Sound Investment Composer Sarah Gibson

Hit play below to listen to our Arts Alive feature with Sarah Gibson.

Sound Investment is Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s unique commissioning program that allows donors, or “sound investors,” to journey along with different composers as they write, edit, and premiere a new orchestral work. Since 2001, seventeen composers total have been commissioned including Andrew Norman, Matthew Aucoin, Julia Adolphe and Ellen Reid. This season’s composer, Sarah Gibson found influence for her piece warp & weft in the feminist art of Miriam Schapiro.

Schapiro is known for theorizing the term femmage, a type of art that collaged materials like cloth and fabric which are often associated with women’s crafting in the home. Schapiro wrote that femmage simultaneously recalls quilting and Cubism, has a “woman-life context,” and that it “celebrates a private or public event.”

As a nod toward Shapiro’s use of textiles, Sarah Gibson calls her new piece warp & weft, the terms for the two basic components used in weaving. The lengthwise warp yarns are held stationary while the transverse weft is drawn over-and-under to make fabric. This is realized musically in Gibson’s piece where large vertical chords have melodies weaving through them.

Catch the world premiere of Sarah Gibson’s warp & weft with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on January 26 at the Alex Theater in Glendale and January 27 at Royce Hall. The concert includes Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G Major, K. 453 performed by Jonathan Biss, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Andante for Strings, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Learn more at laco.org/events.