Lara Candland’s book Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree was published BlazeVox.  Her work has appeared in Fence, The Colorado Review, Barrow Street,  Greatcoat, Fine Madness, The Quarterly and other journals.  Her pamphlet, Tongue Child was published by the University of South Carolina’s Palanquin/TDM series.  She has been a finalist in The Motherwell, Hudson, and St. Lawrence book awards.  She has also been the recipient of an AWP Intro Award,  She is a founder and the librettist for Seattle Experimental Opera, and a finalist in the Genesis Prizes.  Her opera, Sunset with Pink Pastoral with husband and composer Christian Asplund, was performed by Almeida Opera in London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre.  Candland has taught poetry, college writing, food writing and fiction writing at various colleges and universities around the country as an itinerant grad student/follower of a grad student, and is currently exploring the intersection between written down works and live improv with electronic sampling. 

 

Canadian-American composer-performer Christian Asplund’s interests include intersections of text/music, improvisation/composition, and modular textures/forms.  He has received awards from Genesis Foundation, Barlow Endowment, Artistrust, King County, ASCAP, Alpert Foundation and Jack Straw Foundation.  His teachers have included Thea Musgrave, Alvin Curran, Michael Hicks, David Sargent, Joel Durand, and John Rahn. He has performed with Stuart Dempster, Malcolm Goldstein, and Christian Wolff, John Butcher, Eyvind Kang, Amy Denio, Jessica Lurie, and many others. His music appears on Present Sounds, Tzadik, Sparkling Beatnik, and other labels, and his compositions have been performed and broadcast in many locations in Europe, North America and Australia.  His scores are published by Frog Peak Music.  He has written books and articles for Perspectives of New Music, American Music, University of Washington and University of Illinois Presses.  His most recent project has been three marathon performances on piano of the complete works of Thelonious Monk in Utah, Seattle, and New York. Words used by the press to describe his music include:  passion, panoramic power, pure pointillist, plaintive, painstaking, rhythmically toothy, rocking, remarkable, rollicking, searing, subdued, soothing, submersive, splendid, unique, ethereal, mesmerizing, mind-blowing, otherworldly, absorbing, intelligent, idiosyncratic, distinctive, captivating, bewitching.  He lives in Provo, Utah where he teaches at Brigham Young University.