LA and OC Weirdo Music and Art Forum

Venue: First Lutheran Church of Venice - Southern California
815 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Tickets: https://www.ticketor.com/hearnow/tickets/hn25-vocal-304094
$25.00 General admission
$10.00 Student admission For students with valid ID
$15.00 Senior admission For attendees 65 and older

HN25 Festival Pass
Use code HN25ALL3 to get 20% off the whole season (ends March 31)
https://www.ticketor.com/hearnow/tickets/hn25-festival-pass-304098

The magic of the voice as solo, as blended - or not - into ensemble, with and without orchestral instruments, with and without electronic modulation, with a speaking string quartet and a shouting flutist...HEAR NOW 2025 explores how composers are using the voice as expression, from jubilant to musing to protest and beyond. The adventurous HEX vocal ensemble leads the way in ensemble works, and vocal soloists take on a range of techniques matched to the the texts.

Program:

• exsangues (2022) — Elliot Menard, for four treble voices
• Hghi (2024) — Arin Shahjahanian, for soprano, clarinet and piano
• Three Copypastas, mvmts 1 & 2 (2023) — Theo Trevisan, for vocal octet
• Brooklyn Narcissus, mvmt 1 (2017-20) — Chris Castro, for soprano solo
• et bon bon bon bon bon… (2023) — Tanner Pfeiffer, for SATB vocals
• THE SONG OF PROPHET X — Hugh Levick, for piano quartet and speaker/singer
• Torso, air (2019) — Kevin Zhang, for vocal octet
• sea change (2023, rev 2024) — TJ Sclafani, for SSATBB vocals
• I Can’t Help You (2024) — John Hollywood, for mezzo-soprano, bassoon, horn, viola and percussion
• Again and Again (2024) — Drew Corey, for SSATTB vocals

All programs are subject to change.

Pierre Passereau's 16th-century "Il est bel et bon" is known for a section where the singing resembles the clucking of chickens...Through a melodramatic ramping up, Tanner Pfeiffer's et bon bon bon bon bon takes it to an absurd extreme where performers may be more chicken than human...Drew Corey's Again and Again composition process started with a driving 8th-note ostinato and was built from improvising off of an iPhone memo recording of it.
Three Copypastas, mvts 1 and 2, take us into the social networking arena, where a "copypasta" is 'any block of text that gets copied over and over again..." (and we all know that one!). Thus the piece, conceived by Theo Trevisan for SSAATTBB uses means of text repetition while paying homage to and subverting traditional tropes in double-choir writing. Chris Castro takes Paul Blackburn's poem, Brooklyn Narcissus, about a drunken train ride across the Manhattan Bridge while obsessing over the death of a plant and gives the solo soprano a fabulous workout as we contemplate our own dead plants! More works on the program by Elliot Menard, Kevin Zhang, Peter Knell, Arin Shahjahanian, John Hollywood, TJ Sclafani, and Hugh Levick.

About the Festival: https://hearnowmusicfestival.com/
Founded in 2011 by composer Hugh Levick and cellist of the Lyris Quartet Timothy Loo (both pictured here), the HEAR NOW Music Festival’s mission is to promote the breadth and diversity of concert music being written by composers living and working in the LA area by presenting concerts and informative activities of high artistic quality to the public.

Artistic goals include:

1. To foster the recognition of Los Angeles composers and their unique voice in contemporary music.
2. To connect composers with musicians.
3. To nurture dialogues that explore the values of today’s concert music.

Milestones
Since its first two-concert festival in 2011, the Hear Now Music Festival (HN) has provided an ever-broadening spotlight on the musical imagination of composers based in the Los Angeles area. The results from the festivals so far are 184 works by 161 individual LA-based American composers — some known, and many others unknown to audiences.

For the 2014 festival, HN began seeking partnerships with other music organizations to broaden its scope beyond chamber music and expand to a third concert. The success of our six-year festival partnership with People Inside Electronics (PIE) continues with festivals presenting innovative uses of electronics in concert music.

In 2015, HN began a partnership with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), a leader in presenting wide-ranging repertoire and adventurous commissions. LACO selects several pieces their musicians will perform in the festival, often engaging their artist-in-residence.
A biennial collaboration was started in 2016 with the UCLA Philharmonia, a high-level student orchestra, to present new and recent orchestral works by LA composers.

In 2017, HN presented outreach concerts in locations including LA City College and Chapman College. Festival composers spent a day at each college preparing the students to experience the program.
In 2018, HN partnered with the Harmony Project for a workshop and outreach concert for underserved and at-risk school-aged music students.

Impact
HEAR NOW has become an essential musical experience for the concert-going Los Angeles public. The support and encouragement of HEAR NOW’s Honorary Artistic Advisor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, has validated the premise of the festival among the public. Numerous composers –emerging and mid-career– have been brought to both critical and public attention and HEAR NOW has served as an incubator for the discovery of new talent.

