Mast on Fig proudly presents two darkness sounding events with Wild Up!

Satsang 2 – Rountree Reads Parables
Sunday, December 29, 2019
5:00 – 6:30 PM
Mast on Fig
4030 N Figueroa St LA
$10 tickets HERE*

Four Satsangs (spiritual discourses) spread on different weeks, span the duration of darkness sounding, in which singer / composer Odeya Nini and artistic director Christopher Rountree lead discussions, group sings, sound baths, and readings around the topics of community, endeavoring, history, darkness, and ritual.

For this second Satsang, Chris Rountree reads stories and leads a discussion about how we find ourselves in them. Chris has long been fascinated in how stories and music share pace and direction. In this short series of stories read aloud, interspersed with music, Rountree weaves lessons for the time of year when we’re all contemplating how things have gone, how they’ve changed, how we got where we are now, and exactly how to go forward best.

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Saunders – On Sensory Deprivation
Thursday, January 9, 2020
8:00 – 9:15 PM
Mast on Fig
4030 N Figueroa St LA
$10 tickets HERE*

Annie Saunders and Christopher Rountree have a public conversation about ‘Rest’ (working title) their work in progress with composer Emma O’Halloran. Topics include sensory deprivation, suggestibility and the nature of consciousness, sense perception and hallucinations, and what ‘rest’ means to us in the modern world.

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about Christopher Rountree, curator / performer

We see Lady Macbeth in a dozen crooning silhouettes washing blood out of rags over bright porcelain sinks; see dozens of watermelons fly off of Disney Hall; listen to three minutes of “Le nozze” for twelve hours; and hear the sound of rose-petal jam making as music. Conductor and composer Christopher Rountree, is standing at the intersection of classical music, new music, performance art and pop. Regarded as one of the most iconoclastic conductors in the field, Rountree’s inimitable style has led to collaborations with: Björk, John Adams, Yoko Ono, David Lang, Scott Walker, La Monte Young, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mica Levi, Alison Knowles, Sigourney Weaver, Tyshawn Sorey, Ragnar Kjartansson, L’Rain, Caroline Shaw, Saul Williams, Ryoji Ikeda, Du Yun, and many of the planet’s greatest orchestras and ensembles including: the San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera national de Paris, the Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Rountree is the artistic director and conductor of Wild Up, the ensemble he founded in 2010, and artistic director of an interdisciplinary ambient series in an oak grove in LA, called SILENCE. for more about Chris

about Annie Saunders, director

Annie Saunders is a director and live artist. Her company, Wilderness, creates immersive performance site-specifically in under-utilized urban spaces in Los Angeles and around the world. The company has also presented work at REDCAT, the Public Theater, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Omaha’s One Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Edinburgh’s Summerhall, the San Francisco Playhouse, the Getty Villa and the Bush Theatre and Theatre Delicatessen in London, and created commissioned experiences for Cannes Lions, Bulleit Bourbon, Dos Equis, Hewlitt Packard, Asics Worldwide, Santander and Mastercard. She was a participant in the Devised Theater Working Group for next-generation performance-makers at the Public Theater, trained at the University of London, the Sanford Meisner Center and RADA, and spent ten years as a creative activist with Eve Ensler’s V-Day, a global creative movement to end violence against women. She is a core collaborator with Lars Jan’s Early Morning Opera and has appeared in Holoscenes, The Institute of Memory (TIMe) and Abacus. for more about Annie

About darkness sounding

What is it about the end of the year? It’s dark already, our clocks have jumped. And even in LA nights seem to overtake the days. Pagan and sacred holidays abound: rituals collecting themselves around the darkness. We’re hungry for something new, for something wrapped and warm, yet we search for a newness unbounded by the trappings of the past. In December 2019 and January 2020 Wild Up embarks on a new venture, a series set against the darkest days of the year. We make mindful, joyful and maybe melancholic music, endeavoring to drone sounds of the earth. The sounds of community being drawn together in contemplation. darkness sounding is made possible through generous support from Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman, and Bill Anawalt.

About Wild Up

Called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant … fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times, Wild Up has been lauded as one of classical music’s most exciting groups by virtually every significant institution and critic within earshot. Artistic Director Christopher Rountree started the group in 2010 with a vision of a group of young musicians that rejected outdated traditions and threw classical repertoire into the context of pop culture, new music, and performance art.

In 2019 – 2020, the group celebrates 10 years of bringing people together around the belief that no music is off limits, that classical music concerts can defy convention and address the need for heart-wrenching, mind-bending experiences.

Over the past decade the group: accompanied Björk at Goldenvoice’s FYF Fest; premiered David Lang and Mark Dion’s “anatomy theater” at LA Opera; played the scores to “Under the Skin” by Mica Levi and “Punch Drunk Love” by Jon Brion live with the films at L.A.’s Regent Theater and Ace Hotel; premiered a new opera by Julia Holter at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust; premiered a new work of avant-pop icon Scott Walker and celestial loop-maker Juliana Barwick at Walt Disney Concert Hall; played a noise concert as a fanfare for the groundbreaking of Frank Gehry’s new building on Grand Avenue and First Street in downtown L.A.; was nominated for a Grammy for their 2019 Chris Cerrone portrait “The Pieces That Fall to Earth; and held performance and educational residencies at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Colburn School, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, National Sawdust, University of North Carolina, and the Hammer Museum, among others.