What does it mean to find harmony between silence and noise, or between the individual and the collective? Sitting on an Earthquake, Dancing on a Volcano, an hour-long collaboration between composer and CalArts Music faculty Michael Pisaro-Liu and sociologist John Holloway, takes up those questions in performances Friday, May 8 and Saturday, May 9, at New Theater Hollywood.
The performance brings together spoken word and music, with Holloway delivering text alongside Pisaro-Liu on guitar and an ensemble that includes CalArts alumni Ivan Cunningham (Music MFA 25) on saxophone; Grace Dashnaw (Music MFA 25) on cello; Mads Frøslev (Music MFA 25), who performs as MK Velsorf, on samples and guitar; faculty member Judith Berkson (Music DMA 24) on piano; and current student Adam Lion on percussion.
As described in the program notes, Sitting on an Earthquake, Dancing on a Volcano, “speaks to the hope we might kindle for a future world in which value is measured not by money but by human dignity and the joys of a flourishing, inclusive, communizing harmony.”
Pisaro-Liu is the director of Composition and Experimental Music at The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and also the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition. He is a long-time member of the Wandelweiser Collective known for pieces with long durations of silence. Last month during CalArts’ spring break, he and fellow CalArts faculty member Arne De Boever co-led a series of workshops on “Silent Music” in Paris.
Holloway has written widely on anti-capitalist struggles and the meaning of revolution today. He is particularly inspired by the Zapatista movement and the Kurdish Freedom Movement. His trilogy, Change the World without Taking Power (2002), Crack Capitalism (2010), and Hope in Hopeless Times (2022) has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has stirred international controversy. He is a professor in the graduate school of sociology in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.
Holloway, who is traveling from Mexico for the performance, will also participate in a session at CalArts’ Wild Beast on the morning of Friday, May 8 in Pisaro-Liu’s experimental music workshop class.
Sitting on an Earthquake, Dancing on a Volcano is organized by MK Velsorf as part of an ongoing series of concerts at New Theater Hollywood. Tickets are available on the venue’s website.
By Orianna Reid
