PAST EVENTS
Music for Guitar (classical and electric), Mandolin, Arpeggione, Toy Piano and voice
Music by Theodore Norman, Steve Reich, Louis Durey, Lord Berners, Garry Eister,
Jonathan Grasse, Buzz Gravelle, and Peter Yates
Every Fireside Concert features a different mix of contemporary music, opera, jazz, storytelling, dance, poetry, beat boxing, a capella singing and more. Performances take place before the large period fireplace with an eco-log fire. Comfy couches, cozy candles, organic beverages and snacks all await you inside Santa Monica's own historic playhouse! Please check out the entire line-up of artists on the right.
Please Note: Seating is very limited, reservations are highly recommended! So if you see something you like it's never too early to make a reservation.
Tickets: All shows begin promptly at 8:05pm unless noted, doors open at 7:30pm. Reservations are released at 7:55pm
Ticket Prices: $10 for Adults. $5 for Seniors (55 and up), Youth (18 and under) and Students of any age. (Show school ID)
Reservations: E-mail [email protected]. Please email your NAME, DATE OF SHOW, # OF SEATS & PHONE. You will receive a confirmation email within 24 hours. (Please arrive by 7:55PM to retain your reservation; late seating is not guaranteed.)
Fireside at the Miles is sponsored by the City of Santa Monica, Cultural Affairs Division
and is supported by generous donations from local businesses.
Click here to visit the Fireside At The Miles website
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Cal Poly Pomona - Music Recital Hall 8-pm
Cal Poly Pomona - Music Recital Hall 8-pm
Thursday, October 20 , 2016
CSUDH Festival of New & Improvised Music, concert #2.
ensembleFRET, opening is the Scott Heustis Group featuring guitarist Scott Heustis, drummer Breeze Smith, and bassist Anthony Shadduck.
CSU Dominguez Hills Laser Recital Hall (LaCorte hall A103) - 8:30 pm
Please visit the event's Facebook pager, HERE
3 Concerts in March, 2016
Solos - Trios - Quartets
with guest artist JohnPaul Trotter
Music by:
Stravinsky
Hindemith
Ginastera
Buzz Gravelle (premieres)
Paganini
Ellington
Garry Eister (premiere)
For: Guitar (acoustic, electric) Mandolin Electric Bass
Tuesday, March 1
Los Angeles City College
Clausen Music Building
David Alpert Lecture Hall
12:30 – 1:30 pm, Free admission
-
Friday, March 4
Cal Poly Pomona Recital Hall
8 pm, $15 general, $10 student
Tickets at the door,
or at http://csupomona.tix.com
-
Saturday, March 5
House Concert in Pacific Palisades
Private Residence
8 pm, Free, details will be sent with RSVP (required)
click to RSVP by email at: [email protected]
or (818) 929-1773
PROGRAM FOR MARCH 4 & 5, 2016
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ensembleFRET at Prism@play
presented by the Efflorescence Collective
Saturday, January 17, 2015 - 8:00 pm - $8 (in advance) $10 (at the door)
Yoga-at-Play, 1008 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Performing The Egg and the Seed by Peter Yates
with guest vocalist Alexandra Grabarchuk
ensembleFRET, with guest vocalist Alexandra Grabarchuk, will present the new live version of Peter Yates' 20-minute "comic-book oratorio" The Egg and the Seed as part of the winter Prism@play presentation by the Efflorescence collective. The piece will feature 265 narrative slide images concerning intercourse in all its forms - molecular, chemical, biological, social, sexual, cultural,national. Dead serious and full of laughs, Prism @ play is a curious convergence of creative energy. A brief guided workshop experience will unfold into waves of spinning snow flurries, vivid cosmic choreographies, and interactive installations. This Prism is a sonic feast as a collection of harmonies and voices travel through the empty shell of a winter night. Snuggle in and immerse yourself at this elegantly sensitive interdisciplinary creative arts event in downtown Los Angeles.
Tickets are available online pre-sale for $8.
http://winterprismatplay.bpt.me/
or $10 at the door
8pm to midnight
Come and go as you please.
Enjoy cocktails, tea, or hookah while witnessing a handful of live performance expressions from an eclectic mix of artists.
8:15pm - Yoga for Lucid Dreaming workshop with Stephen Beitler, founder of FreeYoga.TV
An extra special treat!
