Tag Archives: Kristy Edmunds

MAKI NAMEKAWA PERFORMS GLASS

Phil has written sonatas for other instruments before, but this would be his first for the piano. I imagined how much he would pour into it given that the piano is the instrument he has spent a lifetime playing (at home and on countless tours). However, Phil is not an artist to let the potential of a “first” be tethered to what is known. His exuberance came from writing something that would far surpass what he could play, or be able to entirely hear on the instrument itself beyond imagining it as the composer. There would need to be someone who could bring the music to life and bridge the musical space between themselves, the audience and the composer.

Phil composed his Piano Sonota for Maki Namekawa and Maki collaborated on its shape and dimensionality by adding her tremendous capacity and insight as a pianist. — Kristy Edmunds

In spring of 2019, Philip Glass sent Namekawa the score for the sonata, and the following summer the two longtime collaborators premiered the work at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr. The piece made its American debut in November of that year at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

This weekend, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA)—in association with Ars Electronica in Linz—will stream a prerecorded performance by Namekawa of the piece. Also on the program: Mozart Camargo Guarnieri’s Sonatina No. 3 in G-clef (1937), Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1907-1908), and György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata.

See link below for details.

PIANO SONATA BY PHILIP GLASS—PERFORMED BY MAKI NAMEKAWA

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance

Sunday, January 10.

3 pm on the West Coast; 6 pm East Coast.

From top: Philip Glass and Maki Namekawa at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, 2019; Namekawa, photograph by Tom Mesic; Namekawa, photograph by Verena Lafferentz; Namekawa and Glass, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, 2019. Images courtesy and © the photographers, the musicians, and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

JULIAN ROSEFELDT AND CATE BLANCHETT IN LOS ANGELES

On the occasion of JULIAN ROSEFELDT—MANIFESTO—, the West Coast premiere of the work as a 13-channel film installation, Cate Blanchett and CAP UCLA director Kristy Edmunds will join the artist in conversation.

Drawing on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, and Dogme 95—including Yvonne Rainer, Claes Oldenburg, Wyndham Lewis, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Kurt Schwitters, Elaine Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt, and Werner Herzog—Rosefeldt directed Blanchett through her investigation of thirteen different personas, “from a factory worker to a television news anchor to a homeless man, performing various historical artists’ manifestos.

“The work pays homage to the long tradition and literary beauty of public statements made by artists, and serves to provoke reflection upon the role of the artist as an active citizen in society today.”*

JULIAN ROSEFELDT, CATE BLANCHETT, and KRISTY EDMUNDS IN CONVERSATION*

Saturday, October 27, at 3 pm.

Hauser & Wirth

901 East 3rd Street, downtown Los Angeles.

Exhibition catalogue

(In 2017, Manifesto was commercially released as a 95-minute film, and played locally at the Monica Film Center.)

Cate Blanchett in Manifesto (3). Image credit: Julian Rosefeldt.

TAYLOR MAC AND KRISTY EDMUNDS

Over the last few years, a consortium of institutions and patrons from across the United States have come together to ensure the production of Taylor Mac’s ongoing, international sensation A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. In Los Angeles, one of Mac’s most committed—and eloquent—supporters is Kristy Edmunds, the executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA).

On Wednesday, May 24, in celebration of Mac’s Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama—and his upcoming CAP UCLA engagement (four nights in March 2018)—Edmunds welcomes the performance artist to the Theatre at Ace Hotel.

AN EVENING WITH TAYLOR MAC, introduction by Kristy Edmunds and remarks by Taylor Mac at 8 pm. Reception at 9.

THEATRE AT ACE HOTEL, 933 South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles.

cap.ucla.edu/calendar/details/taylor_mac_ch4

Image credit: CAP UCLA.

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