“The latest in wearable [tech] reached a runway at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday,” writes Mark Swed in Thursday’s (4/19) Los Angeles Times. “Designer Pauchi Sasaki walked down the right aisle in her trademark black Speaker Dress I, while the model and flutist Claire Chase sported Speaker Dress II, a skirt with its tiny, thin speakers patterned like an Issey Miyake bag…. Chase also had the ideal accouterment, a flute of intricate plastic tubing that looked as if it took its inspiration from a cow’s intestine…. The hall was awash in engulfing instrumental and vocal sounds, processed through live electronic manipulation. Sasaki’s ‘Gama XV: Piece for Two Speaker Dresses’ may or may not be a game-changer, but it works brilliantly on all levels.” Also on the program were Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together and Attica, “with the commanding young baritone Davone Tines [who] intoned the words as though they were the atomic structure of a spiritual. Both were simply breathtaking…. In [Ted Hearne’s] 2012 string suite [Law of Mosaics] the instruments are amplified with contact microphones.… [Gustavo] Dudamel led what are surely the finest performances the Rzewski and Hearne pieces have ever had.”
Posted April 20, 2018
Pictured: Pauchi Sasaki on violin and Claire Chase on flute perform Sasaki’s “Gama XV: Piece for Two Speaker Dresses” as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella concert at Disney Concert Hall. Photo by Maria Alejandra Cardona / Los Angeles Times
