Join us for the first of six workshops as part of the Modal Interchange: Conversations on 21st-Century Performance Practices series with Vicki Ray, a Los Angeles based composer and pianist, who will join Wendy Richman in a conversation about concert programming and commissioning new works.
Programming as Composition
Every musician presenting a concert is: a composer! In this talk I’ll explore different ways to think about concert programming and how the works you program constitute a meta-composition. Using musical examples I’ll explore the way connections between worlds - musical and otherwise - can create fresh, interesting juxtapositions that challenge (and hopefully delight!) the performer as well as the listener. Folded into this approach is the opportunity to commission new works that can tie previously unrelated pieces together and expand the repertoire of our instrument.
Bio
Described as “phenomenal and fearless” Vicki Ray is a pianist, improviser and composer. She has commissioned and premiered countless new works by today’s leading composers. Ray is a founding member of Piano Spheres and was, for many years, the head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts where she was named the first recipient of the Hal Blaine Chair in Musical Performance. She has appeared on numerous international festivals and was a regular member of the faculty at the Bang On a Can Summer Festival at MASS MoCA. Ray has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series as soloist and collaborative artist. Her widely varied performing and recording career covers the gamut of new and old music: from Boulez to Reich, Wadada Leo Smith to Beethoven. Notable recordings include the first Canadian disc of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Blue Rider Ensemble, the premiere recordings of Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations) and the Daniel Variations with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the first recording of John Cage’s Europeras 3 and 4. Her recording of Cage’s The Ten Thousand Things on Microfest Records received 2013 Grammy nomination. Vicki can also be seen playing the chromelodeon in the Los Angeles based PARTCH ensemble. Vicki Ray is a Steinway artist.
More about Modal Interchange: Conversations on 21st-Century Performance Practices
The personality of Los Angeles’s new music scene mirrors its city’s culture and geography as a whole: equal parts diversity and decentralization, in a battle for recognition and relevance that crisscrosses 650 freeway miles. This series casts a wide net around the new music community, hosting a diverse group of individuals who might not otherwise share the same artistic and academic spaces in a series of lecture-workshops geared to an audience of performers.
Modal Interchange is a series of six workshops through 2026-27. Each workshop focuses on an element of 21st-century performing, programming, and music-making in the world of contemporary music: histories of experimental music and the avant-garde, commissioning new works, concert programming, listening as an audience member, listening as a performer, score-reading and part-marking, learning and practicing contemporary works, researching and writing program notes, improvisation, and activism.
This series is conceived and hosted by violist Wendy Richman and produced in partnership with the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities. Dr. Richman is Lecturer in Performance Studies, Director of uclaFLUX, and a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
For the full schedule, please visit our website: https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/modal-interchange-conversations-on-21st-century-performance-practices/