Los Angeles’ new-music scene, like the city itself, is an easy place to feel lost. Here, you have to actively seek out the hidden, tucked-away treasures.
One such gem is the Hear Now Music Festival, now in its 14th season. On Sunday, April 13, the second of this year’s Hear Now concerts took place, revealing the kind of artistic community for which Angelenos could spend years searching.
The venue was 2220 Arts + Archives, a volunteer-run cultural center just a stone’s throw from downtown. The building was originally a clothing factory, though the exposed brick walls and wood-frame ceiling feel more like a sacred space, a place for community to gather and grow. And gather we did for this sold-out concert featuring mostly younger composers with ties to the area’s university music programs.
After a brief getting-to-know-the-composers talk, warm greetings, embraces, and smiles abounded — the gentle but enthusiastic bubbling murmur of a crowd looking forward to what proved to be an enjoyable evening.
The program of nine new works opened with Tommy Dougherty’s Extraordinary Instruments, an emphatic and dramatic piece for four violinists and their voices. The musicians quickly set the pace for the evening, drawing the audience in. Gibson Mahnke’s Through this ocean glass answered this intensity with gentle nostalgia, evoking weathered memories of the seashore.
Solve, a kaleidoscopic piano piece by Isaac Schankler, ebbed and flowed with repeated song fragments that gave way to a chorale, stately in its reserved sorrow. The final chord was left suspended in air, feeling (ironically, given the title) unresolved and prompting a moment of quiet reflection that delayed the warm applause for pianist Richard An.
If Solve was a kaleidoscope, then Haosi Howard Chen’s Tangent was a prism, beautifully blending a delicate pointillistic approach with sensitive lyricism. The concert’s first half closed with a clear crowd favorite, Shahab Paranj’s Diar, a string-quartet interpretation of five distinct dance styles from the composer’s native Iran. The piece got heads bobbing and toes tapping — a function of Paranj’s deftly direct writing as much as the Lyris Quartet’s pitch-perfect delivery.
The four pieces that followed intermission seemed to take on a collective elemental narrative. Mason Moy’s Amateur Geology for string trio was an earthy study in sophisticated simplicity and quiet power, calling to mind the scale and beautiful desolation of Southern California’s deserts. In Kevin Hartnett’s string quartet Immiscible Figures, earth was answered by wind. The piece’s contrasting textures and themes whirled playfully round one another, creating a delightful musical turbulence. Despite being titled “immiscible” (a word describing substances that refuse to blend, like oil and water), Hartnett’s quartet is cohesive and unified throughout.
Daniel Cui’s Pining is a flowing, contemplative octet for mixed instruments that has the cool fluidity of a river swelling at its banks. And the final work of the evening — Stephen de Filippo’s a moment like this. . ? — undoubtedly represented elemental fire. Its primal volcanic energy brought the concert to a rousing close.
The performances were, without exception, phenomenal. A collection of Los Angeles’ most sought-after musicians gave these nine works the same respect and energy they’d give the music of Beethoven or John Williams. But the evening’s beauty resided in the community that brought this singular event to life, in the love with which the music was written, performed, and received. New chamber works are alive and well in Los Angeles and have a thriving home at the Hear Now Music Festival.
