Ellen Reid – Memory / Nostalgia / Somesuch Thing

ELLEN REID is a composer and sound artist whose work “brims with canny invention” (LA Weekly). Reid’s work is largely collaborative and takes the form of opera, chamber music, scores for film and theater, and immersive interactive media. Reid’s score for She Gone Rogue(developed with Golden Globe winners Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker) was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and her work in HOPSCOTCH (dir Yuval Sharon) was hailed as “ineffably moving” by Marc Swed of the LA Times and “radiant” by Alex Ross of the New Yorker. Reid’s music direction and scoring of Prometheus Bound (Getty Villa, Malibu) was said it would “make you believe that the mythical sirens really existed” (KCRW) and her soundscape for the award winning feature film The Midnight Swim (Dir. Sarah Adina Smith) was “admirably disquieting” (Variety). Reid’s single Orlando and Tiresias, Meeting on an Unmarked Plane was released on the Bedroom Community label with wild Up and Jodie Landau in October 2015, and her opera is in progress with Beth Morrison Projects. Reid recently received a Young Composer Award from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where her new commission was performed on the Bayerischer Rundfunk. Reid has works in progress with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, cellist Johannes Moser, librettist Royce Vavrek, playwright Roxie Perkins, wild Up, Chromatic, VisionIntoArt, and Beth Morrison Projects.

wild Up is a modern music collective; a Los Angeles-based group of musicians committed to creating visceral, thought-provoking happenings. wild Up believes that music is a catalyst for shared experiences, and that a concert venue is a place to challenge, excite and ignite a community of listeners.

wild Up has been called “Best in Classical Music 2015” and “…a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant…fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times, “Searing. Penetrating. And thrilling” by Fred Child of Performance Today and “Magnificent” by Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times. Over the last five years, wild Up has collaborated with orchestras, rock bands and cultural institutions around the world.

The past season, wild Up was Ensemble in Residence with Jennifer Koh and Shai Wosner at the Laguna Beach Music Festival; and the group premiered a few dozen new works, including composer David Lang’s “anatomy theater” at L.A. Opera. In October 2015, wild Up made their New York debut on the American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC festival with a new program called “West.”

This season wild Up is Group in Residence at National Sawdust, and Education Ensemble in Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. They’ll be featured on the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight festival, at the Carlsbad Festival, and  at the Valley Performing Arts Center; celebrating John Adams and punk rock, and continue the intensive educational program that they co-founded with the LA Philharmonic, in which ten young composers and a faculty of eight legendary composers meet to collaborate on new work.

Founded in 2006, Beth Morrison Projects encourages risk- taking, creating a structure for developing new work that is unique to each artist, which gives them the time and space
to experiment and push boundaries. Noted as a composers’ producer, ”Beth Morrison, of Beth Morrison Projects, has been gathering strength for several years, producing some of the most exciting music-theatre projects in the city (The New Yorker).” To date, the company has commissioned, developed, and produced more than forty premiere opera and music-theatre works that have been performed around the globe. The New York Times recently said, “The production of new [opera] works in the city still falls mostly to the tireless Beth Morrison and her Beth Morrison Projects…” The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Ms. Morrison may be immortalized one day as a 21st-century Diaghilev, known for her ability to assemble memorable collaborations among artists.” Current and upcoming projects include works by composers: Darcy James Argue, Mohammed Fairouz, Du Yun, Ted Hearne, David Lang, David T. Little, Zhou Long, Keeril Makan, Missy Mazzoli, Paola Prestini, Kamala Sankaram, Scott Wheeler and more.