APRIL 28 8PM PAMELA Z

APRIL 29 8PM THERESA WONG

EDWARD SCHOCKER & THE CROSSING ENSEMBLE

APRIL 30 8PM LUCIANO CHESSA

YBCA FORUM & GRAND LOBBY

#NEWFREQFEST2016 Our organization was founded in 1993 as WELCOME TO a citizen institution that would be home YBCA Presents to the diverse local arts community while YERBA BUENA serving to connect the Bay Area to the CENTER FOR world. YBCA’s mission is to generate NEW FREQUENCIES FEST 2016 culture that moves people. We believe THE ARTS that culture—a collection of art, traditions, values, human experiences, and stories— is what enables us to act with imagination and creativity, to act socially, politically, and with conviction. Culture instigates THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 8PM change in the world. MEMORY TRACE, Pamela Z

We believe that more and different kinds FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 8PM of people need to be defining culture today THE UNLEARNING, Theresa Wong and that more people need to have access THE CROSSING, Edward Schocker and the to cultural experiences that are relevant to Crossing Ensemble their lives and their communities. We need new definitions and new experiences that SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 8PM bring people together regardless of their A RETROSPECTIVE, Luciano Chessa differences in order to make the inclusive and equitable culture we need today. We believe that the arts should be on the front line of change and that cultural institutions exist to spur and support big societal movements. Through powerful art experiences, thoughtful and provoca- tive content, and deep opportunities for participation, we are committed to kindling inclusive culture that cultivates empathy, awakens personal and societal transfor- mation, and reaches for a world fueled by inspiration. The need has never been stronger than now, and there is no better place than YBCA to answer the call. We are so glad that you are here. We are grateful for your cultural participation, and we hope you will come back and enjoy all that YBCA has to offer.

