Hey there, reader/listener/new friend!
Thanks for stopping in! All of us here at Loop38 firmly believe that it’s much easier to enjoy a concert when you have some background in what you’re about to hear and why it’s incredible! SO, leading up our concerts this year, I will be posting these short little tidbits about our featured composers. Hoping that this will feel like you’re chilling with a friend, getting psyched about great music! Feel free to take a peak, have a listen, and get a taste for what’s to come!
Our upcoming concert bayou born is COMING UP QUICK THIS TUESDAY NIGHT!!! It will be up at the Live Oak Meeting House, which is also a James Turrell designed space. Most importantly, it’s free! So, you really have no excuse for not showing up.
Today we’re getting to know one of my favourite new composers. Angélica Negrón is a composer and mutli-instrumentalist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1981. She is currently based in New York where she is spinning out evocative new works encompassing toy instruments, live electronics, and contemplative idiosyncrasies. One of the first pieces of hers I came across was this fantastic number for toy piano and electronics:
She is also a founder of the electronic indie band Balun, where she sings and plays the accordion. Check it out!
She has been featured in many magazines and editorials as an up and coming composer and has been commissioned by Bang on a Can and the American Composers Orchestra, among many. She is currently in residency at National Sawdust working on her “lip sync opera titled Chimera for drag queen performers and chamber ensemble exploring the ideas of fantasy and illusion as well as the intricacies and complexities of identity”.
Here’s a great interview with her on Youtube!
“I love art that makes me see the world in different ways, that makes me question my perceptions and understandings, and that invites me to change something about myself and my surroundings.”
In case you need another reason to love Negrón, aside from her wonderful compositions, she co-founded Acopladitos, a music program for children, and is currently a teaching artist at New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program at Lincoln Center. What a STAR.
-Ally