Landscape Music Membership Opens to Performing Artists & Ensembles

Landscape Music began in 2015 as a composers’ collective, highlighting the work of composers and composer-performers based in the United States. Membership grew to include international artists, and now we are inviting performing artists, and performing ensembles, to join the ranks of our featured artists!

Like our composers and composer-performers, all performers and ensembles invited to Landscape Music will have demonstrated a deep, sustained engagement with themes of landscape, nature, and/or place in their bodies of work, across multiple projects. With the addition of performers, Landscape Music promises to become increasingly effective as a platform, a community, and a catalyst for collaborations.

Music in the American Wild album coverOur very first performing ensemble member is the American Wild Ensemble. Comprised of Emlyn Johnson, flute; Ellen Breakfield-Glick, clarinet; Lauren Becker, horn; Hanna Hurwitz, violin; Alexander Peña, viola; Daniel Ketter, cello; and Colleen Bernstein, percussion, this chamber ensemble has done incredible work commissioning and performing music inspired by landscape, nature, and place. It’s an honor to feature them on LandscapeMusic.org. In their words:

“American Wild Ensemble celebrates the people, places, and stories that shape American history and culture through the commission and performance of new music. The American Wild Ensemble specializes in context-driven music that encourages our audiences to explore their environments through a different lens, engage with contemporary music in a new way, and foster the sense of community between performers, listeners, and the spaces that surround them. We design programming that is unique to each of our partnering organizations or locations, offering cohesive, site-inspired performances, workshops, and special events that support and reflect the vision of our collaborators.”

Listen to recordings of their performances and learn more at the ensemble’s member profile.

More performing members will be announced very soon!

To facilitate the growth of Landscape Music, the invitation process has been streamlined with a formal application. Inquiries are welcome from composers, performers, and performing ensembles who are interested in joining the network. Please submit an application using this Google Form.

—Nell Shaw Cohen
Founder & Director, Landscape Music

Visions of the Wild Festival Presents Earth Year with Landscape Music & Citywater, April 21, 2021

U.S. Forest Service & VCAF present Earth Year Visions of the Wild Film and Arts Festival

Composers from Landscape Music, an international composers’ collective, and musicians from Citywater, Sacramento’s premier new music ensemble, present their work in a free online event with the Visions of Film and Arts Wild Festival on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 5:00pm PDT. Register for this free event at visionsofthewild.org.

São Miguel Island, the Azores.

São Miguel Island, the Azores. Photo by Guillermo Varela. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The audience will hear the World Premiere performances of two brand new works for flute and cello, commissioned by Landscape Music exclusively for Visions of the Wild. Composed by Juhi Bansal and Daniel Morel, these pieces will celebrate diverse locales from the biosphere reserves of the Azores to the apple orchards of Missouri. The premieres will be recorded and presented by Cathie Apple, flute, and Timothy Stanley, cello, of Citywater.

Additionally, composers Nell Shaw Cohen, Derek Keller, and Ryan Suleiman will introduce excerpts from works that take inspiration from places in and around the Bay Area. They’ll discuss their musical responses to Andy Goldsworthy’s land art in the Presidio of San Francisco (Cohen’s Transforming Forest); the beauty, complexity, and fragility of the Sacramento watershed (Keller’s NorCal Water Music); and the devastation of the 2017 Sonoma wildfires (Suleiman’s Burning).

The presentation will conclude with a live audience Q&A. Continue reading