[photo credit: Sierra Madre Playhouse]
Aperture Duo — violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell — performs “as wave as stone” at Sierra Madre Playhouse at 8 p.m., a theatrical chamber program of contemporary works for violin and viola that folds in performance art and improvisation.
The argument belongs to “Travelogue,” a piece the duo commissioned from composer Erin Rogers, written while Rogers toured Europe on a succession of planes, trains and buses. Pope and Powell speak, sing, recite and quarrel throughout it, doubling as train commuters and as practicing musicians. Rogers has described the title as a tribute to Joni Mitchell’s album of the same name.
Also on the program is “to be two” by Leilani Leilehua, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and Kanaka Maoli composer, multimedia artist, curator, scholar and educator whose work is characterized by expansive explorations of timbre. The piece borrows its title from a book by philosopher and linguist Luce Irigaray, and Leilehua has woven excerpts from it into the score. The program also includes “edge” by Helmut Oehring, a composer whose perspective on sound and communication was shaped by growing up with deaf parents; “434.6” by Grammy-nominated Andrew McIntosh; and Kaija Saariaho’s “Aure,” written as an homage for Henri Dutilleux.
Aperture Duo was founded in 2015 by Pope and Powell, and commissions new work to widen a repertoire that has historically been thin. The publication I Care If You Listen has credited the duo with a “distinct sense of unity and independence” — two instruments that can sound like one, or like two people who disagree.
“as wave as stone” will be performed by Aperture Duo on Sunday, August 23 at 8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre. For more information, call (626) 355-4318 or visit sierramadreplayhouse.org. Tickets: $12 to $35.
