These performances are funded in part by grants from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The James Irvine Foun- dation, LA County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, BMI Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Amphion Foundation. Support for the California E.A.R. Unit has been provided by Chora, a proj- ect of the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation under the direction of Artist and Foundation Director Lauren Bon. Chora aims to support the intangibles that precede creativity. UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AT REDCAT April 22–24 Carl Hancock Rux: Poesia Negra: Race, Sex and the Myth of the American Mytopia April 30–May 1 Les Espaces Acoustiques and Beyond: New Music after Grisey May 5 Party for Betty! LOU REED: METAL MACHINE MUSIC May 9 Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra CALIFORNIA E.A.R. UNIT May 16 SONIC BOOM Ring Festival LA: Considering Wagner featuring Villa Aurora Composers-in-Residence May 20–23 APRIL 20, 2010 | 8:30 PM Lionel Popkin: There is An Elephant in This Dance June 2–3 Partch: Even Wild Horses For more information visit www.redcat.org. presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts METAL MACHINE MUSIC (IN FOUR MOVEMENTS) E.A.R. Unit strives to achieve a fl exibility and rapport within contemporary music, and earn an CALIFORNIA E.A.R. UNIT international reputation as one of America’s fi nest contemporary chamber ensembles. The California E.A.R. Unit was founded in 1981. In its twenty-nine year history, the ensemble SONIC BOOM has presented concerts of electroacoustic and live interactive computer music, music theater, dance, and local and world premieres of over 500 chamber works. The E.A.R. Unit seeks to serve TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010 its home base of Los Angeles, refl ecting the region’s unique cultural diversity, and to represent Los Angeles and Southern California as its new music ambassadors to the world. For amplifi ed ensemble The ensemble has earned critical acclaim, garnering awards for its contributions to the fi eld of contemporary American music such as the L.A. Weekly’s Best Classical Ensemble 1999 and 2003, as well receiving the prestigious Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center in Lou Reed (Original guitar version 1975) 1999. Arrangement, instrumentation and score: Ulrich Krieger (2002/06/10) The Unit has performed in many main venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C, Original transcription: Ulrich Krieger/Luca Venitucci (2002) and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. They have toured throughout the world: Brussels, Aspen, Additional transcription: Ulrich Krieger (2006/10) Kiev, Paris, Cologne, Tanglewood, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Am- sterdam, Reykjavik, as well as to other domestic and international hotspots for new music. The ensemble has been featured in documentaries for the BBC and Japanese television, American and National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Danish National Radio, and Eric km Clark*, violin WGBH’s “Art of the States”. Luke Fitzpatrick, violin From 1987 to 2004 the E.A.R. Unit was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then, they have been in residence at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Kristin Haraldsdottir, viola Theater (REDCAT) housed in the Walt Disney Hall Complex. The Unit has worked closely with Jennifer Thomas, viola many composers such as Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman, John Luther Adams, Fred Aniela Perry, cello Frith, Tod Machover, Julia Wolfe, Louis Andriessen, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Michael Gordon, James Barry, cello Charles Wuorinen, Morton Subotnick, and Alison Knowles, among many others. The E.A.R. Unit has recorded for the Nonesuch, New Albion, New World, Tzadik, O.O. Discs, Eric Klerks, bass Bridge, Crystal and Cambria labels. Recent CDs include: GO on the Echograph label, a recording Daren Burns, bass of some of today’s greatest living composers: John Adams, James Sellars, Frederic Rzewski, Julia Casey Butler, saxophones Wolfe, and John Bergamo; SETTINGS, chamber works of Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles com- Philippe Brunet, trumpet poser Mel Powell, and Indigenous Music, chamber works of Stephen “Lucky” Mosko. The group is very proud to announce the release of Morton Feldman’s For Christian Wolff on Bridge Records. Luke Storm, tuba Robert Allaire, accordion Luca Venitucci is an Italian musician, who mainly works in the fi eld of improvised and electronic Amy Knoles*, percussion music. He performs on keyboards and accordion. He has worked with Otomo Yoshide, Mike Vicki Ray*, piano Cooper, Fabrizio Spera, Peter Kowald, Tim Hodgkinson, and many more. Venitucci co-founded the Italian electro-acoustic improv group Ossatura and used to be member of the German zeitkratzer ensemble. *California E.A.R. Unit Krieger has worked with Lou Reed, Lee Ranaldo, Phill Niblock, Thomas