1-3pm Workshop and Performance opportunity facilitated by JeremyHahn and Alison Hart
In the Moment: Performance and Being Presence
This movement improvisation workshop is open to all levels. After the completion of the workshop participants will perform live during Prism.
For more information please visit our workshop page https://www.facebook.com/events/321897308018873/
The evening will feature work by Efflorescence artist Stephen Beitler
http://www.stephenbeitler.com/
Brenda Carsey - vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer
http://www.brendacarseyart.com/
Ceci Castelblanco - vocalist, interactive and visual artist
http://www.facebook.com/ccartist
Suniel Fox - guitarist and electronic music producer
http://www.sunielfox.com/
Jeremy Hahn and the AS One Collective / High Impact - choreographer and visual artist
http://www.jeremyhahnperformance.com/
Kelci Hahn - opera singer
Alison Hart- choreographer and visual artist
Sofia Klass - dancer and performer
Michelle LaVon - dancer and fire performer, www.michellelavon.com
Eric Pham - composer and musician
http://www.ericphammusic.com/
Pamela Clare Wylie Samuelson - aerialist
Kathryn Shuman - vocalist
Adam Yasmin - Gongfu tea ceremony
and more special guests to be announced!
For more information please visit http://www.artsatplay.com/
and WeAreEfflorescence.com
http://winterprismatplay.bpt.me/
or $10 at the door
8pm to midnight
Come and go as you please.
Enjoy cocktails, tea, or hookah while witnessing a handful of live performance expressions from an eclectic mix of artists.
8:15pm - Yoga for Lucid Dreaming workshop with Stephen Beitler, founder of FreeYoga.TV
An extra special treat!
1-3pm Workshop and Performance opportunity facilitated by JeremyHahn and Alison Hart
In the Moment: Performance and Being Presence
This movement improvisation workshop is open to all levels. After the completion of the workshop participants will perform live during Prism.
For more information please visit our workshop page https://www.facebook.com/events/321897308018873/
The evening will feature work by Efflorescence artist Stephen Beitler
http://www.stephenbeitler.com/
Brenda Carsey - vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer
http://www.brendacarseyart.com/
Ceci Castelblanco - vocalist, interactive and visual artist
http://www.facebook.com/ccartist
Suniel Fox - guitarist and electronic music producer
http://www.sunielfox.com/
Jeremy Hahn and the AS One Collective / High Impact - choreographer and visual artist
http://www.jeremyhahnperformance.com/
Kelci Hahn - opera singer
Alison Hart- choreographer and visual artist
Sofia Klass - dancer and performer
Michelle LaVon - dancer and fire performer, www.michellelavon.com
Eric Pham - composer and musician
http://www.ericphammusic.com/
Pamela Clare Wylie Samuelson - aerialist
Kathryn Shuman - vocalist
Adam Yasmin - Gongfu tea ceremony
and more special guests to be announced!
For more information please visit http://www.artsatplay.com/
and WeAreEfflorescence.com
Friday, November 21, 2014 - 8:00 pm
Cal Poly Pomona
Full Program 11-21-14.pdf | |
File Size: | 240 kb |
File Type: |
PROGRAM
Sleep Another Night, Garry Eister
"Sleep Another Night" began as a lullaby, although it lost some of that quality, particularly in the middle sections, as I worked on it. Still, near the very end of the piece, just before the music drifts off into Slumberland, one could hear the melodic shape and rhythm of the famous musical setting whose words are "Down will come baby, cradle and all," and, even more deeply hidden right before that, the melodic shape of "Rockabye, baby" in the arpeggione. I love writing for unusual instruments, and it was fun to do something for the arpeggione. On discussing the instrument with me, Peter Yates remarked that a friend of his said that if one doesn't write some arpeggios for the arpeggione, what's the point of using it? I took the excellent advice implicit in this rhetorical question and wrote a brief arpeggiating solo for the arpeggione followed by a series of arpeggiated chords that accompany a series of rising arpeggiated guitar chords which would serve as the climax of the piece, if it had one. Instead, it falls asleep. - Garry Eister
