LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR E3
When he was a little boy,
Christopher Rountree frol-
icked with elves and fairies
under the dappled light of
the camellia forest at Des-
canso Gardens.
Playful theatricality was
embedded in his DNA. His
theater-world parents — a
“blissed out” mother who
practiced Siddha yoga and
an “amazingly joyful” father
who played in a folk band —
met at UCLA in the 1970s
during a student production
of “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” (she was Titania, he
was Bottom).
“Look, over there —
there’s an elf in that tree,”
Rountree’s mother would
say, and he would happily
run after it, chasing fantasy
and magic in the pictur-
esque La Cañada Flintridge
gardens.
Three decades later,
Rountree is still seeking
magic in that garden. In
place of the imaginary fairies
of his childhood, he now con-
jures enchanting moments
of musical and artistic con-
nection.
With “Silence,” an eve-
ning series of “experimental
music under the oaks” this
month, the 36-year-old com-
poser, conductor and cura-
tor will musically activate
Descanso’s fragrant open
spaces along with the series’
co-artistic director, violinist
and Girlschool founder
Anna Bulbrook.
Over the last decade,
Rountree has made a name
for himself as an essential
advocate for and facilitator
of new and experimental
music. As the director of
Wild Up, the flexible and vir-
tuosic L.A.-based new music
collective he founded in 2010,
he has regularly commis-
sioned and premiered art,
music and opera by a new
generation of innovators.
As a conductor, Rountree
has led musicians at presti-
gious concert halls and op-
era houses around the
world, as well as inside mu-
seum closets, warehouses
and DIY galleries. Pushing
musical and artistic bound-
aries, he has collaborated
with artists including Björk,
John Adams, Yoko Ono and
Ragnar Kjartansson.
Most recently in his
hometown of Los Angeles,
Rountree collaborated with
the Getty Research Institute
to curate the Los Angeles
Philharmonic’s wildly en-
gaging centennial season
Fluxus Festival. During its
run, Rountree was seem-
ingly everywhere: launching
watermelons off the roof of
Walt Disney Concert Hall,
traipsing around a prop-
filled stage performing John
Cage’s “Water Walk” or facili-
tating the smashing of a vi-
olin onstage.
“Silence” is, in many
ways, representative of
Rountree’s curatorial style:
It’s collaborative and con-
ceptual, brings new and ex-
perimental sounds into an
unexpected space, and oblit-
erates traditional bounda-
ries among genres. In vari-
ous combinations, the series
features goth and indie sing-
ers (Zola Jesus, Low Leaf), a
poet and rapper (Saul
Williams), a classical pianist
(Gloria Cheng) and music
by Cage and Pauline Ol-
iveros.
Rountree won’t conduct
during “Silence,” but he and
Bulbrook will actively par-
ticipate.
“Spoiler alert, we’re going
to be handing out rocks,”
Bulbrook said with a big
smile.A collaboration
On a recent afternoon,
she and Rountree met at an
Echo Park bar to discuss
their artistic collaboration
over margaritas and TopoChicos. They chatted about
recent collaborations (the
two met through the L.A.
Phil’s Fluxus Festival, dur-
ing which Bulbrook curated
a memorable all-female cele-
bration of Yoko Ono co-pro-
duced by Girlschool) and
the musical and artistic in-
spirations behind this proj-
ect.
Rountree and Bulbrook
share an artistic bond.
They’re fascinated by the
fantasy of absolute silence
and what Bulbrook called
the “opportunities and pos-
sibilities that arise out of si-
lence.” They share a passion
for music that lives at the in-
tersection of indie, pop, clas-
sical, experimental and
avant-garde.
“We share an unbounded
philosophy about what
‘good’ music is, and what
‘music’ is,” Bulbrook said.
“Working closely with Chris,
I’ve found that his generosi-
ty is absolutely consistent,
as a person and as a profes-
sional collaborator. He is
generative and open, un-
afraid to experiment. He
cares deeply not just about
the work he’s making but
also about the people he
makes it with.”
Whereas Bulbrook grew
up embedded in classical
music and didn’t break out
until college, when she
played in indie rock bands,
Rountree said he’d never
heard a Beethoven sym-
phony until he reachedcollege.
“I think I learned about
music kind of backwards,”
Rountree said.Dad’s message
Born in Anaheim, Roun-
tree attended middle and
high school in Irvine. At
Woodbridge High, he was
the captain of the hockey
team, president of the Latin
club and a player of the
trombone and the eupho-
nium in the band, his first
formal musical training.
Rountree played in a
Weezer-inspired band with
friends, gigged on his trom-
bone and won euphonium
competitions. Driving to
school or to the beach in his
Toyota Camry, he listened to
Philip Glass’ “Einstein on
the Beach” on repeat until
he had it memorized.
Rountree went to Cal
State Long Beach to study
music. He was planning to
become a band director.
With his warm, coach-like
enthusiasm and engaging,
athletic conducting style, it’s
easy to imagine him as a suc-
cessful high school band di-
rector, inspiring students
toward creativity and excel-
lence.
But life had other plans
for Rountree.
When he was 20, his fa-
ther committed suicide.
“He was an amazingly
joyful person, but also a de-
pressed person,” Rountree
said.“Before he died, my dad
left me a note. Among other
things, it said, ‘You should
be a conductor. I gotta go.’
That moment was totally
defining. It was like I pulled
the card from the deck that
said, ‘Go be an artist.’ So I
decided then that I wanted
to be an artist, and my life
changed in that moment.”
