Cross-Hatched | Impresarios, Inc.

ABOUT JOAN LA BARBARA

Joan La Barbara, Joan La Barbara, composer, performer, sound artist and actor, is renowned for developing a unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques (multiphonics, circular singing, ululation and glottal clicks, her “signature sounds”), influencing generations of other composers and singers. Awards and honors include the Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award; Premio Internazionale Demetrio Stratos for experimental music; DAAD-Berlin and Civitella Ranieri artist residencies; the Guggenheim Fellowship; seven National Endowment for the Arts awards (Music Composition, Opera/ Music Theater, Inter-Arts, Recording, Solo Recital, Visual Arts); and the American Music Center’s Letter of Distinction for her significant contributions to contemporary American music. La Barbara’s numerous commissions for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, orchestra, interactive technology, and sound scores for dance, video and film have included a score for voice and electronics for Sesame Street, broadcast worldwide since 1977. She has collaborated with visual artists Matthew Barney, Judy Chicago, Ed Emshwiller, Kenneth Goldsmith, Bruce Nauman, Steina, Woody Vasulka and Lawrence Weiner, and premiered landmark compositions, including Morton Subotnick’s chamber opera Jacob’s Room and multimedia works Hungers and Intimate Immensity; Robert Ashley’s operas Now Eleanor’s Idea, Dust, Celestial Excursions, Improvement and Concrete; Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach; Morton Feldman’s Three Voices; Steve Reich’s Drumming; and John Cage’s Eight Whiskus and Solo for Voice 45 from Song Books. In addition to her internationally acclaimed recordings of Feldman and Cage, her seminal works from the 1970s, Voice Is the Original Instrument, Sound Paintings (Lovely Music) and Shaman-Song (New World), and Mode Records’ recent CD and Blu-Ray surround-sound release The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara, she has recorded for A&M Horizon, Centaur, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Music & Arts, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage, New Albion, Newport Classic, Sony, Virgin, Voyager and Wergo. Film work includes creating the character voice for the “alien newborn” in Alien: Resurrection and vocal work on John Frizzell’s score for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and a portion of her work Erin was included in Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score for Arrival. La Barbara was artistic director of Carnegie Hall’s multiyear series “When Morty Met John”; cofounder of the composers collective Ne(x)tworks; artist faculty at New York University, teaching music composition; performing arts faculty of Mannes/The New School; composer and publisher member of ASCAP; and member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA. She is composing a new opera inspired by Virginia Woolf and Joseph Cornell.

ABOUT YUVAL SHARON

Described by the New York Times as “opera’s disrupter in residence,” director Yuval Sharon has been creating an unconventional body of work that seeks to expand the operatic form. He founded and serves as artistic director of The Industry in Los Angeles, an acclaimed company devoted to new and experimental opera that has brought opera into moving vehicles, operating train stations and various “non-spaces” such as warehouses, parking lots and escalator corridors. The Industry’s performance installations have been presented at the Hammer Museum and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

For Sharon’s current three-year residency at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, his recent projects include War of the Worlds (Fall 2017); Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Gustavo Dudamel (Spring 2018); John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2 (November 2018); and Meredith Monk’s Atlas (June 2019). Other upcoming projects include Lohengrin for the Bayreuth Festival (Summer 2018) and Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway for the Frankfurt Opera (September 2018).

A fitting inclusion for this program at The Broad, he previously directed a landmark production of John Cage’s Song Books at the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall featuring Joan La Barbara. Sharon was honored with a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater. He serves on the board of Opera America and the Artist Council for the Hammer Museum, and as a fellow for the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.