CalArts Music Faculty Performances This Weekend

Vicki Ray performs ‘Concerto for Prepared Piano and Symphony Orchestra’ by Amir Konjani at The Wild Beast in February. | Photo: Scott Groller

There are plenty of opportunities to see what faculty of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts have been up to this summer. Piano faculty Vicki Ray gives a concert at Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena on Friday (July 11) and composition faculty Mark Trayle presents a performance at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA) on Saturday (July 12).

Presented as part of the Music @ Boston Court series that runs July 11-26, Ray’s Piano Spheres concert is titled Vicki Ray, Just Born in LA: The Newest Works of Stucky and Pereira. The program includes newly commissioned works from Los Angeles composer Steven Stucky and LA Phil timpanist Joseph Pereira. Ray will also play music from George Crumb’s masterwork, Makrokosmos.

Later this year, in October, Ray will perform another Piano Spheres concert at Zipper Concert Hall at The Colburn School. Watch Ray discuss her work as Coordinator of the Piano/Keyboard and Collaborative Keyboard Programs at CalArts.

On Saturday afternoon in Santa Monica, composer Trayle kicks off the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound’s (SASSAS) sound. concert series. Trayle’s new multi-channel electronic pieces “intended to conjure sonic illusions” will take place inside SMMoA’s immersive exhibition, Robert Swain: The Form of Color. The concert is free.

In April, Trayle performed some of his most recent work at REDCAT. Read 5.5 Questions for Mark Trayle on the SASSAS website. Below, listen to Trayle’s track Laminaria A:

As previously posted, bassist and faculty Alphonso Johnson performed with supergroup Night Train Music Club on July 4.