REDCAT to Present Los Angeles Premiere of SONGS OF ASCENSION

As part of REDCAT’s Fall 2008 season, CalArts will present the Los Angeles premiere of Songs of Ascension, a new evening-length work from composer, singer, director/choreographer Meredith Monk and the renowned visual artist Ann Hamilton, for five performances only, October 29 - November 2 at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater.  This multimedia performance, a combination of Monk’s pristine, primal music, vocals, movement and her iconoclastic theatricality, along with Hamilton’s raw, sensuous video imagery, features Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, plus a string quartet led by violinist Todd Reynolds, and a 20-person choir composed of members of the voice program at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.  Songs of Ascension will have its world premiere at Stanford University on October 18, 2008.

"It is an honor to host this wonderful collaboration by Meredith and Ann so soon after its world premiere,” said REDCAT Executive Director Mark Murphy. He continued, ”The intimate REDCAT performance space is an ideal setting for this groundbreaking work by two of the most influential artists of our time."

This is Monk’s second collaboration with Hamilton (both are MacArthur “Genius” Award winners). Songs of Ascension was originally inspired in part by poet Norman Fischer’s translations of the Psalms, and also by an eight-story sculpture and performance space created by Hamilton called Tower, that she designed for Steve Oliver’s ranch in Northern California’s Alexander Valley. A cast concrete structure with a double-helix stairwell, Tower creates an intensely resonant acoustic environment -- and was the location for the site-specific inaugural concert by Monk & Ensemble. With the architecture of a tower as a metaphor, Monk’s new work also draws from ritual spiritual motifs of ascension from throughout the world -- the processionals at Buddhist stupas, Moses’ journey up Mt. Sinai, and the Tawaf around the Ka’Bah in Islam.

Directed by Meredith Monk, Songs of Ascension features lighting design by Elaine Buckholtz, costume design by Yoshio Yabara with additional costumes by Gary Graham, and sound design by Jody Elff. The work was developed during earlier residencies at Dartington College of the Arts, Totnes, England and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

Songs of Ascension will have five performances only -- Wednesday, October 29 – Saturday, November 1 at 8:30pm, and Sunday, November 2 at 3pm – at REDCAT, CalArts downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts in the Walt Disney Hall Complex. Tickets are $30 - $35 (general admission) and $24 - $28 (students). Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office by calling 213.237.2800, or online at www.redcat.org. REDCAT is located 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, 90012, at the corner of W. 2nd and S. Hope Streets.

Songs of Ascension was co-commissioned by the Transatlantic Arts Consortium, a partnership formed by CalArts, Dartington Plus, and Idyllwild Arts; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford University; with additional support provided by the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Songs of Ascension was made possible by the Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project, a program administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and MetLife Foundation.  Additional funding generously provided by Lillian and Jon Lovelace, Judith O. and Robert E. Rubin and Abby Sher.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Called by the New York Times “one of America’s most brilliant and unclassifiable theatrical artists” Meredith Monk is a composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music theater works, films and installations. A pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. During a career spanning more than 40 years, she has been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike as a major creative force in the performing arts. In 1978, Monk formed Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble to expand her musical textures and forms. She has made more than a dozen recordings, most on the ECM New Series label, and her music has been performed by numerous soloists and groups including the chorus of the San Francisco Symphony, Musica Sacra, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Double Edge, Björk, and Bang On A Can All-Stars, among others. In October 1999, Monk performed a Vocal Offering for His Holiness, the Dalai Lama as part of the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles. In July 2000, her music was honored in a three-concert retrospective entitled Voice Travel, as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Monk’s first orchestra piece, Possible Sky (commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas for the New World Symphony), premiered in April 2003 in Miami and was performed by the Hamburg Symphony in 2006. Stringsongs, her first composition for string quartet had its world premiere at the Barbican Center in January 2005. Her most recent CD, impermanence, was released on the ECM New Series label in March 2008.

Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale, multi-media installations. Hamilton’s public sculpture projects include commissions for the San Francisco Public Library (with Ann Chamberlain), the Allegheny Riverfront Park, Pittsburgh and Teardrop Park, Battery Park City, New York (both with Michael Van Valkenburgh and Michael Mercil). In 1993, Hamilton was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and in 1999 was chosen to represent the United States at the 48th Venice Biennale. Among her many honors, Hamilton has also been the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She is currently preparing for a 2009 project installation at the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis and is participating in an upcoming 2009 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

ABOUT REDCAT

As CalArts' (www.calarts.edu) downtown center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in the Los Angeles region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT is a center for experimentation, discovery and charged civic discourse.

Mark Murphy has served as the Executive Director of REDCAT since 2001. Murphy is an influential leader in the national and international field of contemporary performing arts, with 20 years of experience producing, presenting and developing new audiences for interdisciplinary performances. He has served as Chairman of the Choreographer's Fellowship Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, was a founding board member of the National Performance Network, an advisor to the National Dance Project, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Japan Foundation's Performing Arts Program. 

ABOUT TAC

Songs of Ascension is the second commission in America for the newly formed Transatlantic Arts Consortium (TAC), a partnership formed by California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Idyllwild Arts, and Dartington (UK). "For the past three years, CalArts, the Dartington Trust, and Idyllwild Arts, under the umbrella of the Transatlantic Arts Consortium, have been involved in discussions and exchanges designed to bring the education of artists, the commissioning of new work, and the fostering of artistic enterprise in a global cultural and economic order into a mutually supporting relationship with one another,” CalArts President Steven Lavine explained.

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