Venue: Winifred Smith Hall,
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
4000 Mesa Rd. Irvine, CA 92697-2775

External Link: School of Engineering

Free but you must register here

Helpful hints: https://www.arts.uci.edu/helpful-hints-your-visits

E-SONIC 2: Engineering-Symphonic Orchestra New Instrument Competition
Monday, May 19, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Winifred Smith Hall

Join UC Irvine’s Samueli School of Engineering and the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, along with the Pacific Symphony, to celebrate the interplay of engineering and music in this year’s E-SONIC 2: Engineering-Symphonic Orchestra New Instrument Competition. Student teams, from across UC Irvine, collaborated to develop brand new musical instruments that will premiere in concert at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, May 19, 2025 in Winifred Smith Hall. Experience innovation in action, enjoy a faculty band, and cheer for your favorite team. The winners of the competition will be announced at the end of the event.

This event is generously supported by Bob Romney and Alex Parker.

Tickets here $30.64 GA & $41.58 reserved seats

We are in the General Admission seating section. Meet at the entrance so we can sit together

For information on parking, nearby restaurants, etc. visit the Nimoy Theater website: https://cap.ucla.edu/ucla-nimoy-theater

Website: https://schoenberg.media.mit.edu/
Trailer: https://schoenberg.media.mit.edu/video/
Images: https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/app/uploads/2025/04/Schoenberg-Carousel-with-animation.mp4

“Ingeniously original music”– The Wall Street Journal

"A composer biography like no other" - The Boston Globe
The Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music are proud to present the West Coast premiere of composer Tod Machover’s chamber opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, May 18, 20 and 22, 2025 at the newly-renovated UCLA Nimoy Theater. These performances are part of Schoenberg 150, the worldwide celebration of the sesquicentennial of composer Arnold Schoenberg’s birth.

Schoenberg in Hollywood is a high-spirited, affectionate homage to one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century, and UCLA’s revered professor of music composition from 1936 to 1944. It presents vignettes from Schoenberg’s life, seen through the aesthetic of the Hollywood film industry. It explores the complex relationship between uncompromising art and mass appeal, and whether—and how—art can change the world.

Called "America's most wired composer" by The Los Angeles Times and a "musical visionary" by The New York Times, Tod Machover is R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at MIT.  He is widely recognized for designing new technologies for music performance and creation, and is director of the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group.

Based on a scenario by Braham Murray with a libretto by Simon Robson, Schoenberg in Hollywood was commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera, which gave its world premiere in 2018. Our production will feature English baritone Omar Ebrahim, who created the role of Schoenberg in the Boston production, and American director Karole Armitage, who directed the Boston premiere. Playing multiple supporting roles will be soprano Anna Davidson and tenor Jon Lee Keenan. The orchestra of 15 will be conducted by UCLA Director of Orchestral Studies and Milken Center Artistic Director Neal Stulberg.

Machover recalls that he started thinking about the concept of Schoenberg in Hollywood over 20 years ago when he read Alexander Ringer’s book, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer As Jew. “The book was a revelation. I had long admired Schoenberg’s music but didn’t know about his complex relationship to Judaism, or about how Nazi critics used his Judaism as a way of justifying their hatred for his music.”

Born in Vienna, Schoenberg converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in 1898. “But then”, Machover notes, “he was kicked out of the Berlin Conservatory the day Hitler came in, and his music was banned in Germany.” In 1933, Schoenberg and his family fled the Nazi regime for Paris, where the composer reconverted to Judaism. In 1935, the Schoenbergs arrived in Los Angeles where the composer lived until his death in 1951. Schoenberg was among many intellectual émigrés who fled Nazi persecution and settled in California in the 1930s.

Schoenberg’s life in Southern California included friendships with George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx and other Hollywood luminaries. It was Harpo Marx (who makes an appearance in Schoenberg in Hollywood) who introduced him to MGM’s legendary head of production Irving Thalberg in 1935. Knowing of Schoenberg’s eminence as a composer, Thalberg asked him to consider writing a score for MGM’s upcoming film, “The Good Earth.” Schoenberg felt conflicted about the offer, but eventually began negotiations with Thalberg, which included a proposed $50,000 fee and total artistic control of his music. He was not offered the job.

“When I heard about that story and meeting, it just seemed to crystallize all of these contrasts,” Machover recalled, “of serious art and commercialism, reaching a large public and being true to yourself, finding your identity and being political and changing the world. So I wanted to make an opera with that meeting as the centerpiece.”

In presenting Tod Machover’s intriguing, exuberant opera about Arnold Schoenberg -- on the UCLA campus -- the Milken Center and Alpert School honor the artistry of two composers whose music resonates deeply with the American Jewish Experience, and celebrate the legacy of one of UCLA’s foundational musical giants.