Four Pieces for Sixteen Strings, Jonathan Grasse
The individual works comprising Four Pieces for Sixteen Strings explore episodic song forms, developmental variations, and ostinati-based studies. The outer pieces are expansive, hybrid contrasts to the directness of the repetitive patterns found throughout numbers two and three. Overall, melodic interplay is foregrounded from varying textures, shifting metric schemes, and freely adapted tonal procedures. The melodicism of the mandolin and arpeggione propel the guitar’s harmonic functions. Freely dissonant, polyphonic passages, unison rhythms, and equitably dispersed polyrhythms periodically contrast the work’s tonal, homophonic nature. The instrumentation’s total number of courses, sixteen, augments the work’s title. Already jokingly ambiguous, the title could read twenty strings due to the mandolin’s double courses. Four Pieces was composed for, and recorded by, ensembleFRET with the assistance of a California State University faculty development grant during the composer’s sabbatical in spring and summer, 2014. -Jonathan Grasse
Zero's Vinyl, Buzz Gravelle
I have always been a big fan of jazz guitarist Charlie Christian (1916-1942). In particular, the guitar solo for the tune Seven Come Eleven has moments of what I consider to be pure proto-bebop magic. Zero’s Vinyl explores and meditates on about eight measures of musical material from that solo, filtering it through a post-minimalist musical vocabulary. Zero’s Vinyl is, in essence, an eight-minute exploration of eight seconds of music. - Buzz Gravelle
Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, J. S. Bach
prelude – allemande – courante – sarabande – menuet I and II – gigue
Peter Yates, guitar
In this piece, Bach takes to an intriguing limit the art of implying in a single line not only melody but also accompanimental rhythm, harmony and modulation. Ambiguities and surprises are part of the story, and in certain measures the player or listener doesn't discover until almost the next barline what the implied harmony was meant to be. Other great improvisers such as Django Reinhardt or Charlie Parker share this stealthy and playful approach to tracing the background "changes" of the music. In a solo piece, it allows each element of the harmony, especially when it is a chromatic tone, to project its full import. The composer encodes in the line a timing as telling as that of the great tragic actors or comedians.
- Peter Yates
Five, Buzz Gravelle
Buzz Gravelle, fretless guitar
My most recent piece for fretless guitar, Five, is strongly influenced by Mediterranean musical traditions, in particular flamenco. It is intended as an exciting showpiece in the vein of much solo flamenco guitar music. However, there is also a polyrhythmic framework to the groove of the piece, with the melody playing three notes in the time space of the two bass notes, and a quasi-repetitive cellular approach to the musical patterns and motifs. -Buzz Gravelle
Three In A Row, Walter Marsh
The three short works here employ a twelve-tone row with which the composer has been preoccupied over the past year. First is a light piece in 3/8 consisting mostly of four bar cells. The second is a consideration of “Moon River” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” along with their respective film characters. Might these two characters be the same person in two different eras and periods of her life? Here, the happy endings are expunged by the row. For the third, we return to another light work, now in 2/4, where the row and a number of it’s flipped versions finds itself in the time of Haydn.
The Egg And The Seed, Peter Yates
with guest vocalist, Alexandra Grabarchuk
The Egg and the Seed is about intercourse in all forms and levels of scale – molecular, cellular, interpersonal, cultural and national. 250 collage images present a "comic book" age-of-exploration narrative whose text blocks and word balloons are not read, but sung. Metaphors of seeking, sighting, touching, merging, mixing and emerging multiply, leading to a cyclic conclusion where all ends in another beginning. This is the premiere performance of the live version of the work.
