Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) presents Living In Color, a concert inspired by the irresistible fun of I prefer living in color, Sarah Gibson’s 2019 Left Coast Composition Competition winning work for percussion and ensemble. The program celebrates composers particularly adept at exploiting instruments’ timbral possibilities, from Errolyn Waller’s stormy Dervish and Gabriel Fauré’s dreamy Piano Trio, to the evocative sounds of myths conjured by Karol Szymanowski and the party vibe of Kenji Bunch's fun viola solo, The Three Gs.
Sarah Gibson’s I prefer living in color, written for bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, and percussion, was inspired by David Hockney’s artwork Snail's Pace, a gigantic painted landscape of shapes with a shifting light installation created to represent Los Angeles’s Mulholland Drive. “This vivacious artwork impacted the melodic structure and energy in my piece,” explained Gibson. “Beginning with a lyrical melody and morphing to a rock band-like groove, I was imagining the many vibrant colors of Hockney’s painting shifting in and out of foreground and background. These musical structures represent both the changing landscapes in Hockney’s painting and also the energizing curves and changing views found along Mulholland Drive.”
Complementing Gibson’s award-winning piece are works by John Luther Adams, Karol Szymanowski, Errolyn Wallen, Kenji Bunch, and Gabriel Fauré, all compositions that explore varying colors and timbre of instrumentation. "Some popular singers have an unmistakable signature sound: It only takes a few notes from Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, to know exactly who is singing,” said Anna Presler, LCCE Artistic Director. For this concert LCCE presents chamber music in which composers are especially skilled at taking the same pitches and instruments used by everyone else and coming up with a timbral effect different from all the rest. “Sarah Gibson is a masterful sound painter,” continued Presler. “We’ll hear her piece with along with composers who make colors that are equally unique and gorgeous. Fauré’s trio sounds especially velvety in this version featuring the clarinet, and Karol Szymanowski creates a magical shimmer in La Fontaine d'Arethuse."