Conrad, McIntosh, Davachi

Program

Tony Conrad Four Violins
Andrew McIntosh Fixations
Sarah Davachi New Work for Wild Up world premiere

About

In music, tuning sets the stakes and the boundaries of our world. It is the carbon we build mountains with, the oxygen we breathe in, it is our environment and, within the duration of a piece, it becomes us. Tunings often resemble nature, ratios instead of generalities, cycles mirroring the cosmos, and patterns turning up anywhere and everywhere the way we see for example Fibonacci in nature. It is with that outlook then that we turn to look toward ancient musics and pieces not yet heard to find tuning, central in its crystal mathematics and ecstatic formalities shaping a whole weekend of music making. For this special search we call Darkness Sounding congregating and coalescing for the first time outside Los Angeles at 92NY, this year honoring tuning. The burning distortion of ring modulated electric violins tuned to the feedback of their amps in Tony Conrad’s Four Violins, the East Coast Premiere of Andrew McIntosh’s microcosmic patterning Fixations, the World Premiere of Sarah Davachi’s full Lower Melodies in which timbres and tunings become overlapping, and resonances become so indescribably intertwined that instruments and even individuals seem to be destroyed within the mass.

About Endless Season

Art in LA has been about freedom and an abundant eschewing of history. With intersecting methods and intentions, humble, aspiring, a city appealing to the aesthete and the mystic in all of her citizens. Here, famous artists are also street-side sign painters, our best restaurants drive or live in strip malls, and our landmarks are geographical before architectural or fleetingly experiential instead of permanent monuments to their own lineages. Here, our religious and secular musics sound the same.

Endless Season gathers around these uniquely West Coast traits. We ask lead artists to question, reinterpret, and challenge the past, modality, and genre. We hold a space of intersectionality and dialogue surrounding every aspect of our work. Together, we will explore the breadth of work and practices, discovering the many shapes of music and ideas in LA today.

Endless Season 2024 - 2025

Endless Season continues internationally and across Los Angeles, as we embark on a year of festivals, residencies, and deep explorations of sound and those close-to-the-heart feelings that draw us toward one another. We begin by bringing the music of Julius Eastman to Germany at Ruhrtriennale. Then, we look toward the future of society with a weekend of democratic music-making with Democracy Sessions at MOCA Warehouse. In 2025, we untether Darkness Sounding, a festival that explores how listening, sound, and music shape our understanding of the world, from LA to congregate in New York around tuning and droves of medieval harmonies at 92NY. And we explore what it means to live life To The Fullest, celebrating selves brimming with unique righteousness, around the music of Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell in a three-month-long festival with the LA Philharmonic and REDCAT and other partners yet to be announced.