Jeff Lederer’s “Schoenberg on the Beach” is an 8-part song cycle of music based on the early vocal music of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. The instrumentation for the piece is voice, clarinets/woodwinds, cello, vibes, bass and drums. There is direct inspiration from the instrumentation of “Pierrot Lunaire” and the style of the vocal production will be drawn from the original sources, a kind of sprech-stimme approach to the written material as well as the personal jazz phrasing of the vocalist themselves. The work includes elements of arrangement of the original sources including Pierrot, and the Hanging Gardens song-cycle, with approaches ranging from strict to loose as well as new composition and improvisation from the group.

Schoenberg (His Son was my High School Math Teacher)- There is a direct personal connection of Schoenberg’s early vocal music for me – I grew up in Los Angeles where in the 12th grade…