Daniel Corral

I was recently asked by pianist Lorenzo Marasso to write a short piano piece in response to Bach’s Invention #13 in Am. My piece is cleverly titled Canon in A Minor. It’s a strict canon at the octave, with the two voices one 16th note apart from each other.

Lorenzo will play Canon in A Minor along with pieces by 14 other composers this Sunday 7/26 at 6pm, live-streaming on YouTube and Facebook.

I’m collaborating with Alexander Gedeon and the Now Hear Ensemble on a piece I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time, titled Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage.

We will premiere CHFES on October 18 at Automata!

CHFES combines live music and theatrical performance to reframe the cultural significance of the “worst album in rock and roll history.”

“Having Fun with Elvis on Stage” is a 1973 album collaged entirely from Elvis speaking on stage between songs at live concerts – no music. AllMusic’s Mark Deming declared “hearing it is like witnessing a car wreck, leaving onlookers too horrified and too baffled to turn away.” Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage reimagines this vilified recording as the libretto for a sort of ghost opera, combining pop art nostalgia with new technology and classical instruments to create a memetic hologram of the endless purgatory of celebrity afterlife.

Members of the Now Hear Ensemble (Federico Llach, Brian Walsh, and Daniel Corral) will perform my original live musical score along with the original LP as if they were the pit orchestra for opera or musical theater – sometimes harmonizing with the words, painting emotions in the spaces between, or reacting theatrically. Meanwhile, Gedeon’s “Elvis” persona becomes a vehicle to explore all things banal and absurd in pop idolatry, as well as the performative aspects of ‘stage presence.’

October 18, 8:30pm

Automata
504 Chung King Ct, Los Angeles, CA 90012

$20 general
$15 students/seniors/Automata members