L.A. STORIES – HELIX COLLECTIVE (2018)
L.A. Stories brings together poets, writers, composers, and musicians to celebrate the beauty and diversity of Los Angeles. This music and storytelling show creates vignettes within the city about surviving and thriving in L.A. Droughts. Movie Stars. Love. Arriving from a distant land. We all share this city but it looks different from every vantage point.
Each musical piece is intertwined with a story about the Los Angeles experience. Composer Jamie Thierman brings to life letters found in the archives of the Los Angeles Public Library from our city’s earliest days. Indian-American composer Reena Esmail combines the Farsi verse of poet Nadia Anjuman with her unique style blending Western and Hindustani musical elements. With a nod to the lighter side of life in L.A., composer Eugene Micofsky gives the story by John Grady, The Reverse Swayze, about a strange night in the Hollywood Hills, a soundtrack of dancing and misunderstandings. Not to leave out the theme of love in the City of Angels, composers Phil Popham and Mark Carlson choose stories about young, wild romance by local writers Wanda Coleman and Larry Colker. Finally, composer Dale Trumbore creates a musical meditation through her own words on the life of an artist in this teeming city.