Wild Up: Artist Bio

Wild Up is a collective of artists who work together at the vanguard of classical music. Wild Up is a laboratory for experimenting with the future of sound. It’s an ethos about what a concert should feel like, how music should function in our lives, and how music can bring us together.

To us, the name Wild Up means: the thoughtful, unabashed, hearts open, eyes up feeling that connects us when we make and listen to music.

Wild Up began in 2010 as the self-funded, grassroots project of Artistic Director Christopher Rountree. Called “…a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant…fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times, Wild Up has been lauded as one of classical music’s most exciting groups by virtually every significant institution and critic within earshot. In the past season, Wild Up premiered new pieces by Julianna Barwick, Andrew Greenwald, Ted Hearne, William Brittelle with Zola Jesus, Ragnar Kjartansson, among others.

In addition, the ensemble played a new program called Eve with Martha Graham Dance Company; gave a portrait of Julius Eastman at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and taught classes around the intersection of mindfulness, social practice and empathy in Virginia.

Past notable performances are many. The group accompanied Björk at Goldenvoice’s FYF Fest; premiered David Lang and Mark Dion’s anatomy theater at LA Opera; played the scores to Under the Skin by Mica Levi and Punch Drunk Love by Jon Brion at the Regent Theater and Ace Hotel; premiered a new opera of Julia Holter’s at National Sawdust; premiered a new work of avant-pop icon Scott Walker at Walt Disney Concert Hall; and performed a noise fanfare for the groundbreaking of Frank Gehry’s new building on Grand Avenue and First Street in downtown L.A. Wild Up has been lavished with praise by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, public radio’s Performance Today and many, many more publications and critics.

Wild Up is working on future projects with Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter; with director Annie Saunders, and with composers Emma O’Halloran and Timo Andres.

Forthcoming albums including the music of Christopher Cerrone, Julius Eastman, and largescale, evening-length projects will be announced in the year to come. Website: wildup.la.