La Vida es Sueño by Steve Lehman
Performance notes:
Steve Lehman's piece La Vida Es Sueño premiered with the Grossman Ensemble on June 7, 2019.
La Vida Es Sueño—named in homage to Calderón de la Barca’s celebrated play from 1635—is a work inspired by the nature and the structure of dreams. What is the sound of an imaginary landscape? Or the feeling of a mythological folk music? This piece explores these questions and seeks to create a sequence of otherworldly sonorities through the use of scordatura (non-standard) tunings in the harp and the vibraphone. Sonic objects and instrumental gestures are introduced, 5 re-introduced, and juxtaposed in new ways throughout the piece, in an effort to evoke a non-linear, dreamlike structure that eschews any true teleology.