Anne LeBaron: Portrait Concert of a Trailblazing Composer

2024-04-12 (Creation date: 2024-02-07)

Anne LeBaron

Internationally acclaimed composer and harpist Anne LeBaron marks her illustrious tenure at CalArts with a retrospective concert at UCLA’s Lani Hall, on February 7, 2024. The program encapsulates four decades of pioneering music. The evening unfolds around LeBaron’s lifelong passions, weaving a tapestry of music with drama, environmental advocacy, sounds and stories from around the world, the recognition of women’s achievements, and the spirit of artistic collaboration. This much-anticipated event features world premieres alongside rarely performed works.

00:00 - Noh Reflections

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces (piano)
8:58 - Memphis Minnie
12:07 - Marilyn Monroe
13:09 - Abby Wambach

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces (soprano and alto saxophone)
17:00 - Leymah Gbowee
20:32 - Julieta Dobles (her poem that inspired the musical portrait: https://poems.poetrybay.com/2022-2023...)
25:40 - Ruth Bader Ginsberg
29:55 - Mary Helen MacKillop
33:25 - Susan B. Anthony

Two Kazak Songs
36:20 - Black of My Eye
41:06 - I am a Kazakh

45:40 - Elegy (from Pope Joan)
50:55 - Infrathin IV
1:03:10 – Anne LeBaron, remarks
1:05:54 - Inner Voice (2nd half of the piece due to technical issues)
1:14:49 - Green Card (from Croak - The Last Frog)
1:21:20 – Panel discussion (Nina Eidsheim, Anne LeBaron, Nancy Perloff, Matthew Vest, Jan Berry Baker)

Performers: Adrianne Pope, violin; Carson Rick, viola; Mia Barcia-Colombo, cello; Elizabeth Setzer, piano; Jan Berry Baker, soprano and alto saxophone; Timur Bekbosunov, tenor;  Maria Elena Altany, soprano;  Miller Wrenn, contrabass; Anne LeBaron, harp.

"The Heroine with a Thousand Faces," a prodigious new multi-year endeavor aiming to create one thousand musical portraits, launches with five original solos for saxophone, honoring women whose momentous contributions have reshaped our history. The prestigious Davise Fund facilitates these tributes by commissioning musical homages to figures such as Australian Saint Mary Helen Mackillop, Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee, and the indomitable Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Extraordinary saxophonist Jan Berry Baker presents world premieres of five such portraits, composed expressly for her. Three additional solos for piano are performed by Elizabeth Setzer.

Accompanied by a string trio, Maria Elena Altany embodies the mythic Pope Joan in "Elegy.” The string trio opens the concert with the dazzling second movement of "Noh Reflections," rooted in the sounds of Japanese Noh drama.

The concert features the premiere of "Two Kazakh Songs," composed for Timur Bekbosunov as part of the large-scale “Silent Steppe Cantata.” Next, an ensemble improvisation led by LeBaron interprets a graphic score inspired by Marcel Duchamp, "Infrathin IV," illustrating her significant influence on experimental harp performance techniques. Describing her 2-CD recording, “1, 2, 4, 3”, The New York City Jazz Record writes, “The artist inhabits her massive instrument as if it were a continent; she fords its rivers of strings and discovers new worlds in the crevices of tonality… nervous and hoarse and brilliant. LeBaron is a true “stratigrapher” in her layering of material, where new vistas seem to unfold endlessly behind others.”

"Inner Voice," for bass and fixed audio media, conjures voices from the earth's deep recesses. The evening culminates with Bekbosunov returning to the stage in a hilarious rendition of “Green Card” from LeBaron’s opera, “Croak – The Last Frog.” Goliath, a waiter-frog toiling at the Herp Haven Hotel in Vegas, seeks a green card to help him pursue Cassie, his love interest, who eventually becomes the last living frog on earth.

Adrianne Pope, violin; Carson Rick, viola; Mia Barcia-Colombo, cello; Elizabeth Setzer, piano; Jan Berry Baker, soprano and alto saxophone; Timur Bekbosunov, tenor; Maria Elena Altany, soprano; Miller Wrenn, contrabass; Anne LeBaron, harp; Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music

Women composers, Art music

Music Library Collection

Music Library