YARN / WIRE
'MOLTEN TREES'
GUEST ENSEMBLE RESIDENCY
TWO PROGRAMS :
DECEMBER 9, 2023 | 4PM and 8PM
at FRANKIE, LOS ANGELES | 300 S MISSION RD, 90033
YARN / WIRE (L to R): Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion | Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, piano
WORKS BY TYONDAI BRAXTON, SARAH DAVACHI,
ANDREW McINTOSH, SARAH HENNIES and KLAUS LANG
BUY TICKETS:
PROGRAM I : (4PM)
Tyondai BRAXTON - 'MUSIC FOR ENSEMBLE and PITCH SHIFTER / DELAY' (2012) [10']
Sarah DAVACHI - 'FEEDBACK STUDIES for PERCUSSION' (2022) [20']
Andrew McINTOSH - 'LITTLE JIMMY' (2020) [30']
PROGRAM II : (8PM)
Klaus LANG - 'MOLTEN TREES' (2017) [30']
Sarah HENNIES - 'PRIMERS' (2019) [30']
Tyondai BRAXTON - 'MUSIC FOR ENSEMBLE and PITCH SHIFTER / DELAY' (2012) [10']
Sarah DAVACHI - 'FEEDBACK STUDIES for PERCUSSION' (2022) [20']
Andrew McINTOSH - 'LITTLE JIMMY' (2020) [30']
PROGRAM II : (8PM)
Klaus LANG - 'MOLTEN TREES' (2017) [30']
Sarah HENNIES - 'PRIMERS' (2019) [30']
ABOUT THIS RESIDENCY:
Monday Evening Concerts is proud to welcome back the brilliant NYC-based chamber ensemble Yarn/Wire. Following its breathtaking Los Angeles debut at MEC in January of 2018, the group has continued to evolve, commissioning a steady stream of important, transfixing and consummately beautiful new works that should serve as a benchmark for new music ensembles across the globe.
Because of the sheer volume and density of Yarn/Wire's recent output, we have decided to present not one, but two concerts over the course of a single day at Los Angeles' gorgeous light-filled warehouse space FRANKIE. The first concert, which will take place at sunset (4pm), features works by Tyondai Braxton, Sarah Davachi and Andrew McIntosh. The second concert, which will take place in the evening (8pm) features works by Klaus Lang and Sarah Hennies.
We at MEC feel that Yarn/Wire epitomizes the spirit of collaborative exploration and adventure that characterize what contemporary music is all about. For this reason, amongst many others, we are thrilled to welcome them back to our stage. Equipped with two epic programs of works by several of the leading compositional voices of a new generation, we look forward to sharing an unforgettable day with you all.
Because of the sheer volume and density of Yarn/Wire's recent output, we have decided to present not one, but two concerts over the course of a single day at Los Angeles' gorgeous light-filled warehouse space FRANKIE. The first concert, which will take place at sunset (4pm), features works by Tyondai Braxton, Sarah Davachi and Andrew McIntosh. The second concert, which will take place in the evening (8pm) features works by Klaus Lang and Sarah Hennies.
We at MEC feel that Yarn/Wire epitomizes the spirit of collaborative exploration and adventure that characterize what contemporary music is all about. For this reason, amongst many others, we are thrilled to welcome them back to our stage. Equipped with two epic programs of works by several of the leading compositional voices of a new generation, we look forward to sharing an unforgettable day with you all.
ARTIST BIOS:
Tyondai Braxton
|
Sarah Davachi
|
Andrew McIntosh
|
Klaus Lang
|
Sarah Hennies
|
Yarn / Wire
|
TYONDAI BRAXTON
Tyondai Braxton is an American composer and electronic musician who has been writing and performing music under his own name and collaboratively since the mid-1990s. Having recently completed a residency at Public Records in Brooklyn, Braxton incorporates electronic and modern orchestral elements into his music, which ranges in scale from solo pieces to large-scale symphonic works. The former front man of experimental rock band Battles, Braxton has focused on his own work since 2010, including his critically acclaimed album Central Market, which has been performed by world-renowned orchestras such as London Sinfonietta, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and HIVE, a multimedia project for three percussionists and two modular synthesizer performers which premiered at the Guggenheim in NYC. Braxton has been commissioned to write pieces for ensembles such as The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, The BBC Concert Orchestra, The Bang on a Can All Stars, Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and Third Coast Percussion. He has worked in collaboration with the likes of legendary composer Philip Glass as a duo and iconic visual artist Thomas Demand at the 2017 Venice Biennale. 2022 will see the release of the recording of his work Telekinesis for orchestra, choir and electronics with Metropolis Ensemble, The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and The Crossing.