Through his trombone
teacher, Rountree found his
first conducting teacher,
Joana Carneiro, who from
2005 to 2008 was an Ameri-
can Symphony Orchestra
League conducting fellow at
the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic and worked with
then-music director Esa-
Pekka Salonen. With her
help, Rountree delved into
classical repertoire and con-
ducted imaginary orches-
tras in silence in an empty
Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Rountree went on to earn
a master’s degree in orches-
tral conducting at the Uni-
versity of Michigan. What he
was worried might be a
weakness — his relative lack
of classical training com-
pared with his classmates —
was actually a gift. He knew
things they didn’t about
contemporary art, new and
avant-garde music, and
where the music world is
headed as opposed to where
it’s been.
Back in Los Angeles after
graduate school, Rountree
received a small inheritance
from his uncle, minimalistpainter Aubrey Penny. He
used every penny of that
$8,000 to launch Wild Up.
For a while, Rountree
worked as middle-school
band teacher and self-
funded his scrappy new mu-
sic ensemble. But it wasn’t
long before institutions like
the Hammer Museum took
note. When curators at that
museum invited him and his
merry band to create music,
Rountree found freedom
in dissolving traditional
boundaries and meshing
music, art and theater.He gets wild
As Wild Up approaches
its 10-year anniversary,
Rountree can’t recall the ex-
act poem from which he
snagged the two words that
make up his ensemble’s
name, but each word of the
name still resonates with
significance.
“This is a ‘wild’ thing,” he
says of his ensemble. “It is a
thing that in its wildness is
vulnerable and is allowed to
be frayed and already bleed-
ing, already broken. The ‘up’
means choosing joy making,
hope and optimism.”
Rountree’s life changed
when his father told him to
pursue conducting. In turn,
Rountree is honoring the
memory of his father’s joyful
side, spending his life in the
pursuit of wildly optimistic
art making and chasing mu-
sical magic in a garden that
still feels like home.He’s back in the garden, chasing magic
Christopher Rountree,
a champion of new
music, creates a series
at Descanso, where
his roots run deep.
By Catherine Womack
Here we go again. It’s the
first week of September, and
the summer heat is reaching
its customary crescendo in
Southern California. The
hard-working members of
the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic have shed their white
Hollywood Bowl coats in or-
der to play in something ap-
proaching comfort. And
Nicholas McGegan — the
Bowl’s go-to 18th century
guy — returned to his cus-
tomary late-season place on
the Bowl podium to lead an-
other all-Mozart concert
Thursday night.
The all-Mozart evening is
becoming as much of a Bowl
fixture as the long-running
Tchaikovsky Spectacular —
and the programming is
threatening to become just
as predictable. In the past,
McGegan has been eager to
explore some of the more ob-
scure corners of the Köchel
catalog, or couple Mozart
with out-of-period rarities
like Jacques Ibert’s “Hom-
mage à Mozart.” This time,
there was no attempt to
depart from the roll call
of standards, as packaged
in the usual overture-con-
certo-symphony format.
Granted, it was top-
drawer Mozart: the Over-
ture to “The Magic Flute,”
the Piano Concerto No. 23
in A major, and for me at
least, the greatest sym-
phony of all, the Symphony
No. 40 in G minor. But that
just made it all the harder to
say something fresh and re-
vealing that would be re-
membered long after the
last notes echoed through
the hillsides.
The hot early-evening
weather seemed to put a
drag on “The Magic Flute”overture performance, with
McGegan operating at
something less than his usu-
al effervescent self. (I recall
something similar happen-
ing six years ago this week in
a Mozart curtain-raiser
here.) Pianist Inon Bar-
natan and McGegan have
been here together before,
collaborating on the Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 22 in- Both were participants
at an all-star concert that
closed Barnatan’s first sea-
son as La Jolla Summer-
fest’s music director last
month.
As he did with the No. 22,
Barnatan tried to shine a dif-
ferent light upon the No. 23
with a sophisticated, con-
stantly changing variety of
dynamics and touches —
sometimes from note to
note. Some of Barnatan’s
percussive highlighting
seemed to bring Mozart intocontemporary times, if only
for fleeting moments. The
performance really came to
life in the third movement
with a wit that was evident
both to the ear and on Bar-
natan’s impish facial expres-
sions on the video screens,
amply urged on by McGe-
gan.
With the heat subsiding
around 9 p.m., McGegan and
the members of the L.A. Phil
were able to deliver a per-formance of the Symphony
No. 40 that was full of pep
and vigor, with beautifully
molded phrasing in the sec-
ond movement and an ex-
hilaratingly paced fourth
movement. Some might find
more existential tragedy in
this G minor symphony, but
McGegan generally doesn’t
do angst — and it’s just as
well, for his Mozart with a
big, wide smile is often just
what we need.MUSIC REVIEW
PIANISTInon Barnatan performs during the L.A. Philharmonic’s all-Mozart program Thursday at the Bowl.Luis SincoLos Angeles TimesMozart makes
for hot night
at the Bowl
An L.A. Phil summer
fixture still hits the
highs with conductor
Nicholas McGegan.
By Richard S. Ginell
‘Silence’
Where:Descanso Gardens,
1418 Descanso Drive, La
Cañada Flintridge
When:7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Additional programs
scheduled for Sept. 21
and 28
Tickets:$37‘That moment was totally defining. It was like I pulled the card from the deck that said,
“Go be an artist.” So I decided then that I wanted to be an artist.’
—CHRISTOPHERROUNTREE,
recalling the freedom that his father bequeathed to himGary CoronadoLos Angeles Times