Introduction
Anne LeBaron’s compositions embrace an exotic array of subjects ranging from the mysterious Singing Dunes of Kazakhstan, to probes into physical and cultural forms of extinction, to the controversial cross-dressing Papessa Joanna. Widely recognized for her work in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms, she has received numerous awards and prizes, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Alpert Award in the Arts, a Fulbright Full Fellowship, an award from the Rockefeller MAP Fund for her cyborgopera, Sucktion, and a 2009-2010 Cultural Exchange International Grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for The Silent Steppe Cantata. Scenes from her sixth opera, Crescent City, invoking the legendary Marie Laveau, have been performed in concert by the New York City Opera.
Anne LeBaron writes ritualistic music of excitement and power. (Sequenza 21)
WET is an ambitious and alarming new opera with strong music by Anne LeBaron. (LA Times)
LeBaron’s score for mixed ensemble brilliantly evokes an imagined medievalism. (Gramophone) |
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News / Announcements
Greetings and welcome! You will find descriptions of scores and recordings, status of current projects, and other informative aspects of my music on this site. My creative pursuits revolve around the heightened awareness of elements that combine, collide, and careen around contemporary opera; the theatrical resonance potentials in the context of concert performance; and the latent value of surrealist philosophy when applied to composition and performance. Courses that I teach at CalArts, such as HyperOpera, Concert Theater, and Surrealism and Music, have emerged from these topics. As the content for this site grows and broadens in scope, it will include details about these courses, cultivated during thirteen years of teaching. My current compositional and analytical inquiries will also be shared, with detours into notation for extended harp techniques, as well as obsessions such as chess, magical realism, the paintings of Remedios Varo, and the effect of scent on cognitive processes.
“The wind blows hard among the pines toward the beginning of an endless past. Listen: you’ve heard everything.” (Shinkichi Takahashi)
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Mark Robson, pianist, and Timur Bekbosunov, tenor, after their concert at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, D.C. on December 9, 2009. The program included the first public performance of excerpts from The Silent Steppe Cantata, arranged for piano and tenor: "Black of My Eye," and "I am a Kazakh." The concert was sponsored by the Embassy of Kazakhstan. |
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