SARAH DAVACHI
Sarah Davachi (b. 1987, Canada) is a composer and performer whose work is concerned with the close intricacies of timbral and temporal space, utilizing extended durations and considered harmonic structures that emphasize gradual variations in texture, overtone complexity, psychoacoustic phenomena, and tuning and intonation. Her compositions span solo, chamber ensemble, and acousmatic formats, incorporating a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Similarly informed by minimalist and longform tenets, early music concepts of form, affect, and intervallic modal harmony, as well as experimental production practices of the studio environment, in her sound is an intimate and patient experience that lessens perceptions of the familiar and the distant.
In addition to her acclaimed recorded output, Davachi has toured extensively alongside artists such as Ellen Arkbro, Oren Ambarchi, Grouper, William Basinski, Catherine Lamb, Aaron Dilloway, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Pisaro, Loren Connors, Tashi Wada, David Rosenboom, Charlemagne Palestine, Arnold Dreyblatt, and filmmaker Dicky Bahto. Commissioned projects include large-scale works for Quatuor Bozzini, London Contemporary Orchestra, Yarn/Wire, Apartment House, Wild Up, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Radio France, Contemporaneous Ensemble, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Bonner Kunstverein, Canadian International Organ Competition, and Western Front New Music. Her work has been presented internationally by Southbank Centre (London UK), Barbican Centre (London UK), Kontraklang (Berlin DE), Ina GRM (Paris FR), Issue Project Room (New York USA), Lampo (Chicago USA), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg DE), Organ Reframed (London UK), The Museum of Modern Art (New York USA), The Getty (Los Angeles USA), Orgelpark (Amsterdam NL), The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles USA), Tokyo Festival of Modular (Tokyo JP), Honen-in Temple (Kyoto JP), Open Frame (Sydney AU), Église Saint-Eustache (Paris FR), Église du Gesù (Montréal CA), Temppeliaukio Church (Helsinki FI), Grace Cathedral (San Francisco USA), Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (Chicago USA), Church of the Heavenly Rest (New York USA), Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi (Bologna IT), Lapidárium Národního Muzea (Prague CZ), and Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid ES), among others. In 2020 she founded Late Music, an imprint within the partner labels division of Warp Records.
Between 2007 and 2017, Davachi had the unique opportunity to work for the National Music Centre in Canada as an interpreter and content developer of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments. She has held artist residencies with The Banff Centre for the Arts, Quatuor Bozzini's Composer's Kitchen, STEIM, Elektronmusikstudion, OBORO Montréal, the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, the National Music Centre, and the Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments, and holds a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. Davachi is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, focusing on timbre, phenomenology, and critical organology, and is based in Los Angeles, California.
In addition to her acclaimed recorded output, Davachi has toured extensively alongside artists such as Ellen Arkbro, Oren Ambarchi, Grouper, William Basinski, Catherine Lamb, Aaron Dilloway, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Pisaro, Loren Connors, Tashi Wada, David Rosenboom, Charlemagne Palestine, Arnold Dreyblatt, and filmmaker Dicky Bahto. Commissioned projects include large-scale works for Quatuor Bozzini, London Contemporary Orchestra, Yarn/Wire, Apartment House, Wild Up, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Radio France, Contemporaneous Ensemble, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Bonner Kunstverein, Canadian International Organ Competition, and Western Front New Music. Her work has been presented internationally by Southbank Centre (London UK), Barbican Centre (London UK), Kontraklang (Berlin DE), Ina GRM (Paris FR), Issue Project Room (New York USA), Lampo (Chicago USA), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg DE), Organ Reframed (London UK), The Museum of Modern Art (New York USA), The Getty (Los Angeles USA), Orgelpark (Amsterdam NL), The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles USA), Tokyo Festival of Modular (Tokyo JP), Honen-in Temple (Kyoto JP), Open Frame (Sydney AU), Église Saint-Eustache (Paris FR), Église du Gesù (Montréal CA), Temppeliaukio Church (Helsinki FI), Grace Cathedral (San Francisco USA), Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (Chicago USA), Church of the Heavenly Rest (New York USA), Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi (Bologna IT), Lapidárium Národního Muzea (Prague CZ), and Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid ES), among others. In 2020 she founded Late Music, an imprint within the partner labels division of Warp Records.
Between 2007 and 2017, Davachi had the unique opportunity to work for the National Music Centre in Canada as an interpreter and content developer of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments. She has held artist residencies with The Banff Centre for the Arts, Quatuor Bozzini's Composer's Kitchen, STEIM, Elektronmusikstudion, OBORO Montréal, the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, the National Music Centre, and the Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments, and holds a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. Davachi is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, focusing on timbre, phenomenology, and critical organology, and is based in Los Angeles, California.
ANDREW McINTOSH
Andrew McIntosh is a Grammy-nominated violinist, violist, composer, and baroque violinist who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts, with a wide swath of musical interests ranging from historical performance practice of the Baroque era to improvisation, microtonal tuning systems, and the 20th-century avant-garde. He holds degrees in violin performance, composition, and early music performance from the University of Nevada, Reno, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Southern California.