Sleep Another Night, Garry Eister
"Sleep Another Night" began as a lullaby, although it lost some of that quality, particularly in the middle sections, as I worked on it. Still, near the very end of the piece, just before the music drifts off into Slumberland, one could hear the melodic shape and rhythm of the famous musical setting whose words are "Down will come baby, cradle and all," and, even more deeply hidden right before that, the melodic shape of "Rockabye, baby" in the arpeggione. I love writing for unusual instruments, and it was fun to do something for the arpeggione. On discussing the instrument with me, Peter Yates remarked that a friend of his said that if one doesn't write some arpeggios for the arpeggione, what's the point of using it? I took the excellent advice implicit in this rhetorical question and wrote a brief arpeggiating solo for the arpeggione followed by a series of arpeggiated chords that accompany a series of rising arpeggiated guitar chords which would serve as the climax of the piece, if it had one. Instead, it falls asleep. - Garry Eister
Four Pieces for Sixteen Strings, Jonathan Grasse
The individual works comprising Four Pieces for Sixteen Strings explore episodic song forms, developmental variations, and ostinati-based studies. The outer pieces are expansive, hybrid contrasts to the directness of the repetitive patterns found throughout numbers two and three. Overall, melodic interplay is foregrounded from varying textures, shifting metric schemes, and freely adapted tonal procedures. The melodicism of the mandolin and arpeggione propel the guitar’s harmonic functions. Freely dissonant, polyphonic passages, unison rhythms, and equitably dispersed polyrhythms periodically contrast the work’s tonal, homophonic nature. The instrumentation’s total number of courses, sixteen, augments the work’s title. Already jokingly ambiguous, the title could read twenty strings due to the mandolin’s double courses. Four Pieces was composed for, and recorded by, ensembleFRET with the assistance of a California State University faculty development grant during the composer’s sabbatical in spring and summer, 2014. -Jonathan Grasse
Zero's Vinyl, Buzz Gravelle
I have always been a big fan of jazz guitarist Charlie Christian (1916-1942). In particular, the guitar solo for the tune Seven Come Eleven has moments of what I consider to be pure proto-bebop magic. Zero’s Vinyl explores and meditates on about eight measures of musical material from that solo, filtering it through a post-minimalist musical vocabulary. Zero’s Vinyl is, in essence, an eight-minute exploration of eight seconds of music. - Buzz Gravelle
Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, J. S. Bach
prelude – allemande – courante – sarabande – menuet I and II – gigue
Peter Yates, guitar
In this piece, Bach takes to an intriguing limit the art of implying in a single line not only melody but also accompanimental rhythm, harmony and modulation. Ambiguities and surprises are part of the story, and in certain measures the player or listener doesn't discover until almost the next barline what the implied harmony was meant to be. Other great improvisers such as Django Reinhardt or Charlie Parker share this stealthy and playful approach to tracing the background "changes" of the music. In a solo piece, it allows each element of the harmony, especially when it is a chromatic tone, to project its full import. The composer encodes in the line a timing as telling as that of the great tragic actors or comedians.
- Peter Yates
Five, Buzz Gravelle
Buzz Gravelle, fretless guitar
My most recent piece for fretless guitar, Five, is strongly influenced by Mediterranean musical traditions, in particular flamenco. It is intended as an exciting showpiece in the vein of much solo flamenco guitar music. However, there is also a polyrhythmic framework to the groove of the piece, with the melody playing three notes in the time space of the two bass notes, and a quasi-repetitive cellular approach to the musical patterns and motifs. -Buzz Gravelle
Three In A Row, Walter Marsh
The three short works here employ a twelve-tone row with which the composer has been preoccupied over the past year. First is a light piece in 3/8 consisting mostly of four bar cells. The second is a consideration of “Moon River” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” along with their respective film characters. Might these two characters be the same person in two different eras and periods of her life? Here, the happy endings are expunged by the row. For the third, we return to another light work, now in 2/4, where the row and a number of it’s flipped versions finds itself in the time of Haydn.
The Egg And The Seed, Peter Yates
with guest vocalist, Alexandra Grabarchuk
The Egg and the Seed is about intercourse in all forms and levels of scale – molecular, cellular, interpersonal, cultural and national. 250 collage images present a "comic book" age-of-exploration narrative whose text blocks and word balloons are not read, but sung. Metaphors of seeking, sighting, touching, merging, mixing and emerging multiply, leading to a cyclic conclusion where all ends in another beginning. This is the premiere performance of the live version of the work.
Saturday, April 19, 2014 - 6:00 to 8:00 pm
EnsembleFRET and Duo del Sol
with Alexandra Grabarchuck
at the Silverlake Lounge
Silverlake, CA
Saturday, April 19th 6:00-8:00 pm
Free
with Alexandra Grabarchuck
at the Silverlake Lounge
Silverlake, CA
Saturday, April 19th 6:00-8:00 pm
Free
Winter/Spring 2014 Concerts
Wednesday, March 19th, 2014 - 8:00 pm
"Snapshots"
Short Works written for ensembleFRET by composers of
The CSULB Composers' Guild
Gerald Daniel Recital Hall
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840
Free
(parking $5)
Featured Guild Composers:
Marcus Carline
Elizabeth Chavez
Zaq Kenefick
James LaPiana Jr.
Edna A. Longoria
Alec Loshonkohl
Casey Martin
Brandon K. Rivera
Jeffrey Wu
Also, Music by:
Theodore Norman
Buzz Gravelle
Krzysztof Klabon
Paul Hindemith
Peter Yates
Organized by the CSULB Composers' Guild and sponsored by Associated Students, Inc.
