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Anne LeBaron

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Anne LeBaron
Born
Alice Anne LeBaron

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
Websiteannelebaron.com

Alice Anne LeBaron (b. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, May 30, 1953) is a United States composer and harpist.

Biography

Anne LeBaron holds a B.A. in music from the University of Alabama (1974), an M.A. in music from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1978), and a doctorate in music from Columbia University (1989), where she studied with Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. As a Fulbright Scholar in 1980–81, she studied with Mauricio Kagel and György Ligeti (Edwards 2001). LeBaron has also studied Korean traditional music at The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts in Seoul (1983) ([LeBaron] n.d.). Although trained in piano from childhood, she took up the harp in college; in 1974 and 1976, she studied privately with Alice Chalifoux at the Salzedo Harp Colony.

LeBaron served as composer-in-residence in Washington, DC, sponsored by Meet the Composer from 1993 until 1996 (Edwards 2001). She was Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2000. Beginning in 2001,[citation needed] she was appointed Professor of Music at the California Institute of the Arts, where she has held the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition since 2013. Her awards include an ASCAP Foundation Grant and a BMI Student Composer Award (1979), the GEDOK International Prize in Mannheim (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1991–1992), the Alpert Award in the Arts (1996–1997), a Cultural Exchange International Grant in 2009 from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for The Silent Steppe Cantata (2011), and the Toulmin Grant from Opera America (2014).

Composition

LeBaron's composition in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms embraces a wide range of media and styles. Frequently combining tonal and atonal techniques, she has utilized elements of blues, jazz, pop, rock, and folk music in such scores as the opera The E & O Line (1993), American Icons (1996) for orchestra, and Traces of Mississippi (2000) for chorus, orchestra, poet narrators, and rap artists. She has also used American literary sources with Devil in the Belfry (1993) for violin and piano, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, and the Gertrude Stein setting Is Money Money (2000) for soprano and chamber ensemble. Among her multi-cultural compositions are Lamentation/Invocation (1984) for baritone and three instruments, using Korean-derived gestures and long sustained tones for the voice; Noh Reflections (1985) for string trio, which draws upon the music of Japanese Noh theater; Breathtails (2012) for baritone, string quartet, and Japanese shakuhachi; and her large-scale celebration of Kazakhstan, The Silent Steppe Cantata for tenor, women's chorus, and an orchestra of traditional Kazakh instruments.

Writing about LeBaron's 1989 Telluris Theoria Sacra (for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano), musicologist Susan McClary notes that the work "...points to LeBaron's more pervasive interest in music's ability to mold temporality, immersing the listener in a sound world in which time bends, stands still, dances, or conforms to the mechanical measure of the clock" (Lochhead 2007).

Theater has played an important role in LeBaron's music, with such scores as Concerto for Active Frogs (1974) for voices, three instruments, and tape, and the harp solos I Am an American ... My Government Will Reward You (1988) and Hsing (2002). She has also composed a series of monodramas for female voice and chamber musicians: Pope Joan (2000), Transfiguration (2003), Sucktion (2008), and Some Things Should Not Move (2013). LeBaron's operas The E & O Line, Croak (The Last Frog) (1996), and Wet (2005) were all collaborative works that led her to develop the genre she terms "hyperopera": "an opera resulting from intensive collaboration across all the disciplines essential for producing opera in the 21st century – in a word, a 'meta-collaborative' undertaking" (LeBaron 2012).

With her hyperopera Crescent City (2012, libretto by Douglas Kearney), LeBaron went a step beyond the nineteenth-century concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the united/total/universal artwork that synthesized architecture, scenic painting, singing, instrumental music, poetry, drama, and dance), championed by Richard Wagner. A more lateral, inclusive, and intensive collaboration of artists occurs with hyperopera, breaking down the usual hierarchical structures of traditional opera, which define and limit the roles of individuals on creative and production teams. The genre of hyperopera involves the collaborations of a diverse group of artists that can portray a variety of meanings or realities (Swed 2012). In the postmodern tradition of redefining opera, also seen in the work of Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, LeBaron replaced the Wagnerian orchestra with smaller and more specialized forces of instruments and electronic sound for Crescent City, with musicians who move readily among stylistic genres, just as the vocalists do. The opera's theatrical action is refracted through a prism of video work, lighting effects, and performance freedoms and simultaneities. For its world premiere production in Los Angeles in 2012, Crescent City also engaged six visual artists to participate in the collaborative process by designing and building set pieces as various locales in the opera.