As a baroque performer McIntosh is a member of Tesserae, Bach Collegium San Diego, and Musica Angelica, has served as guest concertmaster for baroque operas with LA Opera and Opera UCLA, was recently both music director and concertmaster of Long Beach Opera's all-Handel pastiche production "The Feast”, and has performed with the Washington National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, Musica Pacifica, and the American Bach Soloists. He is also a frequent recitalist, performing with historical keyboardist Ian Pritchard and fortepianist Steven Vanhauwaert, and also appeared at the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series in 2016 performing solo Bach on baroque violin.
As a solo artist he has performed at Miller Theatre in New York, REDCAT, and festivals and concert series across Europe and the US. He also was the viola soloist in the US premiere of Gèrard Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques, for which performance the LA Times said he “played with commanding beauty”. As a chamber musician he is a member of the Formalist Quartet, Wild Up, and Wadada Leo Smith’s Red Koral Quartet, with whom he recently recorded a 7-CD box set of Smith’s String Quartets 1-12, available on TUM Records. He has worked personally with a wide range of composers including Christian Wolff, Sofia Gubaidulina, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Helmut Lachenmann, Tom Johnson, and Jürg Frey.
As a composer he often works with forms and ideas found in nature or in other artistic disciplines, working in instrumental, vocal, and fixed media forms, and was described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as “a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West". His compositions have been featured at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Ojai Festival, Big Ears Festival, the Gaudeamus Festival, Time:Spans Festival, Hamburger Klangwerktage, Moments Musicaux Aarau, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Muzik, Miller Theatre, National Sawdust, Issue Project Room, Monday Evening Concerts, and Tectonics Festival Glasgow. The individual musical personalities of performers he writes for are a central consideration in his work, and he has worked particularly closely with the musicians of Wild Up, the Formalist Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and soprano Estelí Gomez. Recent commissions include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry opera company, Yarn/Wire, the Calder Quartet, and violinists Ilya Gringolts, Movses Pogossian, Lorenz Gamma, and Marco Fusi.
Originally from rural Northern Nevada, McIntosh is currently based in the Los Angeles area.
As a baroque performer McIntosh is a member of Tesserae, Bach Collegium San Diego, and Musica Angelica, has served as guest concertmaster for baroque operas with LA Opera and Opera UCLA, was recently both music director and concertmaster of Long Beach Opera's all-Handel pastiche production "The Feast”, and has performed with the Washington National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, Musica Pacifica, and the American Bach Soloists. He is also a frequent recitalist, performing with historical keyboardist Ian Pritchard and fortepianist Steven Vanhauwaert, and also appeared at the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series in 2016 performing solo Bach on baroque violin.
As a solo artist he has performed at Miller Theatre in New York, REDCAT, and festivals and concert series across Europe and the US. He also was the viola soloist in the US premiere of Gèrard Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques, for which performance the LA Times said he “played with commanding beauty”. As a chamber musician he is a member of the Formalist Quartet, Wild Up, and Wadada Leo Smith’s Red Koral Quartet, with whom he recently recorded a 7-CD box set of Smith’s String Quartets 1-12, available on TUM Records. He has worked personally with a wide range of composers including Christian Wolff, Sofia Gubaidulina, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Helmut Lachenmann, Tom Johnson, and Jürg Frey.
As a composer he often works with forms and ideas found in nature or in other artistic disciplines, working in instrumental, vocal, and fixed media forms, and was described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as “a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West". His compositions have been featured at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Ojai Festival, Big Ears Festival, the Gaudeamus Festival, Time:Spans Festival, Hamburger Klangwerktage, Moments Musicaux Aarau, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Muzik, Miller Theatre, National Sawdust, Issue Project Room, Monday Evening Concerts, and Tectonics Festival Glasgow. The individual musical personalities of performers he writes for are a central consideration in his work, and he has worked particularly closely with the musicians of Wild Up, the Formalist Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and soprano Estelí Gomez. Recent commissions include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry opera company, Yarn/Wire, the Calder Quartet, and violinists Ilya Gringolts, Movses Pogossian, Lorenz Gamma, and Marco Fusi.
Originally from rural Northern Nevada, McIntosh is currently based in the Los Angeles area.
KLAUS LANG
Klaus Lang (*1971 Graz / Austria) lives in Steirisch Lassnitz (Austria). He studied composition and theory of music (with H.M. Preßl, B. Furrer and Y. Pagh-Paan) and organ. Klaus Lang loves tea and dislikes lawnmowers and Richard Wagner. Klaus Lang’s music is not a means to convey extramusical contents, such as emotions, philosophical or religious ideas, political propaganda, advertisement etc. His music is no language used to communicate non-musical content. Music is seen as a free and selfstanding acoustical object. In his work he is not using sound, sound is explored and given the opportunity to unfold its inherent rich beauties. Only when sound is just sound it is percievable as that what it really is: a temporal phenomenon – audible time. Klaus Lang sees time as the genuine material of a composer and at the same time also the fundamental content of music. In his view musical material is time perceived through sound, the object of music is the experience of time through listening. Music is time made audible.
