The brilliant Aperture Duo – described by Bandcamp Daily as “crucial members of the LA new music scene” – shines in a program of three world premieres and a repertoire favorite. Violinist Adrianne Pope and violist Linnea Powell are players whose jaw-dropping technical ability is matched only by their fearlessness. They’re also key members of Wild Up, LA’s ruling new-music ensemble.

Brooklyn-based composer Steven Swartz’s lyrical ‘merger’ will have its world premiere on this program. “I’ve always been intrigued by moments when the boundaries between two instruments become porous and their identities blur,” says Swartz. “For much of ‘merger,’ the violin and viola share the same material – they’re unified yet autonomous, like Adrianne and Linnea’s singing voices, which occasionally join the musical texture. The four sections that form merger range widely in mood: expectant, playful, melancholy, and tranquil, corresponding to the seasons of the year.”

Composer/guitarist JIJI contributes another world premiere to the program: ‘Cherry Dreams.’ As JIJI tells it, “It’s a bittersweet feeling just looking back at the things, not knowing it was going to be the last time: playing with your childhood friends in the playground, having dinner together and getting drunk with your friends, the last time your dad picked you up before you grew too big, the last day you got to wear your favorite dress as a child, the last time you saw that special person, the last sip you had of your favorite drink (before it got discontinued), and the last walk you took going to school.”

Jordan Nelson, a versatile composer who’s on the faculty at the Colburn School, originally wrote ‘As They Say’ in 2013 as a suite for viola/voice and piano/voice. In 2022, he revised and re-engineered the piece for Aperture Duo; this will be the world premiere of the new arrangement. The texts, compiled in collaboration with Will Clifton and Andi Hemmenway, come from a variety of proverbs, parodies of proverbs, excerpts of different biblical translations, and colloquial tongue-twisters.

The evening closes with Carolyn Chen’s exuberant ‘My Loves Are in America,’ a centerpiece of Aperture Duo’s self-titled debut album. The piece is inspired by the playing of Tommy Potts, the iconic Irish fiddler whose highly individual, virtuoso playing added beats, improvisations, and radical treatments of tune structures, taking inspiration from jazz, Chopin, and Rachmaninov. Chen calls ‘My Loves’ “a celebration of virtuosic eccentricity, exploring how voices moving in different senses of time can coexist and groove together.”