wild Up / of Ascension Celebrates the Legendary Album by Jazz Great John Coltrane

LA-based music collective, wild Up, returns to the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts with of Ascension, the first Jazz Club performances for the 2018/19 season on November 8 & 10, 2018. of Ascension, co-commissioned by The Soraya, is a musical journey inspired by John Coltrane's legendary 1966 album, Ascension.

Curated by composer Ted Hearne and wild Up's conductor Christopher Rountree, wild Up, of Ascension promises to be an evening of avant-garde jazz with pieces commissioned in response to each track of Coltrane's masterwork, one of the most pivotal jazz albums of all time. Wild up, of Ascension will include:

• Ted Hearne: One Like
• Guillaume Machaut: Kyrie from Masse de Notre Dame
• Brian Ferneyhough: Time Motion Study 1
• George Lewis: Oraculum (U.S. Premiere)
• Oliver Messiaen: Interstellar Call from Des Canyons aux Etoiles
• Bjork: Constellation
• Julius Eastman: If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?
• Ted Hearne: Illuminating the Maze
• Eric Dolphy: Something Sweet, Something Tender
• Weston Olencki: bent
• Jen Hill: Piece for Internet
• Jean-Féry Rebel: Le Cahos from Les éléments

"For ages, humans have been inspired by the act of rising, by being lifted off the ground and into flight," said wild Up's Chris Rountree. "With an ensemble of wind instruments and a rhythm section: we follow the lines of celestial pop music, ecstatic Sufi spinning, wild free jazz, gripped complexity, and antiphonal polyphony. For wild Up, of Ascension is an architecture filled with vibrant noise - one that connects disparate stylistic artforms inside a self-similar sound."

The Soraya's Jazz Club is a new experience, transforming the mainstage into a New York-style jazz club and putting audiences in the middle of the action onstage. Table-seating with two bars on either side of the stage are available for patrons to enjoy a drink and wander through the crowd to mingle with friends as they enjoy jazz's most fearless artists in an intimate experience, combining proximity with high octane performances. Single tickets are $44--$66. The $66 ticket includes reserved, premium seating close to the artist, one complimentary drink, and an invitation to a private after-party with the artists after the performance. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit The Soraya or call 818-677-3000. Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts is located at 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330. Ticket prices subject to change.

"Every time wild Up returns to The Soraya, they bring something completely original to our stage and this time, the entire audience will be on stage with them," said The Soraya's Executive Director, Thor Steingraber. "We are proud to be co-commissioners on this new piece which also marks the first time we can present wild Up in a jazz program. I know Christopher Rountree and Ted Hearne will make us look and appreciate Coltrane's masterpiece, shining a new light on this seminal work. Also, wild Up returns in the spring to perform the music for the World Premiere of Martha Graham's EVE Project."

About John Coltrane and Ascension
John Coltrane's Ascension is a pivotal album that marked a major evolution of Coltrane's approach and helped usher in the era of free jazz. This freeing from conventional jazz composition and the augmentation of his ensemble caused a rift that resulted in the fragmenting of his core quartet five months after the sessions for the album, and the records made during the remainder of Coltrane's tragically short life would further extend the embrace of free improvisation and open-ended structures that were launched with Ascension

About of Ascension (from The Soraya program notes by Craig Byrd)
"When I heard [Ascension] I thought about it as having this pulsing energy," says Christopher Rountree, Director of wild Up. "It has this beautiful architecture but is totally free. I heard it as a young man and thought, 'I want to make something like this."

of Ascension is not an attempt to recreate Coltrane's work, but rather to inspire and elevate an audience as Coltrane described by combining a wide range of musical genres together to create wholly unique and mesmerizing experience. Just as Coltrane did 52 years ago. As Rountree says, "The idea of music that lifts us up so much it sends us into the heavens."

To create of Ascension, Rountree functioned like the most innovative and thoughtful deejay. He mixes styles and genres and samples music you might not think of putting next to each other, but when done right it seems as if they have always belonged together.

"Certainly, classical music is part of it," Rountree reveals, "although I wouldn't say that's the main part of it. Jazz is part of it. Sound art and performance art is part of it. We have ancient spiritual music that is tonal and gorgeous. We're doing old church music. We have free jazz next to new complexity and they sound similar. And if you put them next to each other they have this similar energy, but something really special happens for all of those things. They all change and there is this energy of like lifting off the grounds."

About wild Up
wild Up is an experimental classical ensemble. A flexible band of Los Angeles musicians committed to creating visceral, thought-provoking happenings. The group, led by artistic director and conductor Christopher Rountree, unites around the belief that no music is off limits, and that a concert space should be as moving as the music heard in it: small, powerful and unlike anything else. Our projects are meant to bring people together, defy convention and address the need for heart-wrenching, mind-bending experiences.