Klaus Lang has received commissions from numerous renowned festivals for new music such as steirischer herbst, Wien Modern, IMD Darmstadt, Eclat Stuttgart, Maerzmusik Berlin, Osterklang Innsbruck, Tage zeitgemäßer Musik Bludenz, Musikmonat Basel, Takefu Festival (Japan), Lucerne Festival and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. He has written music theater works for the Bonn Opera, the Tyrolean Landestheater, the Hebbeltheater Berlin, the Theater Aachen and the Munich Biennale, among others. Ensembles such as Klangforum Wien and Ensemble intercontemporain, the Arditti Quartet, choirs of WDR and SWR and many others have performed works by him.
In addition to his work as a composer, he performs as an organist with old, new and improvised music and has published numerous articles in music journals. Since 2006 he has held a professorship at the University of Music in Graz for composition and is also repeatedly active as a lecturer at impuls and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, among others.
Klaus Lang has received commissions from numerous renowned festivals for new music such as steirischer herbst, Wien Modern, IMD Darmstadt, Eclat Stuttgart, Maerzmusik Berlin, Osterklang Innsbruck, Tage zeitgemäßer Musik Bludenz, Musikmonat Basel, Takefu Festival (Japan), Lucerne Festival and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. He has written music theater works for the Bonn Opera, the Tyrolean Landestheater, the Hebbeltheater Berlin, the Theater Aachen and the Munich Biennale, among others. Ensembles such as Klangforum Wien and Ensemble intercontemporain, the Arditti Quartet, choirs of WDR and SWR and many others have performed works by him.
In addition to his work as a composer, he performs as an organist with old, new and improvised music and has published numerous articles in music journals. Since 2006 he has held a professorship at the University of Music in Graz for composition and is also repeatedly active as a lecturer at impuls and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, among others.
SARAH HENNIES
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She presents her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist with notable performances at MoMA PS1 (NYC), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Warsaw Autumn, Ruhrtriennale (Essen), Archipel Festival (Geneva), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Time:Spans (NYC), and the Edition Festival (Stockholm). As a composer, she has received commissions across a wide array of performers and ensembles including Bearthoven, Bent Duo, Claire Chase, Ensemble Dedalus, Mivos String Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Nate Wooley, and Yarn/Wire.
Her ground breaking audio-visual work Contralto (2017) explores transfeminine identity through the elements of “voice feminization” therapy, featuring a cast of transgender women accompanied by a dense and varied musical score for string quartet and three percussionists. The work has been in high demand since its premiere, with numerous performances taking place around North America, Europe, and Australia and was one of four finalists for the 2019 Queer|Art Prize.
She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from the Fromm Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New Music USA, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Creative Work Fund.
As a scholar and performer she is engaged with ongoing research about the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis and a recording project to document music by the American percussionist and composer Michael Ranta. Sarah is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.
Her ground breaking audio-visual work Contralto (2017) explores transfeminine identity through the elements of “voice feminization” therapy, featuring a cast of transgender women accompanied by a dense and varied musical score for string quartet and three percussionists. The work has been in high demand since its premiere, with numerous performances taking place around North America, Europe, and Australia and was one of four finalists for the 2019 Queer|Art Prize.
She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from the Fromm Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New Music USA, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Creative Work Fund.
As a scholar and performer she is engaged with ongoing research about the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis and a recording project to document music by the American percussionist and composer Michael Ranta. Sarah is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.
YARN / WIRE
Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. The ensemble is admired globally for the energy and care it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous music, and the New York Classical Review states that “Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today.” Founded in 2005, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and their creative potential.
Yarn/Wire has performed internationally at festivals including the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International, Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Ultima (Norway), Festival 20/21 (Belgium), Contemplus (Prague), and Wien Modern (Austria) festivals, in addition to Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York’s Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood, Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Catherine Lamb, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.
Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival, plus other educational residencies and outreach programs, the quartet works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music.
Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Kairos, New Amsterdam, Northern Spy, Shelter Press, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint.
Yarn/Wire has performed internationally at festivals including the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International, Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Ultima (Norway), Festival 20/21 (Belgium), Contemplus (Prague), and Wien Modern (Austria) festivals, in addition to Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Academy of Music, and New York’s Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood, Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Catherine Lamb, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.
Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival, plus other educational residencies and outreach programs, the quartet works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music.
Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Kairos, New Amsterdam, Northern Spy, Shelter Press, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint.