Portraits in Sound Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s (LCCE) opens its 20th anniversary season with Portraits in Sound, a program exploring the interplay of music and visual arts, featuring Kurt Rohde’s new work, Artifacts, with projected images by painter Frances McCormack and text by Sue Moon. 

In Left Coast’s 2012-2013 opening concert, Portraits in Sound, music and images intersect. In celebration of LCCE’s twenty-year anniversary, founding member and former artistic director Kurt Rohde created a new piece, Artifacts, that explores the passage of time, incorporating projected images by painter Frances McCormack, text by writer Sue Moon, and narrated by Michel Taddei. "The work plays with the idea of time, the reconstruction of memories, the discovery of objects from the past, and the way we change the meaning of these objects as time goes by,” explains Rohde. “My intention is to synthesize the music, images and text into a work that combines subtle dramatic and theatrical elements with a rich and engrossing musical narrative.”

The interplay of music and sound is further explored in Six Faces, a contemporary piece by Carl Schimmel. Inspired by six cubist portraits from the early 20th century, Schimmel’s string quartet was written for LCCE and will be presented with projected images. “This piece grew out of my fascination with portraiture,” Schimmel explains, "...it often attempts to provide a glimpse into the inner life of the character––and different viewers may come to different conclusions about the subject's personality.”  Continuing Left Coast’s tradition of juxtaposing new works with classics, Debussy’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair and Ondine, both depicting contrasting characters, will be performed along with Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. 

Completing the concert is an exciting collaboration with chamber music groups from across the United States. Left Coast will present works by three western division finalists from the National Rapido! Composition Contest. At the October 1 concert in San Francisco, judges will choose a winner to send to the last round of the competition in Atlanta, Georgia. 

These performances are made possible with grants from San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music and the Heller Foundation. 
Kurt Rohde's new work, Artifacts, was commissioned with support from the Commissioning Music/USA Grant from New Music USA. 

About the Rapido Competition
Rapido!® A 14-Day Composition Contest was founded by the Atlanta Chamber Players & The Antinori Foundation in 2009 to promote new chamber music compositions. The Rapido Contest challenges composers of all ages to submit an original chamber work of 4-6 minutes composed in just 14 days: musical form and instrumentation are specified. 15 Semi-Finalist works compete at regional concerts, followed by a National Finals Concert with 5 Finalists competing. Leading the Finals Judging team will be Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Music Director. First prize includes a $7500 Commission - to expand the winning work for premiere performance by partner ensembles in five US cities the following season and - capping the Rapido contest! - to compose a work for symphony orchestra to be premiered by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra! Left Coast was invited to join the consortium for the 2012 round. 

About the Contemporary Compositions
Carl Schimmel is a composer with wide ranging interests that include mathematics, visual arts and unusual words, as evidenced by the interesting connections he makes in his works. Winner of Columbia University’s Joseph Bearns Prize and the 2010 Lee Ettelson Award, Carl Schimmel has received honors and awards from many organizations, including the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Copland House, and ASCAP. A graduate of Duke University, Yale University and Case Western Reserve, he is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Illinois State University in Normal, IL, where he resides with his wife and two children. 

Kurt Rohde, violist and composer, is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is the winner of the 2012 Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize. He has received commission awards from Meet the Composer ­Commissioning Music/USA, the NEA, and the Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations. Mr. Rohde recently completed new works for eighth blackbird, the Scharoun Ensemble, pianist Genevieve Lee, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. A Professor of Music Composition at UC Davis, he will be a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for 2012-13.