20 - Bengt af Klintberg
Newspaper Event - Allison Knowles
Piece for any number of vocalists - Allison Knowles
Nivea Cream Piece - Allison Knowles
DRIP MUSIC (DRIP EVENT) - George Brecht
TEA EVENT - George Brecht
Game of Definitions - George Brecht
Opus 46 - Eric Andersen
Boxing Day - Ken Friedman
For a Drummer - George Brecht
ROBERT ASHLEY: EARLY WORKS
4-1-2015 REDCAT, LOS ANGELES
The Entrance
She Was A Visitor
The Wolfman
in memoriam...ESTEBAN GOMEZ
in memoriam...CRAZY HORSE
Trios (White on White)
CORNELIUS CARDEW: THE GREAT LEARNING
2-13-2015 AUTOMATA ARTS, LOS ANGELES
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MUSIC OF JAMES TENNEY
12-19-2014 CENTER FOR THE ARTS EAGLE ROCK, LOS ANGELES
Harmoniums 1, 5 & 7
2 Koans and a Canon *world premiere
Saxony
MUSIC OF PAULINE OLIVEROS
9-9-2014 HUMAN RESOURCES, LOS ANGELES
Sonic Rorschach
Thirteen Changes
Bye Bye Butterfly
Song for Margrit
Double Basses at Twenty Paces
Rock Piece
2013/14 SEASON