Warmly,

DEBORAH CULLINAN CEO of YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

Pamela Z photo of Memory Trace by Silvia Matheus

2 3 A NOTE FROM The Bay Area is experiencing a resurgence PROGRAM OVERVIEW THE CURATOR of national recognition with its healthy and vibrant experimental music scene ISABEL YRIGOYEN spearheaded by the Center for New Music, MEMORY TRACE MUSIC CURATOR , Symphony’s Pamela Z SoundBox, the Other Minds music festival, and the Luggage Store Creative Music Memory Trace is a solo performance Series. The San Francisco Conservatory exploring various aspects of memory of Music and its New Music Gathering through voice, electronics, multichannel conference hopes to be an annual hybrid video, sampled text fragments, and conference and music festival of national gestural movement. The work grew out scope devoted to contemporary music. of a sound and video installation that I showcased at Arc Gallery in 2012. It unfolds YBCA’s New Frequencies Festival 2016 through a series of dreamlike sonic and highlights the work of four Bay Area– visual episodes of remembering and based artists from this underground forgetting. scene: Pamela Z, Theresa Wong, Edward Schocker, and Luciano Chessa. Each play a Part of my working process involved pivotal role in the new sound music arena, making audio and video recordings of delving into experimentation with old and interviews with a number of people, whom Pamela Z photo by Silvia Matheus new technologies, making instruments, I asked to recount memories, dreams, and repurposing traditional instruments to curious memory-related stories. I mined changes in the way her memory worked. create new sounds, and using the body these for speech and image fragments to She began launching into dialogues and voice to push the envelope and create collage, layering and triggering samples about (and with) people from her past as San Francisco was at new forms. in the performance. I composed music if those conversations had taken place combining my live voice and electronic just yesterday or were in the midst of the forefront of musical The projects bridge music and sound, processing with this audio and video happening. She began sharing fragments experimentation during performance, and visual arts to express source material, which I conjured and of her past that she had never spoken of concepts and explore the contemporary controlled using instruments that sensed before and mentioning names that my the 1960s counterculture. human condition with imagination, depth, my physical gestures and the amplitude of sisters and I had never heard. It was as The city’s history with the and humor. Pamela Z opens with the my voice. These voices, faces, and figures if she was time traveling—slipping in and premiere of Memory Trace, an exploration emerge periodically throughout the various out of the present. My observations of her avant-garde, particularly of the concept of memory, occupying the episodes, acting as connective tissue for inspired me to examine subtle changes as the Tape Music intersection of technology and theater, the work, forming some of its multiple in my own memory processes. I began to and forefronts the artist’s extraordinary layers. wonder how my memory will change in the Center developed new operatic vocal range. Theresa Wong’s future. Toward the end of her life I made tape-based art forms, The Unlearning, is a timely reflection on I can still remember the day in the early some audio and video recordings of her, war and whether we can unlearn cycles 1990s when I first purchased memory. I and a small amount of that footage made contributed to a wealth of violence. Edward Schocker’s The delighted in the fact that I could hold it in its way into Memory Trace in the form of of creative collaborations Crossing takes us into a contemplative my hand: a thin green wafer etched with a short, single-channel movie used as an space of ecstatic sound rooted in a lattice of metal lines. I quickly noticed episode in the piece. My mother passed among artists such as improvisation, contrasting traditional parallels between the computer’s memory away in early August 2015, just one week Terry Riley, Steve Reich, shinawi Korean musical practice with and my own. Prone to anthropomorphism, after I mounted a work-in-progress run contemporary performance. Luciano I continue to compare and often confuse of the piece, and I will always think of the David Tudor, Pauline Chessa’s retrospective is a self-portrait, the two. I am interested in exploring how work as being dedicated to her memory. Oliveros, and others showcasing sixty-four hand-picked artists humans and computers store memory. from gospel to orchestra. Chessa also How do they “misplace” information, or Memory Trace was workshopped at New Music with the San Francisco’s premieres A Blind Date, inspired by his lose it entirely? How can we differentiate New College in Sarasota, Florida, in January Actor’s Workshop, the San personal life and experiences as an openly between dreams and real or manufactured 2015. The work-in-progress showed at Royce gay Italian man. memories? Why do certain sounds or Gallery in San Francisco in summer 2015 in an Francisco Mime Troupe, aromas trigger very old recollections? intimate three-night run. Anna Halprin Dancers’ Join us for a remarkable three-day festival and an extraordinary range of expression As I was developing Memory Trace, my Workshop, and Canyon and sound art. Enjoy! aging mother was living out her final years. Cinema. I became deeply interested in the vast memories she held as well as the rapid 4 5 ARTIST PROFILES and performed original scores for Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble, an ISEA panelist on sensor-driven and choreographers and for film and video and St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. She network performance, Leonardo LASER PAMELA Z artists. She has done vocal work for other has had numerous dance commissions, presentations. He received 2012 and 2014 Creator, composer, performer composers, including Charles Amirkhanian, providing scores for choreographers LAD awards for video design, and a 2012–13 , and Henry Brant. Her large- such as Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Jo Isadora Duncan Award nomination for Pamela Z is a composer, performer, and scale multimedia performance works Kreiter (Flyaway Productions), and best visual design. He teaches workshops media artist who works primarily with Parts of Speech, Gaijin, Voci, and Baggage Donald Byrd (Spectrum Dance Theater). in interactive video and sound, and has voice, live electronic processing, sampled Allowance have been presented at the She curates and produces the ROOM been a visiting artist and conference sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital Kitchen, New York; Theater Artaud and Series, a San Francisco avant-chamber presenter in media and performance at looping techniques, she processes her ODC Theater, San Francisco; the Museum series featuring a variety of virtuosic many institutions, including the University voice in real time to create dense, complex of Contemporary Art theater, Chicago; solo artists and chamber groups playing of San Francisco, San Francisco State sonic layers. Her solo works combine theaters in Washington, DC, and Budapest, experimental music. She has collaborated University, MIT, Massachusetts College of experimental extended vocal techniques, Hungary, and beyond. Her one-act opera with a wide range of artists, including Art and Design, Louisiana State University, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, Wunderkabinet, inspired by the Museum of Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Miya the University of Roehampton, the and sampled concrète sounds. She Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Masaoka, Jeanne Finley and John Muse, University of Brighton, Amherst College, uses MSP and Isadora software on Matthew Brubeck), premiered at the Lab Shinichi Iova Koga (inkBoat), and Luciano Duke University, the University of Sussex, a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI in San Francisco, and was subsequently Chessa. Her interactive web-based and Brunel University London. controllers that allow her to manipulate presented at REDCAT in Los Angeles and work Baggage Allowance can be viewed sound and image with physical gestures. the Open Ears Festival in Canada. Pamela at baggageallowance.tv, where it is Winters received a BFA in photography, Her performances range in scale from Z has shown media works in exhibitions at permanently installed. video/film, and performance at the School small concerts in galleries to large-scale the Whitney Museum of American Art, New of the Museum of Fine Arts, , multimedia works in theaters and concert York; Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Pamela Z has been the recipient of and Tufts University. He completed halls. In addition to her performance work, Cologne; the Tang Museum, Saratoga many honors and awards, including the postgraduate training in architecture