wild Up

Calling itself a collective on occasion, the Los Angeles ensemble Wild Up stages events that, in its own phrasing, “live somewhere between new music and theater and performance art and pop.” The group has joined forces with an array of conventional orchestras, rock ensembles, and cultural organizations. Christopher Rountree established Wild Up in 2010 and continues to serve as artistic director, with the goal of assembling young players who would situate fresh classical-music presentations amid popular culture, performance art, and the avant-garde. Twenty-four musicians belong to the ensemble, though any given undertaking draws upon a shifting subset of that roster. Residencies have been held at institutions including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Hammer Museum. A sequence of prominent Los Angeles engagements during the 2013–2014 season, among them first appearances at the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Brooklyn Festival, at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Minimalist Jukebox Festival, and at the Colburn School—the latter inaugurating an enduring partnership—brought the group wider attention.

Additional partnerships have linked Wild Up with musicians and creators spanning numerous genres. Hundreds of new compositions have received their premieres under the ensemble’s auspices, among them works by Julia Holter and Juliana Barwick, while further projects have involved avant-garde pop artists such as Björk, for whom Wild Up provided support at the FYF Fest, and Scott Walker. The music of the Black avant-garde composer Julius Eastman, who died in 1990, has been a particular focus. Live film scores have also been presented, among them Mica Levi’s score for Under the Skin and Jon Brion’s for Punch Drunk Love, both at the Regent Theater and Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. A noise concert marked the groundbreaking of a new Frank Gehry structure in downtown Los Angeles, and the ensemble inaugurated the winter-solstice series Darkness Sounding. Wild Up appears on the 2019 New Amsterdam recording of Christopher Cerrone’s The Pieces That Fall to Earth, nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Group Performance, and issued Femenine in 2021, the initial installment in a planned sequence of Eastman recordings.