Time to order your tickets for the 2015 LA International New Music Festival at REDCAT Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall!

I am happy to announce the complete programs for all five concerts between July 7 and July 15. All concerts begin at 8:30 PM with a pre-concert talk at 8 PM.  My ensemble, Southwest Chamber Music, will be joined by our old friends from Mexico, the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, new friends here in Los Angeles, the Eclipse String Quartet, and vocal soloists Ayana Haviv, Laura Mercado-Wright, Elissa Johnston, Jon Lee Keenan and Abdiel Gonzalez. Have a good look at the concerts, and you’ll find the ticket information easily!

Tuesday, July 7 – Tambuco’s Latin America

• Gerardo Gandini Escuchando Pierrot Chez Mme. Ocampo (Argentina)
• Leopoldo Novoa ¿Sábe Cóme é? (Colombia)
• Jorge Camiruaga Cuarteto en Chico (Uruguay)
• Alejandro Cardona Las siete vidas del Gato Mandingo (Costa Rica)
• Hermeto Pascoal Musica para Caçerolas (Brazil)
• Hebert Vázquez Livre pour 4 marimbas (México)

Wednesday, July 8 – México’s Gabriela Ortiz

• Aroma Foliado
• Baalkah
• Altar de Muertos

Thursday, July 9 – A New Era: Cuba, Vietnam, México & Japan

• Roberto Vizcaino Rumbla Clave (Cuba)
• Vu Nhat Tan Young Rice (Vietnam)
• Javier Alvarez Metal de Corazones (México)
• Toshio Hosokawa The Raven (Japan)

Tuesday, July 14 – Tambuco & Japan

• Masamichi Kinoshita Les enfant de la mer qui ont perdu memoire de l’eau II
• Toshiya Watanabe A Sign
• Takumi Ikeda La Caverna (without allegory)
• Toru Takemitsu Rain Tree
• Tomoko Momiyama Moons of Hidden Shadows

Wednesday, July 15 – From 100 to 103: The Last Works of Elliott Carter

• Tintinnabulation for 6 Percussionists (Edgar Allan Poe)
• A Sunbeam’s Architecture (E.E. Cummings)
• The American Sublime (Wallace Stevens)
• What Are Years (Marianne Moore)
• On Conversing With Paradise (Ezra Pound)

Concerts are at 8:30 PM with pre-concert talks at 8 PM. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office, by phone at 213.237.2800 or online at redcat.org. For more information and detailed program information, visit http://www.swmusic.org

These concerts are a good marker not only for July of 2015 but for future festivals as Ricardo and I move forward in the coming years. While we were together for a long planning visit in Mexico this April, we knew that the subject matter that inspires us goes beyond vast. We will need many concerts over the coming years! The geography of Central and South America can’t be covered in a single evening, so important decisions have to be made just to get started. And as we look over the ocean to Asia, with its very different and captivating textures and cultures, we find an entire universe of new music.

And Los Angeles is a great host city for these musical dreams. Over a decade ago, Ricardo told me he thought our work here with Southwest could be a tremendous window for Central and South American composers. And in the interim we have both developed parallel and important relationships in Asia. It’s time for us to bring these worlds together, as our hugely successful concerts and CD projects of the music of Carlos Chavez and William Kraft created a solid baseline for our new explorations. While we were auditioning scores and performances in Coyoacan this April, each piece I heard had an exciting energy that I am happy to share with everyone here in Los Angeles and througout the United States.

And looking towards Asia with Ricardo and Tambuco for this 2015 festival meant focusing on their extraordinary involvement with Japan….

…and our extraordinary involvement with Vietnam.

What I like about getting a lot out of a little with our festival (no, we aren’t a multimillion dollar organization living at the corner of Pampered and Easy Streets) is that, unlike having lots of concerts to program during a season, when you reduce things to five evenings you don’t waste even one piece. You do leave cherished works on the cutting room floor (where I always look for ideas for the next festival….) because long omnibus programs are for me unprofessional, so decisions need to be made. Programming is a lot like French cooking. I mean, truly, what don’t the French reduce? And always to amazing results!

I’ll be blogging about each concert as time moves forward, and yes, the programs are full of U.S. and West Coast premieres. We hope you agree that this LA International New Music Festival addresses the complacency of where our music comes from on so many concerts, all over the world. Ricardo and I hope to encourage everyone to rethink their musical priorities. Why not turn to old adversaries in Vietnam and Cuba for inspiration? Costa Rica and Mexico for energy? Discover Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil for our new music, move Japan beyond Takemitsu? Celebrate Carter’s awesome late works? Why not? Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms will survive just fine!

Ricardo and I are excited to share all this music with you, and we’ll look foward to seeing you at REDCAT Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall this July!

And just for a reminder, here’s the ticket information you need to make your plans!

Concerts are at 8:30 PM with pre-concert talks at 8 PM. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office, by phone at 213.237.2800 or online at redcat.org. For more information and detailed program information, visit http://www.swmusic.org

Best, best, best,

Jeff