she has a growing body of intermedia Springs, New York; the Dakar Biennale, Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke and live performance and is also the co- gallery works involving multichannel sound Senegal; the Krannert Art Museum, Artist Impact Award, the Herb Alpert Award curator of Oakland’s MilkBar, with Mary and video installations. Champaign, Illinois; and the Kitchen, New in the Arts, the Creative Capital Fund, Armentrout. York. the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award, an ianwinters.com Pamela Z has toured extensively to perform Ars Electronica honorable mention, and in international festivals, including Bang Pamela Z has received chamber the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission on a Can at Lincoln Center, New York; commissions from a number of Fellowship. She holds a music degree from DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY TEAM the Venice Biennale; Interlink Festival, contemporary music ensembles, including the University of Colorado. Ian Winters Camera and Video Tech Japan; Other Minds, San Francisco; and the , the pamelaz.com José María Francos Lighting Design Pina Bausch Tanztheater 25 Jahre Fest, All Stars, String Quartet, the Donald Swearingen Gesture Control . She has composed, recorded, California E.A.R. Unit, Left Coast Chamber Instruments IAN WINTERS Camera and video technologist VIDEO PERFORMERS Mary Armentrout Ian Winters is an award-winning video and Dana Iova-Koga media artist working at the intersections Shinichi Iova-Koga of performance, architectural form, Satu Palokangas and time-based media. In addition to Julie Queen individual work he often collaborates with Sten Rudstrøm composers, directors, and choreographers Paige Starling Sorvillo to create both staged and open-ended Marshall Trammell media environments through performance and visual and acoustic media. SAMPLED VOICES Winters’s recent awards include a 2014–15 Geraldine Cipolla Beaird Isadora Duncan Award for visual design Ronee Blakley and a 2016 master artist residency at Shaun Boyle Atlantic Center for the Arts. He has George Brant had further residencies at Djerassi, the Beverly Brooks University of Sussex, and Earthdance. Mel Day Winters received funding from the Rainin Evelyn Ficarra and Zellerbach Foundation in 2013. He was Skip Gianocca Pamela Z photo of Memory Trace by Silvia Matheus 6 7 Traci Horgen PROGRAM OVERVIEW Kristofer Mills Dennis O’Leary Jinni Seo THE UNLEARNING Gustavo Villegas-Solís Theresa Wong David Watson Paul Young The Unlearning is inspired by the work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, which YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS Theresa Wong discovered as a printmaking (THE MOMMY MOVIE) student living abroad in in 1998. Diane Lebedz Goya’s series of aquatint etchings Beverly Brooks published thirty-five years after his death, Carol Brooks Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters Linda Brooks of War, 1810–20), are powerful images Pamela Z of the Peninsular War between and Tony Bennett Napoleon’s French Empire. In 2009 Wong Johnny Mathis referenced this work while composing J Brooks Marcus The Unlearning, drawing parallels to the William Brooks violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Richard Lebedz Wong’s work questions how the thoughts, All music composed by Pamela Z © Last beliefs, and attitudes that lie within each Letter Music (ASCAP) except music in of us can affect societies, cultures, and the Mommy Movie: “As Time Goes By” countries at war. Visual projections by the by Herman Hupfeld (performed by Tony filmmakers Daria Martin and Mao Mollona Bennett) and “Fly Me to the Moon” by Bart combine Goya’s etchings with ancient Howard (performed by Johnny Mathis) goddess imagery from the research of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. Theresa Wong photo by Peter Gannushkin Through extensive excavations in central Europe, Gimbutas discovered matrilineal THE BILL ARTIST PROFILES societies that existed for thousands of years without any evidence of warfare. The Unlearning THERESA WONG Imagery of feminine animal-human deities 1. Bury Them and Keep Quiet such as rams, deer, bears, and snakes 2. With or Without Reason Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, and symbolizes the protective characteristic 3. Against the Common Good vocalist actively exploring the intersection of the feminine in these matrilineal 4. Everything Is Topsy-Turvy of music, creative experimentation, societies. Juxtaposing this art from 5. Farándula de Charlatanes improvisation, and the synergy of multiple supposedly peaceful societies and the 6. Feline Pantomime disciplines. Raised in upstate New York art of Goya’s violent times surfaces the 7. Sad Presentiments of What Must Come and the San Francisco Bay Area, Wong role of matriarchy and patriarchy in peace to Pass studied classical piano and cello from an and war. The Unlearning explores this 8. And This Too early age. Her interests expanded into phenomenon in current times. Through 9. Strange Devotion! design, leading her to Stanford University’s imagery and song, the piece calls into 10. It Serves You Right product design program, as well as the question whether war is a cycle that 11. This Always Happens University of Applied Arts in Vienna and repeats itself or whether it can be broken 12. I Saw It Fabric. While living in Venice, Wong through deeper processes of individual and 13. Las Camas de la Muerte realized her vision to unite music with collective unlearning and learning. 14. This Is Worse the inquisitive process of design, with 15. When Truth Dies What Is Her Heaven? hopes of transforming the potential of 16. Folksong for the Landless performance. Upon returning to the United 17. What Courage! States, she completed an MFA at Mills 18. Nothing, We Shall See College. 19. Proud Monster! 20. Candlehat Wong’s works include The Unlearning (released on Tzadik, 2011), O Sleep, and (All titles except 15, 16, and 20 are from Venice Is a Fish (released on Sensitive Skin Goya’s etching titles) 8 9 for Jeremy Flower’s song cycle The Real Me JOSÉ MARÍA FRANCOS and Ben Goldberg’s Orphic Machine, and has performed Sarah Kirkland Snider and Francos studied lighting and set design at Ellen McLaughlin’s Penelope. She is on the Laney College in Oakland back in the early faculty of the New England Conservatory 1980s and has not stopped working since. and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He has designed for the Oakland Opera, the Oakland Ballet Company, Wallflower Order, Dance Brigade, June Watanabe in DARIA MARTIN Dance, Ellen Bromberg Ensemble, Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theatre, Robert Daria Martin’s 16mm films aim to create Moses Kin, Dohee Lee Performance continuity between disparate artistic Projects, and Navarrete+Kajiyama Dance media (such as painting and performance), Theater. In 2001 he became the production between people and objects, and between manager and then technical director at internal and social worlds. Martin is Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. currently an associate professor and director of artistic research at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. CREATIVE TEAM Her films have been exhibited in solo shows at ACCA Melbourne; the Museum Theresa Wong music, cello, voice, lyrics, of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the New and costume design Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, violin, voice, and costume Los Angeles; Kunsthalle Zürich; MK Gallery, design Milton Keynes, England; the Showroom, Daria Martin visual projections London; and Tate Britain. Mao Mollona visual projections José María Francos lighting design Edward Thomasson graphics and editing MASSIMILIANO (MAO) MOLLONA Carole Kim live video programming Jeanie-Aprille Tang visual production Mollona is a writer, filmmaker, and assistant anthropologist. He is a senior lecturer Dominique Persi make-up in the Department of Anthropology at Photo by Peter Gannushkin Goldsmiths College, London. He has a multidisciplinary background in economics SPECIAL THANKS Music, 2014). She has presented her work Yard. She has written a song cycle for the and anthropology, and his work focuses internationally at Fondation Cartier, Paris; International Contemporary Ensemble on the relationship between art and the Theresa Wong wishes to thank Isabel Cafe OTO, London; Area Sismica, Forlì, ; about dreams, a musical/radio piece for political economy. He has conducted Yrigoyen and Yerba Buena Center for the Festival de Arte y Ópera Contemporánea, the Rova Saxophone Quartet about the extensive fieldwork in Italy, the United Arts, and the many friends and supporters Morelia, Mexico; and Roulette and the coming of the Industrial Revolution, a Kingdom, Brazil, and Norway, looking who made the creation of this work Stone, New York, and other venues. She piece about communications technology at the relationship between economic possible, including: Yaddo Corporation, is a recipient of