Beyond Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

• 1 Qui tollis 09:48
• 2 Aura (Version for Percussion Quartet) 06:13
• 3 Memory Palace: I. Harriman 03:19
• 4 Memory Palace: II. Power Lines 04:50
• 5 Memory Palace: III. Foxhurst 05:04
• 6 Memory Palace: IV. L.I.E. 04:23
• 7 Memory Palace: V. Claremont 03:58
• 8 Fear-Release 08:47
• 9 I Hold the Lion's Paw: I. — 02:43
• 10 I Hold the Lion's Paw: II. — 06:52
• 11 I Hold the Lion's Paw: III. — 05:07
• 12 I Hold the Lion's Paw: IV. — 04:16
• 13 I Hold the Lion's Paw: V. — 05:12
• 14 I Hold the Lion's Paw: VI. — 01:51
• 15 I Hold the Lion's Paw: VII. — 07:00
• 16 I Hold the Lion's Paw: VIII. — 02:19
• 17 I Hold the Lion's Paw: IX. — 04:11
• Total Runtime 01:25:53

Info for Beyond

There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it „home“. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer s city of origin.

Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship.

For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community.

Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.

Bjarnasson s Qui Tollis spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With Fear - Release, Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir s Aura is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility. The expanse of McIntosh s I Hold the Lion s Paw is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With Memory Palace, Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.

„mesmerizing,“ with „colorful, atmospheric and...supremely melodic…“ (New York Times)

„Thought-provoking and uncompromisingly intelligent“ (Percussive Notes Magazine)

Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Los Angeles Percussion Quartet
The Grammy-nominated Los Angeles Percussion Quartet is an innovative and dynamic chamber music ensemble, whose performances of 20th and 21st century music is acknowledged for “championing composers of thought provoking and uncompromisingly intelligent music”. (Percussive Notes) Newly commissioned works by the quartet have garnered numerous awards from the FROMM Foundation, Theodor Presser Foundation, ASCAP, and BMI. In 2012, the LAPQ’s seminal album, Rūpa-khandha, was released by record label Sono Luminus, breaking new ground as the first 7.1 surround-sound high-fidelity recording of percussion chamber music. The quartet’s work on Rūpa-khandha “presents the entire color-spectrum of global percussion instruments intelligently and with great competency” (Neue Musikzeitung), and subsequently earned multiple nominations for the 55th Grammy® Awards, including the prestigious category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

In the LAPQ’s five-year history, their performances have delighted audiences throughout concert halls, museums, warehouses, and living room salons, with appearances in many of California’s most distinguished concert series, including Monday Evening Concerts, Music and Conversations, People Inside Electronics, Morrison Artists, Fullerton Friends of Music, April in Santa Cruz, and the L.A. Composers Project. The LAPQ has presented workshops and masterclasses to students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts, CSU Sacramento/Bakersfield/East Bay, and Occidental College, among others.

Each member of the LAPQ is an active performer and educator in Southern California, and have trained at leading music conservatories, including the University of California – San Diego, Oberlin Conservatory, the Thornton School of Music (USC), and the Herb Alpert School of Music (CalArts).

Matt Cook
performs in a variety of projects from classical art music to Middle Eastern, Jazz and popular music ensembles. He has recently performed with the Robin Cox Ensemble, California E.A.R. Unit, Sonic Generator, Ensemble Green, PARTCH Ensemble, the Cabaza de Vaca Arcestra, Loud Objects, Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra and the United Musicians Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles. He has worked closely composers Roger Reynolds, Sofia Gubaidulina, Philppe Manoury, Olga Neuwirth, Tristan Perich, David Johnson, and Lewis Nelson. As a drummer and world percussionist, Matt has performed with singers Claudia Vasquez, Coco York, Anthony Starble, Joanna Lemle, indie-pop band Artichoke Heart Souffle, and various musical theater companies in Los Angeles.

Dr. Justin DeHart
is an avid performer and dedicated teacher of a wide variety of musical styles - from classical to pop, and from world to electronic. DeHart’s musical resume includes performances with the San Diego symphony, pipa master Wu Man, and various pop legends, including Cheap Trick. As a California native, he holds a B.M. from CSU Sacramento, a M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, and a D.M.A. from UC San Diego. DeHart was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for percussion studies in India (2001) and his talents have been featured at concerts and festivals throughout the United States, Canada and Asia. He will release his debut solo CD entitled Strange Paths on Innova Recordings on February 26th, 2013, featuring works by Brian Ferneyhough, Iannis Xenakis, Michael Gordon and Stuart Saunders Smith. Dr. DeHart currently teaches percussion and improvisation classes at Chapman University Conservatory of Music.

Nick Terry
has performed throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe, he has worked closely with such musical luminaries as Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Chinary Ung, Steven Schick & red fish blue fish, Fritz Hauser, Eighth Blackbird, the California E.A.R. Unit, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He is an active performer in many of Los Angeles’ most acclaimed music series, and his discography includes releases on Albany, Innova, New World, Capstone, and <541> Records. Terry is the Director of Percussion Studies in the Conservatory of Music at Chapman University’s College of Performing Arts, where he additionally lectures in non-Western musical traditions and improvisation. He is a proud Artist Endorser for Sabian Cymbals.

Booklet for Beyond