Join us for a pre-concert talk at 6:15 pm with featured performer Fiona Digney and sound engineer Peter Otto.
In partnership with ICA San Diego / North, Art of Elan presents a musical program that explores identity and how it informs our various roles as individuals, family members, and members of society in general. Featuring the North American premiere of Steve Reich’s “Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ,” all performed by percussionist Fiona Digney along with sound engineer Peter Otto, this not-to-be-missed event features a pre-concert talk with the artists as well as a chance to view the Ethan Chan / David Peña exhibit tied to themes of identity and healing.
Identity is not static—it is shaped by memory, movement, and transformation. It is built from fragments of personal experience and cultural history, constantly shifting in response to time and place. Identities explores the fluidity of selfhood, the echoes of heritage, and the tensions between belonging and isolation.
This program is inspired by the work of artists Ethan Chan and David Peña, who both use their art to process and reflect on healing—Chan, from the loneliness and alienation heightened by the pandemic, and Peña, from the grief of losing his grandfather. Chan’s work interrogates the aesthetics of Americana and its relationship to racial identity, exploring how cultural symbols define and exclude. His sculptures, performances, and installations reflect a deep engagement with the complexities of Asian American identity, questioning who is seen, who is heard, and how belonging is constructed in contemporary America.
The music in Identities mirrors these themes of transformation, displacement, and resilience. David Lang’s lend/lease is an act of endurance, where repetition accumulates subtle variations, echoing the slow evolution of self and history. Nico Muhly’s A Hudson Cycle evokes the movement of a river—continuous yet never the same, shaped by invisible forces, much like the cultural currents that shape identity.
Andy Akiho’s Karakurenai and Three Shades, Foreshadows fracture and recombine rhythmic patterns, layering echoes of past and present in a dynamic interplay of sound, much like the way personal and cultural histories intersect. Salina Fisher’s Komorebi captures a fleeting moment—the way light filters through leaves, a metaphor for how identity is both ephemeral and deeply rooted.
The program culminates with Steve Reich’s Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ, a work that bends time itself, layering past and present into an intricate, evolving structure. The piece challenges the perception of now, before, and after—reminding us that repetition is not stasis but transformation.
Like Chan’s and Peña’s work, this program asks us to consider how we are shaped—by memory, by movement, by repetition, and by rupture. It reminds us that identity is not singular or fixed; it is a continuous process of becoming, an evolving narrative told through sound, space, and experience.