Musics From Around the World: Southern California Composers in Concert – Christopher Adler

2021-04-07 (Creation date: 2021-04-07)

Christopher Alder

The first event in the World Music Center at UCLA's new virtual series, Musics from Around the World: Southern California Composers in Concert, spotlighting contemporary global music makers throughout the region. The concert, delivered via Zoom, features composer, performer, and improviser Christopher Adler.


Adler presents his work with the khaen, the bamboo free-reed mouth organ of Laos and Northeast Thailand, an instrument he has championed for over twenty-five years. He performs traditional and contemporary solos as well as two duos with violinist Batya MacAdam-Somer, including the world premiere of a new adaptation of a piece originally for Chinese instruments. The performance is followed by a presentation by Adler, providing insights into his writing process and composing for the khaen.


Adler’s compositions encompass cross-culturally hybrid forms drawn from contemporary concert music and traditional musics of Thailand and Laos, the application of mathematics to composition, and the integration of improvisation into structured composition. He is a foremost performer of traditional and new music for the khaen, establishing it as a concert instrument by commissioning, performing, and recording over thirty new works by thirteen composers from around the world. He is a pianist with Nief-Norf and NOISE, an Affiliated Artist with San Diego New Music, a co-founder of the soundON Festival of Modern Music, Director of Composition for the Nief-Norf Summer Festival, and Professor of Music at the University of San Diego. His work may be heard on Tzadik, Innova, Blue Griffin, Liber Pulveris, pfMENTUM, Rattle, Blue Leaf, Nine Winds, Artship Recordings, Vienna Modern Masters, Centaur, Traditional Crossroads, Circumvention, and Accretion Records.


Musics from Around the World: Southern California Composers in Concert is part of the yearlong celebration of the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive's 60th anniversary. Established in 1961, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is a world-renowned research archive dedicated to the study of musical traditions from around the globe. The series is funded by the Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music, administered by the UCLA Music Library to support contemporary music in any genre.

UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive; Yuri Shimoda; Batya MacAdam-Somer; Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music

Music—Thailand; Kaen; Music—Laos

Music Library Collection

Music Library

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