grants and awards from for the Bang on a Can All Stars, an development and political activism Roulette, Tzadik Records, Henry & Maria Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Center for impressionistic audio travelogue for through participatory and experimental Chu, Denah Bookstein, Anne & Peter Cultural Innovation, Meet the Composer, Causing a Tiger, and a song cycle with film practices in favelas and poor Esmonde, Wladimir & Rose Gerela, Sally and the American Composers Forum. She is the poet Rafael Osés called Necessary neighborhoods. His practice is situated Fullman, Andrea & Tyko Kihlstedt, Adrian & currently based in Berkeley. Monsters based on Jose Luis Borges’s Book at the intersection of pedagogy, art, and Amanda Liang, Emily Little, Vamsi Mootha, theresawong.org of Imaginary Beings (1957). Her score for activism. He is a member of the collective Regina Schaffer, Christina & Robbie the Folger Shakespeare Library production freethought, program director of the Sheridan, Gerald Rousselle & Meiling Yang, of Romeo and Juliet was nominated for a 2015–17 Athens Biennale, and editor of the Gary & Jenny Wong, Harriet & Glenn Wong, CARLA KIHLSTEDT Helen Hayes Award. Kihlstedt is currently Focaal Art and Visual Anthropology (AVA) Joe & Mei Wong, Sabrina Wong and Patrick working on a new song cycle about our blog. & Win Yeung. Special thanks to Olympia Carla Kihlstedt is a songwriter, composer, changing oceans. In addition to her own Dukakis for introducing me to the work of singer, and violinist. She is a founding albums and those of her various bands/ Marija Gimbutas. member of the bands , Rabbit projects, she has contributed to the Rabbit, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, recordings of , Mr. Bungle, Tracy Causing a Tiger, Minamo, ’s Chapman, Pretty Lights, , Cosa Brava, the Book of Knots, and 2 Foot and Madeleine Peyroux. She is the vocalist 10 11 PROGRAM OVERVIEW ARTIST PROFILES degrees in music composition from Middlebury College and Mills College, and is EDWARD SCHOCKER a cofounder of Thingamajigs Performance THE CROSSING Group, an Oakland-based performance Edward Schocker and Schocker is a composer and performer who festival and educational nonprofit. Bolles creates music with made/found materials was a doctoral candidate in performance the Crossing Ensemble and alternate tuning systems. In 1999 studies at UC Davis. His dissertation and 2000 he was artist in residence at project, Myth of Ten Thousand Things, the European Dance Development Center engages the practice and theory of artistic The Crossing creates a new form of in Düsseldorf, where he took part in and collaboration. ecstatic group improvisation through conducted workshops in instrument investigating ancient Asian musical building and composer-choreographer DOHEE LEE, born on Jeju island in South genres such as Japanese gagaku and collaborations. In 2004 Schocker composed Korea, studied Korean dance, music, Korean ritual music. The performance music for a UNESCO-sponsored work with percussion, and vocals at the master tonight was created through a period of Echo Arts, a large bi-communal project in level. Since her arrival in the United States deep development through improvisation Cyprus that helped build understanding she has been a vital contributor to both and playing. For the past year, this group Edward Schocker photo by Daniel Leu between communities in conflict. the traditional and the contemporary met regularly to find its own unique Shocker has received artist residencies arts landscape of the San Francisco Bay sound and group communication. It is and commissions from the Berkeley Art Area and beyond. Lee’s work focuses consistently developing and changing deficiencies, of the people performing it. It Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Stanford on the integration of traditional forms with each meeting, but the goal—to reach seemed much more exciting and personal Lively Arts; the St. Ignatius Choir, directed and contemporary arts through music, a state of communication with another than the traditional (sometimes sterile) in San Francisco; Firebird Youth Chinese movement, images, costumes, and world—remains the same. The Crossing is composer-ensemble relationship.” Orchestra, San Jose; and Youkobo Art installations. Her distinctive and funded in part by San Francisco Friends Space, Tokyo. In 2006 he was awarded profound performance style evokes the of Chamber Music and Zellerbach Family The Crossing’s mission is to create new and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission full spectrum of human emotion—the Foundation. innovative work that combines traditional Fellowship to research Japanese musical primordial, futuristic, visible, and invisible Eastern sensibilities with contemporary instruments and tuning systems, and in realms. The Crossing is rooted in shinawi, a Korean Western performance practices. By 2010 he received a six-month residency at shamanistic performance practice where creating pieces in a collaborative group Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito. SOOYEON LYUH rigorously trained in musicians reach an ecstatic state as process, the goal is to generate meaningful Recently he was an artist in residence at court and folk repertories from a young they seek to bridge the material and the work that investigates various artistic, the Paul Dresher Ensemble ARC program. age, and is known for her masterful spirit worlds. One of the most significant social, and spiritual themes. “I believe this Currently he is an ensemble member of performances of new compositions for musical characteristics of shinawi is its project is particularly pushing boundaries the Thingamajigs Performance Group. The the haegeum, a traditional Korean string element of improvisation. As the music in that the goal for the performers is to group recently developed and performed instrument. Lyuh earned her BA, MA, and accompanies songs and dances performed perform as a group until a connection with a new work with for the PhD with highest distinction in Korean by shamans during a ritual, sometimes ‘another’ world is made,” says Shocker. Berkeley Art Museum. musicology from Seoul National University. spontaneously, the players must rely on “Our goal is to create a crossing between She served as a lecturer at Seoul National masterful improvisation. The ensemble the ‘spirit’ and material worlds, a space University and a member of the National and the aesthetic for The Crossing are where audiences feel a direct connection THE CROSSING ENSEMBLE Gugak Center’s creative music troupe built from locally sourced ingredients and with both.” (Gungnip gugakwon changjakakdan), a sensibilities, slowly churned and developed DYLAN BOLLES makes performances government organization in Korea. For over time in order to create a unique This project allows the performers and with people and environments, many of the past ten years she has performed musical sound and performance style audience an opportunity to investigate which involve the design and construction numerous ensembles and solo pieces of contingent upon the highly developed and what a “spirit world” means to them. This of new musical instruments and the Korean court music, traditional folk music, spontaneous creativity of its musicians. could be achieved through connecting cultivation of co-creative relationships and especially contemporary music. or remembering ancestors, engaging in based in listening practice. His activities Currently she is a visiting scholar at the Says Edward Schocker: “I am interested in meditation or prayer, or allowing the body include a wide range of performance- Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley. creating an environment where work can to physically move as the music takes based collaborations, time-based arts, In 2011–12 she was a visiting scholar at the be created in a collaborative group manner. it. The piece will attract anybody who is installations, and sound compositions. ethnomusicology department, University In the past I’ve worked with various dance seeking to look deeper than our everyday These works strive to build communities of Hawaii at Manoa, where she performed and theater companies and always loved material world. The Crossing gives the based in shared temporal experience. with foreign musicians and composers at the way they created work. Although there local community the rare opportunity to Bolles has worked in such venues as the various concerts and workshops. was a choreographer or director, the work see work that brings together ritual and Richmond Art Center; Pro Arts, Oakland; was built in a group effort by investigating performance—elements that have become the Exploratorium, San Francisco; SUKI O’KANE is a classically trained the creativity and virtuosity, as well as the separated over the centuries. Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito; mallet percussionist, composer, and and Lincoln Center, New York. He holds instigator working with artists from a 12 13 PROGRAM OVERVIEW