Improvisation

As an improviser LeBaron employs a wide array of extended techniques for the harp, including preparing the harp (similar to John Cage's prepared piano) and bowing the strings, as well as a variety of electronic enhancements. Her development of a new performance vocabulary for the instrument began in the early 1970s, when she played in the Alabama improvising ensemble Trans Museq along with Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith. Her career as an improviser has included performance collaborations with such creative composer/musicians as Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Evan Parker, George Lewis, Derek Bailey, Leroy Jenkins, Lionel Hampton, and Shelley Hirsch. LeBaron's double-CD 1, 2, 4, 3 (Innova 236, 2010) features collaborations with thirteen different musicians in solo, duo, quartet, and trio configurations.

Major Works

Chamber: Instrumental

  • Concerto for Active Frogs (1974) for three instruments, chorus, bass/baritone soloist, electronic tape
  • Three Motion Atmospheres (1974) for brass quintet
  • Extensions (1976) for twelve percussionists, piano, harp
  • Memnon (1976) for harp sextet
  • Metamorphosis (1977) for piccolo/flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trombone, harp, percussion
  • Rite of the Black Sun (1980) for percussion quartet
  • After a Dammit to Hell (1982) for bassoon solo
  • Noh Reflections (1985) for string trio
  • Telluris Theoria Sacra (1989) for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, percussion
  • Waltz for Quintet (1989) for flute, violin, viola, cello, piano
  • Southern Ephemera (1993) for flute, cello, harmonic canon, surrogate kithara
  • Devil in the Belfry (1993) for violin, piano
  • Sukey (1994) for string quartet
  • Solar Music (1994) for flute, harp
  • Sukey and the Mermaid (1998) for string quartet, children's choir, narrator
  • Hsing (2002) for harp solo
  • Los Murmullos (2006) for piano
  • Four (2009) for violin solo
  • Fore (2009) for violin solo
  • Enigma of Papilio (2010) for piano
  • Creación de las aves (2011) for piano
  • Blitz (2014) for piano
  • Julie's Garden of Unearthly Delights (2014) for two bassoons, electronic file

Chamber: Vocal

  • In the Desert (1973) for soprano, flute, marimba, temple blocks
  • The Sea and the Honeycomb (1979) for soprano, piccolo/flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, piano, two percussionists
  • Lamentation/Invocation (1984) for baritone, clarinet, cello, harp
  • Dish (1990) for soprano, electric violin, percussion, electric bass, piano
  • Is Money Money (2000) for soprano, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello; set of six call bells
  • Transfiguration (2003) for soprano, flute, harp, percussion
  • Some Thoughts (2004) for soprano, flute, harp, or soprano, piano
  • Breathtails (2012) for baritone, shakuhachi, string quartet

Chamber: Electronic

  • Quadratura Circuli (1978) for electronic tape
  • Planxty Bowerbird (1982) for harp and electronics
  • I Am an American ... My Government Will Reward You (1988) for harp and electronics and live electronics
  • Blue Harp Study No. 1 (1992) for electronic tape
  • Blue Harp Study No. 2 (1992) for electronic tape
  • Sachamama (1995) for flute and electronics
  • Sauger (2001) for trombone and electronics
  • Inner Voice (2003) for contrabass and electronics
  • The Left Side of Time (2004) for trombone and interactive electronics
  • Way of Light (2006) for trumpet, video, audio
  • Way of Light (2008) for flute, video, audio

Orchestral

  • Strange Attractors (1987)
  • Southern Ephemera for Orchestra (1994)
  • Double Concerto (1995) for two harps (one player) and chamber orchestra
  • Mambo (1995) for two orchestras and brass quintet
  • Lasting Impressions (1995) for narrator and/or actors and orchestra
  • American Icons (1996)
  • Traces of Mississippi (2000) for mixed chorus, children's chorus, gospel soloist with pianist, two poet/narrators, two rappers, and orchestra
  • Fleeting Shades (2003) for klezmer band and orchestra

Choral

  • Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines (1977) for chamber chorus: SATB; SAT soli; two percussionists
  • Story of My Angel (1993) for SSAA, soprano solo, piano with live electronics
  • Nightmare (1999) for TTBB, tenor solo, piano
  • Waterfall at Lu-shan (2010) for SATB
  • The Silent Steppe Cantata (2011) for tenor soloist, women's chorus, narrator, two flutes, two accordions, two guitars, three mandolins, percussion, string quartet
  • Floodsongs (2012) for SATB

