New Music Festival in Venice

PLEASE NOTE: This is a post that went up last month; Blogger has misdated it. Trying to fix. Don't go to First Lutheran this weekend unless your aim is to praise the Lord.

The Calder Quartet

THIS Saturday sees two programs of contemporary music, by composers well known and obscure, that tries to take the measure of the classical scene in 21st century Los Angeles. It's called Hear Now and includes solo performers and the Eclipse, Lyris and Calder Quartets.


I spoke to Hugh Levick, both the organizer of the festival and one of the composers -- he's up alongside more famous names, among them Thomas Ades and Esa-Pekka Salonen -- whose work will be performed at the First Lutheran Church of Venice.

First Lutheran

As a young man, Levick earned a writing degree at the University of Iowa and headed to Paris to write a novel, but his interest in jazz saxophone and its furthest edges brought him back to music. He's a guy inspired equally by Kafka, Coltrane and Walter Benjamin.




HERE is my brief piece on his work and influences.