USC Wind Ensemble Concert

The USC Wind Ensemble presents an evening of electro-acoustic music that features works for electronics and wind ensemble by Edgar Varese, Mason Bates and Steven Bryant. A rare performance of Edgar Varese’s landmark work, “Deserts,” composed for winds and electronic tape, alternates sections of acoustic music with pre-recorded organized sounds. Now considered to be one of the most important pieces of avant-garde music, it was a musical scandal as Paris audience members rioted during the 1954 premier in response to what they were hearing. “Mothership” by Mason Bates, one of the world’s leaders in electro-acoustic music, features a variety of soloists performing from different areas around the stage. The concert concludes with Steven Bryant’s “Ecstatic Waters,” a juxtaposition of contradictory musical and extra-musical elements and an attempt to resolve them. The five connected movements hint at a narrative that touches upon naiveté, divination, fanaticism, post-human possibilities, anarchy, order and the Jungian collective unconscious.