Carolyn Duo & Alan Lechuza

This concert performance by the Carolyn Duo will feature excerpts from two large works by composer/performer Alan Lechusza with special guest Dave Wayne (Percussion). Alan Lechusza is quickly becoming one of the country’s top advocates for Native American multi-media art and scholarship. The Carolyn Duo is devoted to producing multi-media art works that blur the constructed lines of artistic demarcation solidified in a post-modern society.

In an urban society we deal with congestion on a multitude of levels each day. The embraced consistency of interference, either technological or human, is contemporarily daunting.  Yet, we continue, in an unfaltering manner, as though this borage of turbulence were natural.  How do we express an understanding of congestion and by what means do we create an acceptance of congestion in our daily lives?  Has the reversal of roles finally arrived where we, as urban dwellers, can only articulate our lives through the amount of congestion that we experience within our lives?  Has the time finally come for such an unholy way of life to become a sacred and protected way of life?  Congestion – A look at the interdeterminacy of interference within our (post-)modern times is an on-going work that struggles with this concept in an electro-acoustic format. 
 
TRAPA: A multi-media operatic work
TRAPA is a composite of fractious junctures that engages all the aspects of the operatic medium.  This work is centered upon the philosophy of apartness: how things fall apart.  The negotiative convergence and departure of sections in a given performance is the governing performative ideology principle of apartness. Sections are interactively balanced throughout a performance while being realized within and by temporal and spatial reservations. This designates that no two performances of TRAPA will be the same.  

Alan Lechusza, PhD
Assistant Professor, American Indian Studies, Palomar College (USA)
Tribal Affiliation: Lusieno/Maidu
Composer/Performer/Scholar

Alan Lechusza is quickly becoming one of the country’s top advocates for Native American multi-media art and scholarship. In 2008 he was elected to the Executive Call-To-Action Committee for the National Associate of Independent Schools (NAIS) based upon his critical work for Native American youth and education. His interdisciplinary research has been received around the globe and will be featured in 2008 at the American Technology and Music Instruction (ATMI) conference and at Kings College, London for the Opera Indigene Conference. His groundbreaking work on Native Hip Hop has been followed up by numerous publications and guest lectures at universities/colleges throughout Canada, Europe and the U.S.  His “powwowphonic” style balances Native American powwow and traditional musics with a constellation of genres including rock, punk, hip-hop, metal and Western classical music.  Alan Lechusza is an active multi-media artist who can be heard on such major recording labels as Tzadik, 9Winds, pFmentum Lira Productions and Ars Nova. His works have been presented at such venues as Lincoln Center (New York), The Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach), Jack Straw Productions (Seattle), New Media Festival (Germany), RedCat (Los Angeles), The Stone (New York) and American Composer’s Forum (Los Angeles, New York and Washington).  More information and audio samples can be found at Black Phone Records.

The Carolyn Duo
Electric/Acoustic Cello – Carolyn Lechusza
Multi-Woodwinds, Live Electronics, Compositions– Alan Lechusza
The Carolyn Duo is devoted to producing multi-media art works that blur the constructed lines of artistic demarcation solidified in a post-modern society.  Founded in 2004 by composer/performers Carolyn Lechusza and Alan Lechusza, The Carolyn Duo has been able to navigate and guide their collective way through an active engagement of works that range from fully improvised to hyper-complex notated works.

The Carolyn Duo will feature special guest Dave Wayne (percussion) on this concert.