A RETROSPECTIVE Luciano Chessa

LUCIANO CHESSA: INKLESS IMAGINATION VIII, FOR GEOFFREY HARTMAN (THE BOY OF WINANDER) Edward Schocker photo by Daniel Leu 2013 wide array of music, movement, expanded The Living Earth Show - cinema, and public art genres. She has Andrew Meyerson, percussion composed for Theatre of Yugen and The Living Earth Show - Luciano Chessa photo by Jamie Lyons inkBoat, performs in the ensembles of Dan Travis Andrews, LED counterpoint Plonsey, and is a member of Thingamajigs of this composition. By asking performers Paolo Pasolini’s last novel, Petrolio (1975). Performance Group with Edward Schocker This duo percussion and light to whisper to the point of inaudibility, I Instead, they constitute a diary of some and Dylan Bolles. O’Kane has performed projection is based on William can remove meaning from a text and still of my reactions to the reading of this live and recorded with She Mob and its Wordsworth’s poem “The Boy of get sound from it—sound that, if it’s not puzzling, masterful book. side projects: the mad folk duo Junior Winander,” which I first discovered the actual sound a poem makes when it’s Showmanship and its alter ego, speed thanks to Geoffrey Hartman in 1991. read out loud, still is sound derived from Pasolini left the novel unfinished. It metal Winner’s Bitch. She has performed Wordsworth’s poem is already in itself a and intimately connected (emotionally, amounts to nothing more than a collection in realizations of Jon Brumit’s Vendetta fully formed musical composition—and structurally, physically) with the text. By of fragments—some very brief, some Retreat; with Lucio Menegon in his Split a perfect one, for that matter. I felt so doing this I also avoid having to ask (and that stretch on for several pages—mostly Lip, Soundtrack Instrumentals, and intimidated by that splendor that I had burden) performers to “act,” and keep revolving around Carlo di Polis and an Strangelet projects; and with Dohee Lee to avoid an open-field competition with their performance focused on sounds alter ego, Carlo di Tetis, who will change in realizations of her multidisciplinary a work shining that bright. I wanted my (and images) without requesting them to gender throughout course of the story. performance and installation piece Mago. piece to have its autonomous life, not focus on meaning, as well as on the task of The characters and their behaviors—the claim some other art organism’s life, delivering a text. political, the social, the ecological, the ADRIA OTTE is a composer and multi- let alone be a commentary or a mere sexual, even the gender-bending one— instrumentalist whose work falls in and background. I love whispering because the breathy are, as is always the case in Pasolini, between a wide range of idioms. Trained sound approximates white noise, a kind all allegories. Carlo is the embodiment in the Western classical tradition on violin It would have been too easy a shortcut of sound that plays a role in this piece in of the middle-class Italian bourgeois. and in bad early-1990s alt-rock on guitar, to have this text be heard and claim the percussion part as well. Finally, I love He works for ENI, the Italian state oil her musical projects include sound design the whole experience as my own whispering because it adds mystery to company, during the time of the OPEC for dance and video, rock bands, electro- composition. This was too easy a the performance, and functions like an embargo against the United States and the acoustic chamber ensembles, and Korean glory: I had to veil this powerful incantation. After all, in my first opera consequent international energy crisis of drumming. poem. Though veiled, I still wanted there are long section of choir and solo the mid-1970s. Pasolini’s original plan was the poem to inform in a subtle way my whispering, and my solo guitar piece to include in the book a thorough account KANOKO NISHI-SMITH is a performer piece. I wanted this poem to give my Amadou likewise requires the performer to of the Italian political structure and its currently based in the San Francisco piece its shape, so to speak—to be a whisper a text to the point of inaudibility. corruption in those years. He never did. Bay Area. Though classically trained on subterranean, structural foundation. piano, and holding a BA in classical music In 1975, when Pasolini was murdered, performance from Mills College, her recent Inkless Imagination VIII is about my LUCIANO CHESSA: PETROLIO. QUATTRO I was four years old. To me, TV and interest has primarily been in performing first encounter with this poem. The QUADRI DA PASOLINI radio political news were a confused twentieth-century and contemporary unforgettable experience of the 2004 and incomprehensible constant drone. musical compositions for piano as well as whistling, and whispy, and whispering Precisely because of my passive news for koto (Japanese thirteen-string zither), sounds of Geoffrey Hartman’s , piano consumption as a child, I have been and in various contexts expressive, ancient voice reading of Christopher Froh, percussion attracted to that particular time in with musicians as well as dancers, poets, it in the context of a class I took with political history, attempting, in retrospect, and visual artists. him at the more These four sketches are not meant to be to understand it. My music, however, is not than twenty-five years ago is the basis a thorough musical transcription of Pier directly “political.” Petrolio is not about 14 15 putting history on trial, or even pointing LUCIANO CHESSA: AMADOU, DA UN T’ANG DI a most singular blind date. A man called LUCIANO CHESSA: TRE DANZE DA SALOTTO to the many similarities between the 1970s UCHECHI KALU him and asked him out for coffee: he was 1983/2010 and the socio-geo-political scenario of the 2008 the FBI agent who for more than twenty time when I composed this piece. All can years followed Banis’s every move in a Luciano Chessa, piano decide on their own what to make of these Travis Andrews, guitar not-so-far-away time in our history in Sarah Cahill, piano historical leitmotifs. Instead, I have always which authoring queer best-sellers was been interested in the way in which history A guitar, like a body, is violated. Some considered by the US government to be Prepared for Alfonso Alberti, and premiered (directly or through its interpretation), by nihilism percolates in it—something that an antiestablishment, criminal act. Banis with him at Milan’s Associazione Musica affecting our personal lives, changes us. may explain this piece’s painful overdose accepted the coffee invitation. d’Insieme in 2010, these Three Dances for of silence. Amadou is based on a poem piano four-hands are also a re-elaboration The “colors” of the score that I have written by a friend and poet I admire, of childhood pieces. derived from Pasolini are the “melancholic” Uchechi Kalu, who at the time the piece LUCIANO CHESSA: COME UN’INFANZIA (which is the dominant one), the “erotic,” was composed was the only female African 1986/2011 In the Capriccioso, the parts of the the “monstrous,” and the “painful” (isn’t poet published in the United States, and Primo and Secondo are linguistically petroleum the most painfully famous who also happened to be—just like the Friction Quartet— homogeneous, while in the Pigramente and liquid of our times?). I have written Guinean Amadou Diallo—a West African Kevin Rogers, violin the Ballabile there is a clear heterogeneity: that the dominant tone of the piece is living in New York. Otis Harriel, violin if the part for the Primo is notated the “melancholic” because fragments Taija Warbelow, viola traditionally, the part of the Secondo (and fragmentation) surround us. The I can only address Diallo’s tragedy Doug Machiz, cello is performative, gestural, abstract. In contemplation of fragments is eminently indirectly, filtered as it is through Travis Andrews, guitar the Ballabile, the Secondo sits in the melancholic. As such, Petrolio is an homage Uchechi’s poem. My focus was never on audience, in the first row. After a few bars to the master of this arabesque-like the news itself, let alone the hysterical This is a string quartet and guitar the Secondo will stand and go toward the sensibility, Robert Schumann. Here, all the mediatic tam tam that followed it. It piece, commissioned and premiered curve of the piano. There, he will observe fragments (including one Anton Webern was on Uchechi’s own process: that of by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble the Primo perform, and eventually will play quote) are presented with little or no sublimizing Diallo’s killing through stylized, in 2011. Incorporating materials from directly on the stick the few knocks that development, as if they were floating, in a sparse, glasslike poetry. Instead of an a string quartet I composed in 1986 in conclude his part of the piece. rhapsodic way. angry, wordy text, Uchechi choose the my hometown of Sassari, Sardinia, it is restrained form of the Chinese T’ang, a a musical reflection on the historical In the Pigramente, the venue lights choice that allowed her to turn resentment Peralta Hacienda in Oakland’s Fruitvale are dimmed. The Secondo will stand LUCIANO CHESSA: ACT II, SCENE II: “TO into no less poignant lyrical beauty. neighborhood. Learning about the Peralta up and slowly wander in the hall with PASS BEFORE THE LAST,” FROM A HEAVENLY Amadou was originally written for Antonio Hacienda Historical Park was just plain a flashlight, like an explorer (a thief?), ACT d’Augello, but was premiered by Travis fortuitous: when my friend Josh Howes shedding light on details: the ceiling’s 2011 Andrews at the San Francisco Conservatory became the Peralta caretaker, that’s when plaster, cracks in the walls, chandeliers, of Music. I got my first tour of the park. Discovering the audience’s faces, wrists, jewelry, Sanford Smith, baritone that Oakland’s birthplace is in the very and, if the performance takes place in