The Kirk Douglas Theater was the venue for “Mosiac,” a concert headed by local composer Emer Kinsella. As with her previous work “Renewal,” which was performed on the Culver Steps in April of 2024, “Mosiac” used music to create a narrative journey, to beautiful affect.
The sold-out audience was a mix of long time fans and brand new listeners, creating an ideal reflection for the performers. The musicians were uniformly excellent; Mehmet Aydin on viola, Mark Bassett on cello, Julian Lampert on bass, Janhan Raymond on piano, Juliet Lyons and A.J. Teshin on backing vocals, and two additional violins – Enosh Kofler and Eleanor Dunbar – supported Kinsella’s own violin.
In addition, there were dancers, billed as ‘movement artists,’ Darrel Dunn, Mark Bannister, Allie Costello, John Jimenez, Cassandra Tsolis, and Dominique Pompa, under the direction of Dunn, giving a visual and kinesthetic punctuation to the music.
The six ‘levels’ of the performance, from The Awakening to Metamorphosis, all consisted of a piece by Kinsella paired with a piece by another composer. Each composer was called up to the stage by moderator Kevin Winston to talk a bit about what inspired them to write their selection, and several also sat in to play an instrument or sing as part of the performance.
Composers Shirley Song, Genevieve Vincent, Jeff Toyne, Raashi Kulkarni, and Tree Adams all offered their work, and their thoughts on what inspired their work in to being. It was a broad landscape, and offered insight into how the many different minds and voices both supported the theme and stood out from it.
Kinsella used five pieces from her latest album ‘Concurrence,’ and one from her former work ‘Saturn,’ as the partner pieces through the levels. Taking on topics as large as creation, spiritual life, death and transition opened up a gorgeous space for the sound to speak.
The concert ended with a solid standing ovation, deeply deserved by all the performers.
Emer Kinsella has been in Los Angeles just shy of a decade, and has a powerful community of creative companions to work with; her goal of “creating immersive and transformative musical experiences,” is well under way.
You can find out more about her work, and purchase her music at emersionmusic.com
Judith Martin-Straw