Ian Dicke & Alexander Elliott Miller: SOUTH
SOUTH presents two Los Angeles composers, Ian Dicke and Alexander Elliott Miller, showcasing large multimedia works that explore the space between mythology and history, from east to west, of our Southern United States.
Alexander Elliott Miller’s TO….OBLIVION: Historic Landmarks Around Los Angeles is a suite for electric guitar, sound effects and video showing changing historic sites in LA of societal or symbolic meaning. Included in the suite are parts about LA’s first abandoned subway tunnel, the hotel where African American jazz artists were welcome to stay during segregation, the abandoned aqueduct constructed by Spanish settlers in 1781 which led to the growth of the city, and others.
Ian Dicke’s Cowboy Rounds is a song cycle for piano/vocalist and live electronic processing. This work “remixes” pre-existing source material culled from the John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip, an ethnographic field collection hosted online by the Library of Congress. Over a sequence of seven folk songs, the piece builds an intersection between old traditions and new technologies while examining the areas between permanence and ephemera.