The Living Earth Show doesn’t have access to million-dollar donors, but they have figured out an original and uncompromising response to the pandemic shutdown anyway. They’re putting out recordings of a “season” of music, in digital formats. Subscribers get the recording, plus an additional EP and an invitation to a Zoom chat with the composer and TLES (guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson).
Andrews and Meyerson push boundaries, but in a fun way. Their performances are high-energy and occasionally light-hearted (as in their comic rendition of Family Sing-a-Long and Game Night by Nicole Lizée.) Having worked on a “whatever it takes” plan from their inception, their season is a wide-ranging look at their past and present.
Though the chat with composer Sarah Hennies is past, Extra Time, her wide-ranging work with Meyerson consisting of intricate reworkings of Prince songs, is now available. The EP of the month is Adrian Knight’s Damn the Flood. Here are the recordings to come, many of them from productions and projects that already occurred:
- December: Tremble Staves, by Raven Chacon
- January: Lyra, by Samuel Adams
- February: Commando, an album release party for the SF-based queer/trans collective based in heavy metal, rap, and spoken poetry
- March: Affirmative Action, by Anthony Watkins and others
- April: Squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze, by Luciano Chessa
- May: Freighter
- June: Shamenah (Book of Kings), by Sahba Aminikia