Köner, Alan Licht, ABOUT THE WORK Michiko Hirayama, Mario Bertoncini, Witold Szalonek, Miriam Marbe, Seth Josel, Zbigniew Karkowski, Merzbow, zeitkratzer, the Berlin Philharmonic, Ensemble Modern, and many others, in Europe, Metal Machine Music was originally conceived and recorded by Lou Reed in his New York apart- North America, Asia and Australia. ment in 1975. The original recording was made with several retuned guitars, amps, pedals, and He calls his style of playing “acoustic electronics”, using sounds that appear to be electronic, reel-to-reel tape recorders and the manipulation thereof. It generally received a very bad recep- but are produced on acoustic instruments and sometimes electronically treated, blurring the bor- tion from audience and critics alike, and nearly killed Reed’s career. At the same time it is the ders between the fi elds. His main compositional interest over the last decade was also in “instru- historic origin of Industrial and Noise music and it now has a world-wide dedicated following. mental electronics”, creating pieces using sounds produced by extended techniques on tradi- The idea of transcribing Metal Machine Music came out of my hearing an “orchestralness” in tional instruments, which are reminiscent of and infl uenced by electronic music. This led Krieger to the original, along with the rock-music side of it. Both versions have both aspects to them, the transcribe Lou Reed’s (in)famous Metal Machine Music for chamber ensemble. orchestral and the rock, but the emphasis is different in each case—otherwise an ensemble ar- His working groups, beside various projects, are: Metal Machine Trio (with Lou Reed), Text of rangement wouldn’t have made any sense, if it had been exactly like the original. Light (with Lee Ranaldo), and zerfall–gebiete (with Thomas Köner) in the nirvana between experi- To me the idea of a transcription seemed very natural. Beside rock music, the other side of my mental rock, electronica, ambient and contemporary composition. musical upbringing was what is called “new” or “contemporary” music: from very early on, I was His pieces have been performed by the California E.A.R Unit, zeitkratzer, KontraTrio, Soldier listening to composers like Schoenberg, Xenakis, Nono, and Stockhausen (but not pre-20th-cen- String Quartet, Wandelweiser Ensemble, UnitedBerlin, and many others. Krieger received grants tury classical music). The same thing interests me in rock, Industrial, No-Wave, and noise music as from the German DAAD program, the Darmstaedter Summer Courses for New Music, the City of in new music: sound, soundscapes and structure, which is rhythm on a large scale. For me, these Berlin and many others, and was Composer-In-Residence at Villa Aurora (Los Angeles), Villa Ser- are the essentials of music—not harmony, and not melody. pentara (Rome), German Research Centre Venice (Italy), University of East Anglia (England), the Music is coming full circle today: archaic ritual music consists mostly of these two parameters, City of Bologna (Italy) and the Music Centre North Queensland (Australia). He has released over sound and rhythm, often extending over long durations, and so does a lot of contemporary music 50 CDs of his original compositions and improvisations, with his groups and as a collaborator with of any style, even dance music like techno. I found all of this in Metal Machine Music: intricate, many musicians. beautiful, complex and daring sound-colors, as in new music; the rough, sheer force of real rock music; and a ritual, archaic, long-duration intensity. Sonic Boom is a CalArts-based student ensemble/band directed and founded by Ulrich Krieger in Lou Reed brought this together from the rock-guitar side of things; I wanted to emphasize 2007. It defi es stylistic and artistic boundaries and is at the forefront of the changing landscape of the orchestral side of it, and the human touch of classical instruments and a ten-piece ensemble. experimental and avant-garde music in the 21st century. Many young composers and performers Also, I wanted to show how Metal Machine Music is a “missing link” between contemporary classi- grew up listening, performing, and studying new music, rock, and electronica. Sonic Boom contin- cal music and advanced rock music. Another motivation was to make it into a live event to be ex- ues the tradition of creative, pioneering musicians and bands like Pierre Henry, La Monte Young, perienced by an audience collectively, instead of a studio production to be heard alone at home Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, CAN, Sonic Youth, Throbbing Gristle, John Zorn, Rhys Chatham, and others, through headphones—to bring out the social, ritual aspect of it. combining the fi elds and experiences of new and experimental music, rock, electronic music, and The problem with most arrangements of rock music for orchestra or string quartet is that the free improvisation. Sonic Boom puts a special emphasis on recent 21st-century styles like Noise, arrangers don’t have a knowledge of rock music, nor do they actually love it.