Bethel Community Church Choir—Calvin center of Fruitvale was something of a an actual salon, furniture, ornaments, Lymos, director LUCIANO CHESSA: BLIND DATE, BASED ON revelation. frames, canvases, chairs, et cetera. Saint Columba Gospel Choir—D. Mark A STORY BY VICTOR J. BANIS The unavoidable sound of footsteps will Wilson, director 2016 (PREMIERE) The departure point for this project, for accompany this exploration. Cadenza Orchestra—Maya Barsacq, the music I have written for it, is found in conductor Richard Neveu, video the ruins of the first Peralta adobe house In the course of it, the Secondo will Mobius Trio, video text in the center of the park. discover a piano: curious and cumbersome This is the second scene, second act, Mobius Trio—Mason Fish, electric guitar relic, a wreck from nineteenth-century of my opera-installation A Heavenly Act and voice I could have not conceived a piece about salon culture. The Secondo will walk (about angels inspecting Earth), which Friction Quartet - Matthew Linder, origins without looking at my own. And I around the instrument, first with just was commissioned by SFMOMA in 2011 electric guitar and voice could have not written a piece that would the flashlight, then with a headlamp as and premiered at YBCA’s Lam Research Robert Nance, electric guitar and voice not look, hopeful, at Fruitvale now. Half a speleologist would use, to explore the Theater in a production by Opera Parallèle a meditation on history and half a gentle most intimate parts of it, looking for a conducted by Nicole Paiement. The scene Titled Blind Date, this work is a meditation utopia, Come un’infanzia is a piece on hidden core. The Secondo will have access takes place in an archetypal church during on Victor J. Banis’s work and life. A Oakland’s infancy, on my infancy—on and touch these insides, knock on them, the most inspired moment of the Sunday key figure in the development of queer infancy, period. lift manually any desired damper to make morning service. “To pass before the last” consciousness in the United States, Banis strings resonate with e-bows so as to is a contemporary gospel selection that has been called the godfather of modern disturb the hypnotic quarter-tone flux of sets ’s angelic language to popular gay fiction. My piece centers on a the Primo, but all this very gently, with earthly devoted music. true story. Banis arranged five years ago wonder, as if just discovering a mysterious place. Throughout this exploration, the 16 17 ARTIST PROFILE touring internationally ever since. OFNI has appeared in sold-out concerts at the LUCIANO CHESSA Cleveland Museum of Art and Singapore’s ArtScience Museum (2015), REDCAT in Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, Los Angeles (2013), and the Berliner performance artist, pianist, and musical Festspiele-Maerzmusik Festival (2011). In saw/Vietnamese dan bau soloist. His 2011 Chessa also conducted the project recent record releases include PETROLIO, with the New World Symphony and Lee a monographic CD released in 2015 by Ranaldo as part of New York’s Performa Stradivarius, Italy’s leading classical spectacle to celebrate ten years of Art music label, with performances by Sarah Basel Miami Beach. A double LP dedicated Cahill, Christopher Froh, Living Earth Show, to OFNI was released on the label Sub Rosa Friction Quartet, and Benjamin Kreith, in 2013 to critical acclaim, and sold out in among others. Recent compositions a matter of months. include Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!, a large-scale work on Herman Melville’s book Chessa’s work has appeared more than Moby-Dick written for Living Earth Show, once in Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, which is in the process of becoming a film and Frieze, and has been featured in directed by John Sanborn, and A Heavenly the Italian edition of Marie Claire and in Act, an opera with original video by Kalup Vogue Italia. Chessa has been interviewed Linzy commissioned by the San Francisco twice by the British BBC, and has been Museum of Modern Art. His second opera, the subject of two short documentaries, Cena Oltrenzista nel Castelletto al Lago one produced by RAI World (2014) and the (on the subject of fasting, and lasting other by Vietnamese State TV VTV1 on the three days), has been commissioned by occasion of his first trip to Vietnam (2015). Luciano Chessa photo by Melesio Nuñez the festival Transart and will premiere in Chessa is the author of September 2016. Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult Secondo will inevitably project shadows dell’Arca’s Compianto sul Cristo Morto (University of California Press, 2012), the and lights on his face, on the face of the (Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, 1463). Chessa has received multiple commissions first monograph dedicated to Russolo and Primo, on the audience, and on the piano Instilling musical life to Niccolo’s life-size for performance projects by Performa his Art of Noise. and its exterior details (legs, tail, pedal, terra-cotta sculpture, this scene portrays in New York and SFMOMA. He presented stick, keys) as well as interior (action, the Virgin Mary as both the tragic “Mary at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in a Currently Chessa teaches at the San holes in the construction, soundboard, of the Seven Pains” and as a universal series of events to celebrate the Art Francisco Conservatory of Music, serves strings). The exact itinerary (and thus the mother-goddess, filled with eschatological of Noises Centennial; was featured at on the advisory board of Tacet, a research duration) of the exploration is stipulated hope. Performance Studies International at publication dedicated to experimental by the two pianists prior to every Stanford University; and performed with music published by the Université Paris 1 performance. By harmonizing together, literally as well and Theresa Wong at the Panthéon-Sorbonne, is a member of the as allegorically, the performers trained in Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. steering committee of the San Francisco different styles drive the scene by fusing In 2014 he offered three concerts at Electronic Music Festival, and curates LUCIANO CHESSA: RECITATIVO, ARIA E CORO up to five different vocal and instrumental the Guggenheim Museum in New York concerts for San Francisco’s Italian DELLA VERGINE techniques in a texturally hybrid whole as part of a retrospective dedicated to Cultural Institute. His music is published 1995/2007 that includes a quote from Richard Italian Futurism; his voice reading Filippo by Edizioni Carrara and Rai Trade. Smallwood’s classic song “Center of My Tommaso Marinetti’s 1909 Manifesto of Amy Foote, soprano Joy.” Futurism and poetry to accompany Jen Laurel Duncan-Anderson, gospel soprano Sachs’s videos was experienced by all of Through this personal dialogue between the exhibition’s visitors. Two additional Bethel Community Church Choir— such different cultures as the Italian, videos by Chessa and Sachs were on view Calvin Lymos, director the Sardinian, and the African American, at the Getty Research Institute in Los Saint Columba Gospel Choir - my hope is that the work can show a Angeles for the 2014–15 exhibition World D. Mark Wilson, director composer interested in the epistemology— War I: War of Images, Images of War. rather than the science—of composing. This work is the pivotal scene of my Urlo The present work would have never been Chessa’s Orchestra of Futurist Noise impietrato, begun in 2000 and still in created had I not attended Calvin Lymos’s Intoners (OFNI), which debuted at YBCA’s progress, a staged oratorio based on one Gospel Choir class at the University of Lam Research Theater, was hailed by of Italy’s most striking artworks, Niccolò California, Davis. the New York Times as one of the best events in the arts of 2009 and has been 18 19 $100,000 AND ABOVE $500 AND ABOVE YBCA 2015–16 Individuals Corporations Anonymous Corporations BOARD OF DIRECTORS Google.org Paul Connolly Yahoo! Matching Gifts Program Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan President Foundations Individuals Paul Connolly Doris Duke Charitable Foundation $5,000 AND ABOVE Anonymous The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Jerry Bailey The James Irvine Foundation Glenn and April Bucksbaum Executive Committee Corporations The Wallace Foundation U.S. Bank Dr. Daniel Coming and Dr. Elizabeth Widman Berit Ashla Alana Devich and Malkia Cyril Diana Cohn Government Government Lisa Doran Elna Hall, PhD Institute of Museum and Library Services The Consulate General of The in New Colin Eykamp D.J. Kurtze York Marcia Feitel Individuals Namrata and Ashish Gupta Erik Mayo Anna and Richard E. Gardner Revocable Trust Individuals Shelley Harrison Rekha Patel Leslie and Merle Rabine Edward and Catherine Topham Jan Hobbel Vicki Shipkowitz Sam Wick and Leah Wade Leigh Honeywell Johann Zimmern Organizations Ed and Peggy Kavounas ArtPlace America Liz and Stephen Lapp $2,500 AND ABOVE Lawrence Li and Philip Tran Members David Liff Meklit Hadero $50,000 AND ABOVE Corporations Grace MacFarlane Adobe Matching Gifts Program Jim Newman and Jane Ivory Kevin King Delta Dental Plan of California Sabrina Riddle Corporations Samia Rashed Salesforce.com Raymond Family Foundation Meg Spriggs Individuals Dr. John Patrick Ryan The Abe Farag Family Foundation Marc Vogl Foundations Emily Sawtell and Stephen Evans Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations 2014 Choreographer Mary and John P. Grossman Neal Strickberger and Ute Frey Elna Hall, PhD Emeritus Commissioning Awards In Memory of Christian Zimmern Panta Rhea Foundation Kevin Johnson and Karen Jenkins-Johnson Helen Sause Surdna Foundation Erik Mayo Petra Schumann and Rob Wullenjohn $300 AND ABOVE Mark Slee Government California Arts Council Meg Spriggs Individuals National Endowment for the Arts Srinija Srinivasan Yvette Chalom and Paul Fogel Benjamin Dear

