Biography
The Living Earth Show functions as a percussion-and-guitar duo that pursues innovative and boundary-pushing directions. The group describes its mission in these terms: "uses the tools of experimental classical music to foreground BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists, facilitating the creation of their most ambitious musical visions and creating work that reflects and responds to our world."
Guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson formed the ensemble in San Francisco during 2011. Commissioned multimedia productions have constituted the core of its activity from the outset, drawing in dance companies, visual artists, sculptors, poets, and additional musicians. These projects frequently incorporate California-related themes and foreground voices marginalized within conventional classical music practice. The duo issued its first recording, the album High Art, in 2013 and followed it three years afterward with Dance Music on the New Amsterdam label. Dedicated to fostering emerging creative minds, the Living Earth Show has undertaken residencies at the University of South Carolina and the University of California at Davis in 2018, at the University of Michigan Center for World Performance Studies together with Stanford University's music department in 2019, and at the University of Maryland in 2021.
Performances across the 2019-2020 season illustrate the breadth of its engagements. The Living Earth Show appeared at the Spoleto Festival USA in South Carolina, presented "Tremble Staves" at San Francisco's Sutro Baths in a co-production with the National Parks Service, joined the San Francisco Girls Chorus at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, collaborated with San Francisco's ODC Theater dance company during a festival marking the ensemble's tenth anniversary, and performed Lordship & Bondage: The Birth of the Negro Superman at the Cloisters in New York through a partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The latter piece was released on a Living Earth Show album in 2019. The duo reemerged in 2022 as a featured artist on Lyra, Samuel Adams' collection of genre-crossing music by the son of John Adams, while also scheduling a varied sequence of nearly monthly album releases throughout the year.
Guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson formed the ensemble in San Francisco during 2011. Commissioned multimedia productions have constituted the core of its activity from the outset, drawing in dance companies, visual artists, sculptors, poets, and additional musicians. These projects frequently incorporate California-related themes and foreground voices marginalized within conventional classical music practice. The duo issued its first recording, the album High Art, in 2013 and followed it three years afterward with Dance Music on the New Amsterdam label. Dedicated to fostering emerging creative minds, the Living Earth Show has undertaken residencies at the University of South Carolina and the University of California at Davis in 2018, at the University of Michigan Center for World Performance Studies together with Stanford University's music department in 2019, and at the University of Maryland in 2021.
Performances across the 2019-2020 season illustrate the breadth of its engagements. The Living Earth Show appeared at the Spoleto Festival USA in South Carolina, presented "Tremble Staves" at San Francisco's Sutro Baths in a co-production with the National Parks Service, joined the San Francisco Girls Chorus at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, collaborated with San Francisco's ODC Theater dance company during a festival marking the ensemble's tenth anniversary, and performed Lordship & Bondage: The Birth of the Negro Superman at the Cloisters in New York through a partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The latter piece was released on a Living Earth Show album in 2019. The duo reemerged in 2022 as a featured artist on Lyra, Samuel Adams' collection of genre-crossing music by the son of John Adams, while also scheduling a varied sequence of nearly monthly album releases throughout the year.
Albums