Dance

  • Bodice Ripper (1999) for clarinet/bass clarinet, electric harp, electronic tape

Opera

  • The E & O Line (1993) for four principals, three-part female chorus, twelve-part mixed chorus, eight instruments, tape
  • Blue Calls Set You Free (1994) for one principal, three-part female chorus, piano, tape, optional alto or tenor saxophone
  • Croak (The Last Frog) (1996) for six principals, five-part mixed chorus, ten-piece chamber ensemble
  • Pope Joan (2000) for soprano, piccolo/flute/alto flute, oboe/English horn, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, percussion
  • Wet (2005) for ten singers, twelve-piece orchestra
  • Phantasmagoriettas from Crescent City (2007) for three singers, six-piece ensemble
  • Sucktion (2008) for mezzo-soprano, percussion, laptop
  • Crescent City (2012) for eight singers, chamber orchestra
  • Some Things Should Not Move (2013) for soprano, flute, harp, bass

Bibliography

  • LeBaron, Anne. "Composing Breathtails." In Current Musicology, 2014.
  • – "Crescent City: A Hyperopera." In International Alliance for Women in Music Journal, 2013.
  • – "Down the Rabbit-Hole of Innovation." In UCLA Center for the Study of Women Special Issue: Writing About Music, 2010.
  • – "The American Composer's Place in the New Grove II." In www.newmusicbox.org, 2002.
  • – "Reflections of Surrealism in Postmodern Musics." In Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, Lochhead, Judy and Auner, Joseph, eds. Rouledge, 2002.

Discography

  • Crescent City (2014). Maria Elena Altany, Lillian Sengpiehl, Ji Young Yang, sopranos; Gwendolyn Brown, contralto; Timur Bekbosunov, Ashley Faatoalia, Jonathan Mack, tenors; Cedric Barry, bass-baritone; Marc Lowenstein, conductor. Innova Recordings 878.
  • Floodsongs. Included on Floodsongs (2014). Solaris Vocal Ensemble; Giselle Wyers, conductor; Phil Curtis, electronic sound. Albany Records TROY1468.
  • 1, 2, 4, 3 (2010). Innova Recordings 236.
  • Pope Joan, Transfiguration (2007). Kristin Norderval, soprano; Mark Menzies, conductor; Lucy Shelton, soprano; Rand Steiger, conductor. New World Records 80663-2.
  • Is Money Money. Included on To Have and to Hold (2007). Dora Ohrenstein, soprano; Sequitur; Paul Hostetter, conductor. Koch International Classics 7593.
  • Los Murmullos. Included on Rumor de Páramo (2006). Ana Cervantes, piano. Quindecim Recordings 164.
  • Sacred Theory of the Earth. (2000) Atlanta Chamber Players, David Rosenboom, conductor; Paula Peace, piano; Christopher Pulgram, violin; Amy Porter, flute; Anne LeBaron, harp. New World/Composers Recordings NWCR 865.
  • Southern Ephemera. Included on Dance of the Seven Veils (1996). New Band. Music & Arts 4931.
  • The Musical Railism of Anne LeBaron (1995). New Music Consort, Theater Chamber Players of Kennedy Center; Anne LeBaron, Leon Fleisher, Claire Heldrich, conductors. Mode Records 42.
  • Dish. Included on Urban Diva (1993). Dora Ohrenstein, soprano. New World Records|New World/Composers Recordings NWCR 654.
  • Phantom Orchestra (1992). The Anne LeBaron Quintet (Frank London, trumpet; Marcus Rojas, tuba; Davey Williams, electric guitar; Gregg Bendian, drums, vibraphone, percussion; Anne LeBaron, harp with electronics): "Bouquet of a Phantom Orchestra," "Human Vapor," "Superstrings and Curved Space," "Bottom Wash," "Top Hat on a Locomotive," "Loaded Shark." Ear Rational ECD 1035.
  • Rana, Ritual & Revelations (1992). New Music Consort, Linda Bouchard, Claire Heldrich, Anne LeBaron, conductors; Theater Chamber Players of Kennedy Center, Anne LeBaron, conductor. Mode Records 30.

References

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