the Playhouse: Wild Up – L.A. Composer Series at Sierra Madre Playhouse

Celebrated contemporary music ensemble Wild Up presents a range of chamber and solo works by female composers with deep links to Los Angeles in the second of two adventurous programs in its L.A. Composer series at Sierra Madre Playhouse, its new long-term East Los Angeles-based home, on Monday, November 11, 2024, 7:30 pm. The program, which embraces the city's richly diverse sound and multi-cultural landscape, showcases Wild Up's unique fusion of new music, theater, performance art, and pop. It is curated by and features Mona Tian on violin along with Carson Rick on viola, and Mia Barcia-Colombo on cello.

The concert includes …In The Dreams of Another and Apertures, both for violin and viola by Korean-born/LA-raised composer Kay Rhie, a professor at UCLA’s Herb Albert School of Music whose wide-ranging music often explores the issues of belonging and the science of acoustics.

Among other works are Meditation for violin and cello by trailblazing Rome Prize-winner Nina C. Young, an Associate Professor of Composition at USC Thornton School of Music who is known for bridging instrumental and electroacoustic music, and LA-based Pulitzer Prize-winner Ellen Reid’s West Coast Sky Forever, evoking sweeping views of Los Angeles from atop Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park. She composed it for her site-specific installation Ellen Reid SOUNDWALK, a GPS-enabled work of public art that reimagines urban parks as interactive soundscapes. 

Also featured is rotoglyph by interdisciplinary artist Marta Tiesenga, noted for illuminating the parallels between maps and musical scores. A composer, visual artist, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser, Tiesenga holds an MFA in Composition - Experimental Sound Practices and an MFA in Experimental Animation with a Concentration in Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts.

Wild Up presents two works by first-generation Indian American Nina Shekhar, a composer and multimedia artist who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works, including Cajón, an extraordinary percussive piece for solo cello, and Warm In My Veins, which Shekhar says refers to “the blood of our ancestors (that) runs warm in our veins, carrying their culture, wisdom, and fieriness of spirit.” Shekhar previously served as Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 2023-24 Sound Investment Composer.

Capping the concert is a poignant tribute to the late Los Angeles-based composer Sarah Gibson, an important Wild Up collaborator who passed away from cancer in July 2024 at age 38. Tran will perform Gibson’s You Are Still Here, a moving solo violin work inspired by Mona Hatoum’s artwork of the same name – a double mirror created to spark a conversation with oneself about the confirmation of existence and survival.

Tian is a member of the Grammy-nominated chamber ensemble Wild Up and has performed extensively for Broadway musicals. She has toured nationally as concertmaster with the Tony Award-winning best musical "Dear Evan Hansen" and "A Christmas Carol.