The Living Earth Show opens on Sept. 28
The Southern Exposure New Music Series has achieved a national reputation for the quality and adventurous spirit of its four yearly concerts, unparalleled in the southeast for their mix of artistic quality, audience education and cutting-edge programming.
Devoted to exploring the rich variety of contemporary classical and world music written
in the past 30 years and masterworks of the 20th century, the series has grown steadily
and attracts crowds from throughout South Carolina and neighboring states.
The non-profit series is presented each year by the School of Music at the University
of South Carolina.
These free concerts, 7:30 p.m. in the School of Music Recital Hall, are often standing room only and early arrival is suggested for seating. For a donation of $100 or more, you can reserve one seat for the entire Southern Exposure season. Go to sc.edu/music/southern-exposure to find out how.
The wide-ranging 2018-2019 season, united as always by musicians and musical programming of the highest caliber, features a GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble, an acclaimed percussion quintet including USC’s own Scott Herring, a spectacularly creative and quirky guitar and percussion duo, and a return visit by America’s leading contemporary-music string quartet.
The Living Earth Show
Friday, September 28
The Living Earth Show, a guitar and percussion duo from the California Bay Area that memorizes every work it performs, won USC’s 2017 Savvy Chamber Competition with a virtuosic program that was both hilarious and thought-provoking. The socially conscious ensemble engages complicated topics head-on, from the relationship of race and sexual identity to the arts and to themselves as performers to the way art passes from one generation to the next.
The Living Earth Show’s Southern Exposure concert features a smorgasbord of different styles, including dance work with electronics by Daniel Wohl; a Persian-inspired piece by Sahba Aminikia; a work using scraped tiles and microtonal guitar by Raven Chacon; and a work that collaborates with numerous contemporary composers to deconstruct some of classical music’s most iconic pieces.
JACK Quartet
Monday, November 12
Called “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe), JACK is one of the most highly-esteemed string quartets in chamber music today. They also represent one of the few ensembles to have earned a repeat visit to the Southern Exposure stage, having performed one of the series’ most memorable concerts in the spring of 2011. Since that time, JACK has been joined by two new members, cellist Jay Campbell and violinist Austin Wulliman, and continues to play worldwide to critical acclaim. Also committed to educating a new generation of composers and performers, the ensemble maintains close relationships with schools including Boston University, the University of Iowa, Columbia, Harvard and Stanford, among others.
JACK’s Southern Exposure show includes a work by one of their most famed collaborators, the acclaimed and controversial Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, performed entirely in the dark (leave your sun glasses at home).
Roomful of Teeth
Thursday, January 17
Roomful of Teeth is a GRAMMY-winning vocal project dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice, and whose members number some of the most versatile young singers in the country, including Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw. Through study with masters from vocal traditions the world over, including Tuvan and Inuit throat singing, yodeling, Persian classical singing, Korean P’ansori and Hindustani music, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques.
As part of an ongoing commissioning process, the Roomful of Teeth is forging a new vocal repertoire without borders. The group’s Southern Exposure performance, a sampling of new works written for the ensemble, kicks off the 2019 College Music Society Summit, held in Johnson Hall, in the Darla Moore School of Business.
Sympatico Percussion
Friday, March 29
Sympatico Percussion includes five of the countries’ most highly respected percussionists and percussion teachers: Scott Herring (South Carolina), Joseph Krygier (Ohio State), Johnny Mendoza (McMurray), Christopher Norton (Belmont) and Susan Powell (Ohio State). The ensemble creates programs with entertainment and intrigue, virtuosity and poignancy, and appealing melodies and vibrant rhythms from around the world.
Sympatico’s Southern Exposure concert includes 20th-century icon John Cage’s Third Construction, one of a series of pieces for unorthodox percussion instruments written between 1939-42 as the composer toured the West Coast with a percussion ensemble founded by Cage and Lou Harrison.
Find out more about Southern Exposure New Music Series.