YBCA DONORS Individuals Atomic Elroy Kevin King and Meridee Moore $1,000 AND ABOVE Ed Gilbert Edward Goodstein and Francesca Eastman Margaret Jenkins $20,000 AND ABOVE Foundations Gaia Fund Laura McKee and Icer Addis A WARM THANK YOU TO YERBA BUENA Dr. Michael Pivovaroff and Rebecca Elmes Corporations CENTER FOR THE ARTS CONTRIBUTORS! Individuals Mathieu Reeves Cushman & Wakefield Peter Rigano Wells Fargo Foundation Berit Ashla and Aron Cramer Thank you to our contributors for Gloria and Saul Feldman David and Elisbeth Silberman Randi and Bob Fisher Dr. Hans Jorg Stahlschmidt Foundations enthusiastically supporting YBCA’s The John and Marcia Goldman Philanthropic Fund James Tucker programs. YBCA gratefully acknowledges The Bernard Osher Foundation Lynne M. Winslow The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Chari- James Hormel and Michael Nguyen contributions from our FY16 partners, and table Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foun- Richard Laiderman and Jung-Wha Song contributions and in-kind donations of Bruce McDougal and Daniel Rey Organizations dation San Francisco Art Dealers Association $300 or more received between Verda Alexander and Primo Orpilla Sabrina Riddle Organizations July 1, 2015, and April 15, 2016. Rebecca and Alan Ross *denotes in-kind gift Yerba Buena Community Benefit District Kendra Shimmell and Wyatt Starosta Special thanks to the City of San Francisco Vicki Shipkowitz for its ongoing support. $10,000 AND ABOVE The St. George and Evans Fund of Horizons Foun- dation Corporations Marc and Megara Vogl Adobe Foundation Harvey and Leslie Wagner Foundation Grosvenor Mitchell and Kristen Yawitz

