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Partch: Lecture and Demonstration

Presented by Repertory Dance Theatre at Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center

October 1, 2008

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Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) invites audiences to a free 'informance' (Lecture and Demonstration) featuring PARTCH, a unique music ensemble from Los Angeles, California that specializes in the music and instruments of the iconoclastic American composer Harry Partch. RDT's pre-season event will focus on the music and life of Harry Partch, the instruments he created and his composition, Castor and Pollux. Harry Partch created one of the most amazing bodies of sensually alluring and emotionally powerful music of the 20th century. Between 1930 and 1972, he wrote music dramas, dance-theater, multi-media extravaganzas, vocal music and chamber music - all to be performed on the extraordinary orchestra of instruments that he designed and built himself. Originally founded in 1991, PARTCH, the musical ensemble is dedicated to preserving the music of Harry Partch and has re-created percussion and string instruments designed by this maverick composer. PARTCH will demonstrate the tunings, the instruments, and discuss the composer's departure from traditional Western Music. Castor and Pollux was utilized by choreographer Elizabeth Waters as inspiration for a dance she created in 1958 on the twin stars of good luck, and will be performed during RDT's home season at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. The ensemble has performed for Chamber Music in Historic Sites, the LA County Museum of Art, UCLA's Partch Centennial Celebration, Sacramento's Festival of New American Music, Minnesota Public Radio's American Mavericks, the Songlines series at Mills College, and the Gordon Getty Concerts at the Getty Center and have toured Japan under the auspices of the American Embassy's prestigious Interlink Festival. In 2004, they made their Disney Hall debut premiering Harry Partch's Bitter Music, and have returned every year since.