Park in Lot 12. Parking pass costs $5
"Snapshots"
Short Works written for ensembleFRET by composers of
The CSULB Composers' Guild
Gerald Daniel Recital Hall
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840
Free
(parking $5)
Featured Guild Composers:
Marcus Carline
Elizabeth Chavez
Zaq Kenefick
James LaPiana Jr.
Edna A. Longoria
Alec Loshonkohl
Casey Martin
Brandon K. Rivera
Jeffrey Wu
Also, Music by:
Theodore Norman
Buzz Gravelle
Krzysztof Klabon
Paul Hindemith
Peter Yates
Organized by the CSULB Composers' Guild and sponsored by Associated Students, Inc.
Park in Lot 12. Parking pass costs $5
Fall 2013 Concerts
Summer 2013 Concerts
Theodore Norman Legacy Concert
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Bing Theatre - 6:00 pm
The Theodore Norman legacy concerts continued. This concert featured eight students who studied with Ted and/or studied in the guitar department at UCLA over a period of almost 25 years: Peter Yates, Alan Duff Berman, James Phillipsen, Buzz Gravelle, Walter Marsh, Philip Graulty, Marc Nimoy, and Brandon Mayer.
The FREE concert was at the Bing Theatre at the Los Angles County Museum of Art on Sunday, August 18th, at 6:00 pm, on their Sundays Live series. Ted's compositions and the compositions of the performers, including two premieres by Buzz and a trio by James, will be included. In addition, the program will feature Ted's transcriptions of music by Ernst Krenek, Paganini and Scriabin, as well as ensembleFRET arrangements of Ted's original music.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Bing Theatre - 6:00 pm
The Theodore Norman legacy concerts continued. This concert featured eight students who studied with Ted and/or studied in the guitar department at UCLA over a period of almost 25 years: Peter Yates, Alan Duff Berman, James Phillipsen, Buzz Gravelle, Walter Marsh, Philip Graulty, Marc Nimoy, and Brandon Mayer.
The FREE concert was at the Bing Theatre at the Los Angles County Museum of Art on Sunday, August 18th, at 6:00 pm, on their Sundays Live series. Ted's compositions and the compositions of the performers, including two premieres by Buzz and a trio by James, will be included. In addition, the program will feature Ted's transcriptions of music by Ernst Krenek, Paganini and Scriabin, as well as ensembleFRET arrangements of Ted's original music.
Spring 2013 Concerts
April 17, 2013 Program - Cal Poly Pomona
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April 28 - UCLA, Schoenberg Hall, Organ Studio, 3:00 pm, Free, parking $11 (JPEG directions below)
PROGRAM - UCLA, April 28, 2013
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2012
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012, 8:00 pm
Cal Poly Pomona Recital Hall
Program:
Cal Poly Pomona Recital Hall
Program:
Friday, November 16th, 2012, 8:00 pm
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Program:
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Program:
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012, 12:10 pm
Los Angeles City College Concert Series
LACC Vinci Hall
Program:
Los Angeles City College Concert Series
LACC Vinci Hall
Program:
ensembleFRET
ensembleFRET: the only mandolin, guitar, and arpeggione trio in existence?
June, 2012
The inaugural concerts of ensembleFRET took place on May 20th and May 25 at UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona. What is ensembleFRET? It's a performance collective started by myself, Walter Marsh, and Peter Yates that explores music old and new, from Bach to our own compositions. Since, in addition to us all being guitar players, I play mandolin, and Peter plays the arpeggione (bowed guitar), we have a variable instrumentation, which includes a trio consisting of mandolin, guitar, and arpeggione. Add to that frequent guest performers and quite interesting and unique programming becomes possible.
-Buzz Gravelle
The inaugural concerts of ensembleFRET took place on May 20th and May 25 at UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona. What is ensembleFRET? It's a performance collective started by myself, Walter Marsh, and Peter Yates that explores music old and new, from Bach to our own compositions. Since, in addition to us all being guitar players, I play mandolin, and Peter plays the arpeggione (bowed guitar), we have a variable instrumentation, which includes a trio consisting of mandolin, guitar, and arpeggione. Add to that frequent guest performers and quite interesting and unique programming becomes possible.
-Buzz Gravelle