Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble is dedicated to the performance of contemporary music, having premiered more than 150 new works. In performance, the group often pairs new pieces with relevant traditional repertory, in the members' own words aiming to reveal "the expressive intent of composers from every age." The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble was founded in San Francisco in 1992. The group is a consortium of between 13 to 15 musicians, from which smaller ensembles may be drawn as needed to facilitate the performance of a wide variety of music. The Left Coast (or LCCE, as it is known) performs at a well-established subscription series offering concerts at several San Francisco Bay Area venues, including the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Berkeley Hillside Club; it also performs outdoors on occasion. The ensemble has performed beyond California and the U.S., appearing at the American Academy in Rome and holding residencies at the Red Note New Music Festival at Illinois State University, the Wunsch New Music Festival at the University of Kansas, and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival in Oregon. The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble emphasizes its commitment to contemporary composition and has performed more than 150 new works, but its concerts often combine new and traditional repertory in inventive, illuminating ways. The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has made several recordings, the first of which was 2006's San Francisco Premieres, on its own label. That album included music by Kurt Rohde, a member of the ensemble and a composer whose music the group has often performed. The group returned in 2021 on the Avie label with a recording of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and Rohde's one wing. The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has a broad-based commitment to education, sponsoring an annual composition contest and collaborating with various artists, scholars, and thinkers.
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