About Christopher Rountree (Director, wild Up)
Christopher Rountree founded wild Up in 2010. He first fell in love with music playing bass in a garage band, trombone in a brass band, and watching the Berlin Philharmonic play Brahms and Bartok.

This year, Rountree makes his Chicago Symphony, LA Opera and Atlanta Opera debuts, returns to the Music Academy of the West and twice to the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series, conducts the Interlochen World Youth Orchestra on the New York Philharmonic's 2016 Biennial, joins Jennifer Koh and Shai Wosner with wild Up at the Laguna Beach Music Festival, and conducts Diavolo's new show "L'Espace du Temps: Glass, Adams, and Salonen." As a composer, his recent premieres and commissions include a new piece for The Crossing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a re-orchestration of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Foreign Bodies, a choral work for Bjork's choir Graduale Nobili in Reykjavik, Iceland, and two new pieces for Jennifer Koh: a short theater piece on the New York Philharmonic's Biennial, and a large scale concerto co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Jenny and wild Up.

Last year, Rountree founded an education intensive with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, continued an education partnership at the Colburn School, and taught "Creativity and Consciousness" at Bard College's Longy School. He joined the Production Company Chromatic, conducted Opera Omaha performing John Adams' "A Flowering Tree," debuted on the San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series, and started a three-year stint as guest conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

With his eclectic style and resume, he's been tapped to curate and create events for contemporary art institutions including the Getty Museum, MCA Denver, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and UCLA's Hammer Museum, where a long-running wild Up residency brought the group to national prominence.

Rountree is a seventh-generation Californian descended from the sheriffs of Santa Cruz county. He is a yogi, unpaid psychoanalyst, cutter of vegetables, storyteller, newfound gym-rat, burrito enthusiast, writer, composer, and teacher.

About Ted Hearne
Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist Ted Hearne draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works.

Hearne's Sounds from the Beach, a cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate personhood, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.
Hearne is currently collaborating with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor to create Place, an 80-minute contemplation on the topic of gentrification through music. Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Barbican Centre and Beth Morrison Projects, and scored for 18 instrumentalists and 6 vocalists, Place premiered at BAM in October 2018.
Hearne's oratorio The Source sets text from the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs, along with words by Chelsea Manning (the U.S. Army private who leaked those classified documents to WikiLeaks), and was premiered to rave reviews at the BAM Next Wave Festival in Brooklyn. During the 2016-17 season, the original production of The Source (directed by Daniel Fish) was presented by both the LA Opera and San Francisco Opera.
Hearne's piece Katrina Ballads, another modern-day oratorio with a primary source libretto, was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize in composition and was named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by Time Out Chicago and The Washington Post. A recent collaboration paired him with legendary musician Erykah Badu, for whom he wrote an evening-length work combining new music with arrangements of songs from her 2008 album New Amerykah: Part One.

Law of Mosaics, Hearne's 30-minute piece for string orchestra, has been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His album of the same name, with Andrew Norman and A Far Cry, was named one of The New Yorker's notable albums of 2014 by Alex Ross.
Hearne was awarded the 2014 New Voices Residency from Boosey and Hawkes,and is a member of the composition faculty at the University of Southern California. Ted's many collaborators include poet Jena Osman, director Daniel Fish and filmmaker Bill Morrison, and his works have been conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams and Gustavo Dudamel. Recent and upcoming commissions include orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry, chamber works for Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble dal Niente and Alarm Will Sound, and vocal works for Conspirare, The Crossing and Roomful of Teeth.

Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya)
The 2018-19 Season marks the eighth year the award-winning Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts which has quickly become one of the cultural jewels of the greater Los Angeles region. Under the leadership of Executive Director Thor Steingraber, The Soraya continues to expand its programming and outstanding multidisciplinary performances. The mission of The Soraya is to present a wide variety of performances that not only includes new and original work from the Los Angeles region but also work from around the world that appeal to all of LA's rich and diverse communities.

Located on the campus of California State University, Northridge, The Soraya's season offers a vibrant performance program of nearly 50 classical and popular music, dance, theater, family, and international events that will serve to establish The Soraya as the intellectual and cultural heart of the San Fernando Valley, and further establish itself as one of the top arts companies in Southern California. The award-winning, 1,700-seat theatre was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers and was recently cited by the Los Angeles Times as "a growing hub for live music, dance, drama and other cultural events."


Tickets:
Prices: Starting at $44. Prices subject to change.
By Phone: (818) 677-3000
Online: TheSoraya.org

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