Foundations Organizations Abundance Foundation Association of Performing Arts Presenters The Sato Foundation Zellerbach Family Foundation

20 21 YBCA CONTRIBUTORS YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS IS PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAMMING STAFF GRATEFUL TO THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO FOR ITS ONGOING SUPPORT. Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Chief of Program & Pedagogy Chinaka Hodge, YBCA Programs in 15–16 are made possible Associate Director of Program & Pedagogy in part by: The James Irvine Foundation. MEKLIT HADERO Isabel Yrigoyen, Associate Director of Performing Arts Additional Funding for YBCA Programs 15–16: Claire Shoun, National Endowment for the Arts, Adobe, Gaia Performing Arts Programs Manager Fund, Grosvenor, Abundance Foundation, and Lauren Geiger, Artist Services Assistant Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. THIS WAS MADE HERE: Beth Hitchcock, Performing Arts and programs Intern A DIASPORIC ODYSSEY

YBCA Performances 15–16 are made possible in part by: Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Salesforce.com.

SUPPORT YBCA MAY BECOME A MEMBER Additional Funding for YBCA Performances 19—21 2016 15–16: Zellerbach Family Foundation and YBCA FORUM Surdna Foundation. → FREE GALLERY ADMISSION ALL THE TIME YBCA.ORG → FREE ADMISSION TO OPENING-NIGHT PARTIES YBCA Exhibitions 15–16 are made possible #MEKLIT → TICKET DISCOUNTS FOR ALL in part by: Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan, YBCA PROGRAMS Meridee Moore and Kevin King, and The → DISCOUNTS ON YBCA CATALOGUES Creative Ventures Council. AND MERCHANDISE → SPECIAL PRICING FOR SENIORS, FULL-TIME Engagement and Education Programs in STUDENTS AND TEACHERS, AND WORKING 15-16 are made possible in part by: Institute ARTISTS of Museum and Library Services, The Wallace Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation, Yerba For more information about YBCA Buena Community Benefit District, Walter membership go to ybca.org, text “YBCA” to 41444, & Elise Haas Fund, The Bernard Osher or contact our Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, The Membership team Sato Foundation, and U.S. Bank Foundation. at 415 321 1352

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