2026 PARTCH Ensemble: Bewitching Petals

PARTCH Ensemble—the Grammy Award-winning ensemble specializing in the music of the iconoclastic composer Harry Partch—debuts newly constructed, custom-built replicas of instruments designed by Partch in their annual survey of his music. Accompanying two world premieres by Rand Steiger and Daniel Corral, the evening begins with excerpts from the rarely heard Partch piece On the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma—a kaleidoscope of swirling timbres that amazes with the composer’s “multiple exposure” technique—and concludes with the “Prologue” & “Epilogue” from Partch’s midcentury piece The Bewitched. Partch’s instruments entitled the Crychord, Chromelodeon II, Zymo-Xyl, and Gubagubi will have their debut performances with the Ensemble, providing what LA Weekly describes as “weird and wonderful sonorities, truly unlike anything else on Earth or any neighboring celestial body.”

The program includes an instrument “petting zoo”: audiences are encouraged to interact with the instruments on stage after the show.