Mini-Concert; free admission.
Sädesärla (Chris Adler, khaen & Batya MacAdam-Somer, violin/viola/voice)
Sädesärla is a world fusion duo project presenting original compositions and arrangements of folk music from Sweden, Thailand, and beyond with Christopher Adler on khaen, the bamboo free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand, and Batya MacAdam-Somer on violin, viola, and voice.
The project was initiated in 2017 when Chris reached out to Batya about joining him on some Scandinavian folk tunes for a faculty recital at the University of San Diego. Since that point, they have built a program of folk music and original works by Chris.
Christopher Adler is a composer, performer and improviser living in San Diego, California. His music draws upon thirty years of research into the traditional musics of Thailand and Laos, and a background in mathematics. He is a foremost performer of new music for the khaen, a free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand, and his CD Landscape Traces: New music for khaen, volume two was selected by Ted Gioia as one of the top 100 releases of 2023. He attended the International Gugak Workshop in Seoul, South Korea in 2022, and was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to South Korea in 2024. His cross-cultural compositions for traditional Korean instruments have been presented at the National Gugak Center by the Society for East-West Music and Ensemble The Geomungo. Other recent projects include Science Fictions for two pianos, based on mathematical sequences explored in a co-authored paper with mathematician Jean-Paul Allouche, and Aeneas in the Underworld, a concert-length oratorio for guitar and ensemble recounting the sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid released on MicroFest Records. He is a pianist with NOISE, a frequent performer for San Diego New Music, and co-founder of the soundON Festival in La Jolla, California. He is currently Professor of Music and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of San Diego, and was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to South Korea in 2024. His compositions have also been released on many labels including Tzadik, MicroFest, Innova, Centaur, New Amsterdam, and Cities and Memory, and his performances are on labels including Tzadik, Innova, and Centaur.
Batya MacAdam-Somer is a violinist, violist, and vocalist. She performs within classical, experimental, folk, and pop music practices, collaborating frequently with musicians and artists across a variety of disciplines. She enjoys teaching and writing about music.
Batya is the third daughter of a Jewish New Yorker and a Midwesterner from Ohio. Batya grew up in the balmy sprawl of Houston, Texas, where she started learning violin and piano in the Suzuki method from a young age and fell in love with music via listening to the local oldies radio station. She became serious about the violin around age 9 and music has been her life ever since.
After beginning her college studies at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston, Batya moved to New York City and earned a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music in 2005. A year later, she drove across the country to study avant-garde and experimental music at the University of California, San Diego, where she earned a Masters and Doctorate of Musical Arts, graduating in 2014.
Batya enjoys a vibrant and varied performance career within classical, experimental, folk, and pop music practices: mainly as a violinist, sometimes as a violist, and occasionally as a vocalist, sometimes singing while playing. Much of her work involves collaborating with other musicians and artists, taking her across the USA as well as to Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Europe.
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