School of Music

Tanya Orellana designs performance spaces for theater and opera. Originally from San Francisco, she has been a core member of the award winning ensemble Campo Santo since 2008, participating in their intimate new work process, conceptualizing and designing sets alongside the writing process.

Her design collaborations includes The Industry’s Sweet Land, a world premiere opera directed by Yuval Sharon and Cannupa Hanska Luger at LA State Historic Park; the world premiere of The Heath, by Lauren Gunderson directed by Sean Daniels at Merrimack Repertory Theatre (Lowell, Mass.); the Mexico premiere of Angels in America directed by Martín Acosta at Teatro Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (Mexico City); Native Gardens by Karen Zacarias directed by Rebecca Rivas at TheatreSquared (Arkansas), Casa de Spirits written and directed by Roger Guenveur Smith at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum (San Francisco, CA); and Rasgos Asiaticos, written by Virginia Grise, a scenic installation using sound, light, and objects to conjure narratives of immigration and migration in the US–Mexico borderlands.

Tanya received her MFA in Scenic Design from CalArts and is the 2016 recipient of the Princess Grace Fabergé Theatre Award.  Her design work on Angels in America was presented in the US Emerging Designers Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial 2019. She is an organizing member of La Gente: The Latinx Theatre Design Network.

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View the full Music and Change series here. This event is open to the Institute; RSVP using this form.

CASSILS is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances.

Cassils's art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

Dorian Wood seeks to glorify both the sanctity and irreverence of intimacy. Through the use of their corpulent body and booming voice, Wood revels in challenging the artist-audience separation, using subject matter informed by their own perspective as a non-binary brown person and an autodidact. Their work has been showcased in concert halls and performance spaces around the world, including at institutions like The Broad (Los Angeles), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Museo Nacional Del Prado (Madrid), the City Hall of Madrid and Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris (Mexico City).  

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Juan Pablo Villa is a vocal artist and composer who has been devoted to vocal exploration by means of free-improvisation, vocal extended techniques, and the free interpretation of diverse vocal manifestations of Mexico and abroad. His name is, without a doubt, a referent in Mexico in what concerns vocal expression and exploration. He is currently offering concerts of La Gruta de Baba (improvisations and pieces) in which, with the voice as core instrument, a looper and diverse objects, he creates a kaleidoscope of vocal sonority that generates an irresistible and surprising landscape for the audience.

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This lesson will be a workshop dedicated to the processes of creating compositions with various noise sources, both electronic and acoustic. We will listen to and analyze different noise excerpts, learn about different recording methods, and compose short etudes together that can be used as starting points for longer compositions.  Mostly this class will give students a lot of information and ideas to work with as they go into their projects for the last half of the semester.

Erin Demastes is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, composer, and performer whose research combines sound and technology with humor, drama, and absurdity. Her work emphasizes the arbitrariness of product design by subverting the usage and perception of materials with play and experimentation. By placing items in theatrical settings, Erin brings out the character of things we normally may not think twice about. She uses everyday, household objects for both her fixed media work and performances but occasionally will create hacked and intentionally non-user-friendly electronics, as well.

 

Event Details

View the full Music and Change series here. This event is open to the institute; RSVP using this form.

LA-based producer Animoss has contributed to many long-standing projects with some of the most critically acclaimed artists in underground hip-hop, including Roc Marciano, Ka, Chuck Strangers, Navy Blue, and Cadalack Ron.

Event Details

View the full Music and Change series here. This event is open to MAP/Ex-Pop and Creative Tech Forum students only; RSVP using this form.

A.G. Cook is one of the most celebrated producers of our time.  Founder of the hugely influential PC Music label, he has produced works by Charli XCX, GFOTY, Hannah Diamond, Tommy Cash, Jónsi, Caroline Polachek, and many others. He has been creative director for Charli XCX since 2015. His solo music includes the 49-track album 7G, as well as Apple, both released in 2020.

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AFRODEUTSCHE (Henrietta Smith-Rolla), is a British-born Ghanaian/Russian/German artist, BAFTA-nominated composer, producer, and DJ based in Manchester, UK. Her polyrhythmic compositions integrate a wide array of musical genres, including Afrofuturistic electro and techno, classical solo piano, and Detroit legacy house; all memorable journeys into deep, abstracted sound. Praised by The Guardian for enacting a new wave of club music, named by Dummy Mag as one of 2019’s most exciting artists, Afrodeutsche’s spectacular debut album Break Before Make was released on the legendary Skam label in 2018, followed in 2019 with the debut release on River Rapid and a much praised remix for Marie Davidson on Ninja Tune.

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