Pacific Serenades

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About Pacific Serenades The mission of Pacific Serenades is to generate new chamber music by commissioning works and presenting them alongside standard repertoire in intimate concert settings, emphasizing the talents of Southern California musicians. Pacific Serenades has twice been awarded the prestigious Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, for our 2004-05 and 2002-03 seasons. Our self-presenting ensemble has become one of the premier chamber music organizations in Southern California and one of the longest-performing on the West Coast since its first concert in 1982. Now in its 24th full concert season, it exists so that music lovers-listeners, performers, and composers alike-might experience chamber music as a living art-and to experience it in the intimate setting for which it is intended. The performers are among the best musicians of the Los Angeles area-indeed, of anywhere. Each of the four programs presents the premiere of a new work commissioned by Pacific Serenades along with standard repertoire, and each is performed in a private home, at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena, and at the UCLA Faculty Center. By the end of its 24th season, Pacific Serenades will have presented the premieres of 98 new works-more than any other group of its kind in the country. Representing 54 different composers, most of them from the Los Angeles area, many of these works have gone on to further performances by other ensembles throughout this country and in Europe and Canada, and many of them have already been published and recorded. The organization is beginning to publish its commissioned works in order to make them more available to other ensembles. Pacific Serenades gave its first New York concert, at Carnegie Recital Hall, in September of 1994, and its first San Francisco concert in January of 1998. Pacific Serenades's first CD, The Hall of Mirrors, was a winner of the 2001 Chamber Music America/WQXR Records Awards. Our newest CD, Border Crossings, features works we have premiered by Latin American-born composers ( Miguel del Aguila and Enrique Gonz lez-Medina ) and other composers directly influenced by Latin American music ( Robert Livingston Aldridge and Mark Carlson ) was released in January 2008. A third, entitled War Scrap: that we may have peace, is in production and will include music by John Steinmetz, Larry Lipkis, and Mark Carlson.