February 13, 2015

Southland Ensemble Plays Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning

Automata is pleased to welcome back Southland Ensemble for their third visit as they present selected paragraphs from Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning The score is a masterpiece of contradiction - order and chaos, spontaneity and deliberation, professional and amateur, individual and collective. Composed from 1968-1970, this work instigated the formation of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental ensemble that has greatly influenced many of us. We will be joined by Corey Fogel, percussionist, as well as Eron Rauch, who will present a visual installation influenced by Cardew's work.

The Southland Ensemble, formed in 2013, is a recent addition to the experimental music community and has thus far committed itself to presenting a series of portrait concerts. Each concert is carefully programmed to reflect a specific creative period in a given composers' career so that the audience is offered the opportunity to delve deeper into the work. It is in this way that the Southland Ensembles seeks to bring experimental music to a more diverse audience. Since its formation, the ensemble has presented works by Christian Wolff, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley and James Tenney. The ensemble seeks to broaden its focus to include composers outside of the United States in subsequent seasons. The Southland Ensemble consists of eight core members who possess a vast amount of experience within the experimental tradition, particularly in the interpretation of graphic notation and text scores. The collective is flexible in size and often collaborates with guests as the music requires. Each member of the group is proficient on a least one or more traditional Western instruments though they deviate from this as the scores dictate, sometimes playing stones or spoken word. The Southland Ensemble seeks to collectively share their experiences through the mediums of interactive concerts, workshops and lectures.

Southland Ensemble is:

Eric KM Clark & Christine Tavolacci, directors Casey Anderson,Matt Barbier, Orin Hildestad, James Klopfleisch, Jonathan Stehney and Cassia Streb