• SASSAS Concludes its 2011
    Series of Summer Concerts with
    sound. at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook:
    Alex Cline, Lady Noise and William Roper
    In Culver City, California
    Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 3:00pm

    Free Concert Features Over 30 Los Angeles Area Musicians

    LOS ANGELES, CA – September 27, 2011 –  The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) concludes its series of summer events with sound. at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook: Alex Cline, Lady Noise and William Roper on Sunday, October 16, 2011. The concert features new compositions by percussionist Alex Cline, experimental collective Lady Noise and brass specialist William Roper. These new SASSAS commissions will be played by more than 30 Los Angeles area musicians arrayed in different locations across the historic topography of the Overlook. The concert begins at 3:00pm at the apex of the Overlook and concludes 90 minutes later in the Safine Rabines-designed pavilion next to the park visitor center. The event is free. Street parking is available along Jefferson Blvd., but come prepared for a steep climb up the Overlook stairs. Parking at the top of the hill is $6.00. Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook is located at 6300 Hetzler Road, Culver City, CA 90232. For more information on the venue please call 323-960-5723 or visit http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22790. For more information on SASSAS and this event please visit http://www.sassas.org/sound/2011/october.shtml.

    Lady Noise (Photo courtesy of SASSAS)

    The Baldwin Park Scenic Overlook is unique in the greater Los Angeles area and California State Park system. A historically complex site, the Overlook offers 360 degree views of the Los Angeles Basin as it resides at the juncture of industry and parkland / preserve. Adjacent to the location of the 1963 Baldwin Hills Dam break and just north of an active oil field, the park was the site of a decade long development battle which was successful in fending off a 230-home development, but failed to stop the flat topping of the hill. Parts of the park have been regraded and “in certain ways the land still looks as though it’s recovering from the earlier violence.” (Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times).

    SASSAS invited each composer to make a field recording at the Overlook and respond to it with a new work focusing on percussion (Cline), electronics (Lady Noise) and lip reeds (Roper). The field recordings will be available for public download on the SASSAS website at www.sassas.org beginning October 1st. These commissions build on a tradition initiated in 2010 when SASSAS invited 3 composers to create new works commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the City of West Hollywood.

    The concert begins at 3:00pm at the top of the Overlook with William Roper’s Fanfares and Arhoolies for lip reed instruments and percussion. Fanfares and Arhoolies uses the noisy, ostentatious form of the fanfare as a frame for Arhoolies or plantation field hollers, songs that were outlets for southern laborers, often slaves, to express themselves while working. Playing instruments as diverse as conch shells, bovine horns, Wagner tuba and French horns are Kevin Brown, Ray Burkhart, Clifford Childers, Dan Clucas, Steve Durnin, James Ford, Loren Marsteller, Joseph Mitchell, and Michael Vlatkovich.

    Lady Noise describe their yet to be titled work as “Washes of white noise, whistling, and breath. The drone of chatter through wind…Collated histories of grasses, planes, pumping jacks, and dry lips mingle under a blanket of smog. A melancholic psychic overload of the hot air indeterminate.” Located in the garden amphitheater, their ensemble includes the members of Lady Noise (Kelly Coats, flute; Kathleen Kim, violin; Gabie Strong, electric bass; and Sandy Yang, electric guitar) in addition to Jesse Appelhans, Aisling Cormack, James Hamblin, Julia Holter, Janet Kim, Stefan Scott Nelson, Ron Russell and Jonathan Silberman.

    Alex Cline (Photo courtesy of SASSAS)

    The four parts of Alex Cline’s Overlook , “Origins,” “Growth,” “Conflict,” and “Balance,” are titled based on the subject headings in the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook visitor center educational materials. According to Cline, “Overlook takes inspiration from both sounds and other sensory elements of the site as well as extra-musical elements that pertain to the site’s history and current status, including material relating to and evoking the Tongve indigenous peoples of the area and to post-industrial development around the region.’’ Concluding the concert in the Overlook pavilion, Cline will be joined by Christopher Allis, Trevor Anderies, Erin Barnes, Joseph Berardi, Germaine Franco, Dave Shaffer and Rich West.

    Artist Bios:

    Percussionist-composer Alex Cline has been a mainstay on the jazz and new music scenes of Los Angeles for over thirty-five years. Combining colorful and sensitive percussion sounds with a drumming foundation based in the jazz tradition, Cline is recognized for his contributions to the music of such artists as Vinny Golia, Julius Hemphill, Bobby Bradford, Horace Tapscott, Wadada Leo Smith, Charlie Haden, and countless others. His work as a composer and bandleader has been documented on recordings with his groups, the Alex Cline Ensemble and Alex Cline’s Band of the Moment. Cline was included in Michael Bettine and Trevor Taylor’s book Percussion Profiles among twenty of the “world’s most creative percussionists.”  Most recently Cline has re-envisioned the Chicago Art Ensemble’s 1969 album-length masterpiece “People in Sorrow” for a performance at REDCAT for an all-star ensemble.

    Lady Noise, founded by artist Gabie Strong, is the free-form sound collaboration between Kelly Coats (flute), Kathleen Kim (violin), Gabie Strong (bass) and Sandy Yang (guitar and drums).  Lady Noise performances draw on visual elements to create an atmosphere of sound and landscape. Compositions are explored between modes of structure and improvisation, creating spaces of interplay and entropy. Disrupting conventional spatial formations of live sound performance, the group freely shapes the area reserved for hearing and language to present the listening audience with the aching beauty of amplified harmonic decay.

    Lady Noise has performed at the UC Riverside Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts; The Japanese American National Museum with OMAYUMI, Steve Irvin, and Alan Nakagawa for RED FLAT; at LACE with Raquel Gutiérrez for GUTTED; The Collective Show; Human Resources; and the Liz Glynn designed Verse | Chorus | Verse amphitheater at the 2011 Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair.

    William Roper (Photo courtesy of SASSAS)

    William Roper is a composer, performer and visual artist. He has fulfilled commissions from Dance L.A., the Gloria Newman Dance Theatre and has a long list of collaborations with recognized artists in video, theater, performance and dance. His compositions have been performed by such groups as the California E.A.R. Unit, TaiHei Ensemble, Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble, and the Cal Arts Cello Ensemble. As a performing artist, Roper has appeared in North America, South America and Europe as soloist and in ensembles as diverse as free improvisation groups to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has released ten CDs as a leader or co-leader on Asian Improv Recordings, Nine Winds, ArtShip Recordings, and Tomato Sage Recordings.

    sound. 2011 is produced by Cindy Bernard in collaboration with Scott Benzel, Gregory Lenczycki, Jorge Martin, Renee Petropoulos, Joe Potts, Dawson Weber, Board of Directors; Danny Gromfin, Board of Advisors. sound. is a project of The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) and is supported in part through grants from the Culver City Performing Arts Grant Program with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment, the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Good Works Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. William Roper’s work received special support from a CCI / Durfee Artist Resource for Completion grant.

    SASSAS (The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that serves as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area. In addition to producing sound., SASSAS archives recordings from the series at www.sassas.org/concerts and www.youtube.com/sassasdotorg.

    #                #                #

    For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

    Posted on September 27th, 2011 lynn-hasty No comments

    Comments are closed.