"Cosmic Rose" (2022) by Anne LeBaron - Hear Now 2023

Cosmic Rose (2022) (West Coast premiere)
ANNE LEBARON
Rachel Constantino, horn
Alison Bjorkedal, harp
COMPOSER'S NOTES
Cosmic Rose, for French horn and harp, refers to a pair of swirling galaxies forming the shape of a rose. The stunning Hubble image released by NASA depicts Interacting Galaxies Arp 273, a combination of spiral galaxies UGC 1810 and UGC 1813 found in the constellation Andromeda. Although the two galaxies are separated by tens of thousands of light-years, they pass through one another! While composing this piece, the image of a rose created by these two intersecting galaxies was a lodestone for me.
Cosmic Rose is dedicated to horn player Rachel Constantino. She commissioned this work with funding provided in part by the Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Program of the International Horn Society, and by the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at the College of Musical Arts of Bowling Green State University, where she premiered it on October 15, 2022.
Active as a composer, educator, writer, and performer, ANNE LEBARON‘s compositions reflect her passions for such disparate subjects as surrealism in relation to music; the global scourge of femicide; and the often-overlooked achievements of women from all walks of life. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied with composers György Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel, subsequently earning a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University. Awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts, a Fromm Foundation commission, a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from Opera America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and artist residencies at Bellagio, Bogliasco, MacDowell, and Yaddo.
LeBaron’s operas celebrate legendary female figures from different eras, such as the Papessa Johanna and the renowned voudon queen Marie Laveau, who is portrayed in Crescent City. Two operas are now near completion: LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, a psychedelic odyssey led by the soprano trio Love, Sex, and Death; and This Lingering Life, a radical retelling of five classic Noh plays guided by The Woman with Tragic Hair. This year, the UCLA Davise Fund for Contemporary Music commissioned her to compose a set of works for saxophonist Jan Berry Baker, launching The Heroine with a Thousand Faces, a multi-year project for solo instruments honoring 1000 women. The New York Music Daily says of LeBaron’s most recent collection of chamber works, Unearthly Delights (Innova), “New classical music has rarely been so darkly and playfully entertaining.” Her published essays investigate subjects such as hyperopera, surrealist music, and how artists confront our post-truth era, and include critical appreciations of contemporary composers and theat- rical productions. She performs as a harpist specializing in improvisation with the LA-based Present Quartet. LeBaron teaches in the Composition and Experimental Sound Practices Program at CalArts.

[@JosephEhrenpreis]

I love Anne's music!