“The big buzz last year, however, was Crescent City, the Industry’s first production in an old warehouse in Atwater Crossing [ii]. Its composer Anne LeBaron is a New Orleanian who now teaches at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) based in Santa Clarita in one of Los Angeles’ northern valleys. A former student of Mauricio Kagel and György Ligeti, LeBaron has pushed the boundaries not only of opera, but of instrumental music. I heard her monodrama Some Things Should Not Move (about her experiences in a haunted apartment in Vienna) at The Colburn School’s Zipper Hall in March and can well understand how an eventual production of that opera, when it is complete, might make a virtue of positioning the audience in a haunted space (if indeed that’s the direction it goes in).”
Symphony Services International, 2013
Read More“Anne LeBaron, on the faculty at CalArts, happens to be the local composer of the moment with her breathtaking opera "Crescent City" currently in production and a piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening Hollywood Bowl concert in July…LeBaron's "Solar Music," which featured flutist Larry Kaplan and harpist Alison Bjorkedal, is full of striking, emphatic tonal colors.”
LA Times, 2012
Read More“I thought the opera’s score to be superb. It could easily be staged in a conventional manner…”
David Gregson, Opera West, 2012
Read More"Equal parts opera, avant-garde, art installation and phantasmagoria, the result, if you can handle it, is a jaw-dropping, perplexing, exciting, fun, challenging, exasperating, noteworthy, and exciting theatrical experience the likes of which you may never see again."
Tony Frankel, Stage and Cinema, 2012
Read More“The bleeding edge of modern theatrical performance art. LeBaron has cooked up a complex, exotic, polyrhythmic gumbo of sound. The images are indelible, and it is a production you will not soon forget…Preservation Hall on acid.”
CultureSpot LA, 2012
Read More“LeBaron's score includes a complex of styles. There is the Cajun and Creole music, the jazz and zydeco from her native New Orleans, which LeBaron layers to create atmosphere. She is fluent in grandly operatic manner and in the language of avant-garde. A lot can happen at once, or she can focus very simply on the moment. This too is a perspective that is always changing, and always captivating.”
LA Times, 2012
Read More“As unorthodox as the story line, music and sets are, the relationship of the audience to "Crescent City" itself may be even stranger. Audiences can view the work from beanbag chairs in the set's approximation of a dive bar, from what Sharon jokingly calls a skybox set over the action, or while walking along a pedestrian area along the edge of the stage. The latter option, he says, "allows you to look at it from the perspective of performance art or a gallery," with a shifting point of view and accidental connection with other audience members.”
LA Times, 2012
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