LeBaron served as composer-in-residence in Washington, DC, sponsored by Meet the Composer from 1993 until 1996, and was an assistant professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2001. She was appointed Professor of Music at the California Institute of the Arts in 2001, held the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition from 2013 until 2016, and developed innovative cross-disciplinary courses such as Concert Theater, Contemplative Practices, Hyperopera, and Musical Reflections of Surrealism.
Composition
LeBaron's compositions in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms embrace a wide range of media and styles. Frequently combining tonal and atonal techniques, she has utilized elements of blues, jazz, pop, rock, and folk music in such scores as the opera The E. and O. Line (1993), American Icons (1996) for orchestra, and Traces of Mississippi (2000) for chorus, orchestra, poet narrators, and rap artists. She has also used American literary sources with Devil in the Belfry (1993) for violin and piano, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, and Is Money Money (2000), a setting of Gertrude Stein texts for soprano and chamber ensemble.
Among her multicultural compositions are Lamentation/Invocation (1984) for baritone and three instruments, using Korean-derived gestures and long sustained tones for the voice; Noh Reflections (1985) for string trio, which draws upon the music of Japanese Noh theater; Breathtails (2012) for baritone, string quartet, and Japanese shakuhachi; and her large-scale celebration of Kazakhstan, The Silent Steppe Cantata (2011) for tenor Timur Bekbosunov, women's chorus, and an orchestra of traditional Kazakh instruments, premiered at Congress Hall in Astana.
Writing about LeBaron's 1989 Telluris Theoria Sacra (for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano), musicologist Susan McClary notes that the work "...points to LeBaron's more pervasive interest in music's ability to mold temporality, immersing the listener in a sound world in which time bends, stands still, dances, or conforms to the mechanical measure of the clock".
Theater has played an important role in LeBaron's music, with such scores as Concerto for Active Frogs (1974) for voices, three instruments, and tape, and the harp solos I Am an American ... My Government Will Reward You (1988) and Hsing (2002). She has also composed a series of monodramas for female voice and chamber musicians: Pope Joan (2000), Transfiguration (2003), Sucktion (2008), and Some Things Should Not Move (2013). LeBaron's operas The E. and O. Line (and the shorter version, Blue Calls Set You Free), Croak (The Last Frog) (1996), and Wet (2005) were all collaborative works that led her to develop the genre she terms "hyperopera": "an opera resulting from intensive collaboration across all the disciplines essential for producing opera in the 21st century – in a word, a 'meta-collaborative' undertaking".
With her hyperopera Crescent City (2012, libretto by Douglas Kearney), LeBaron went a step beyond the nineteenth-century concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the united/total/universal artwork that synthesized architecture, scenic painting, singing, instrumental music, poetry, drama, and dance), championed by Richard Wagner. A more lateral, inclusive, and intensive collaboration of artists occurs with hyperopera, breaking down the usual hierarchical structures of traditional opera, which define and limit the roles of individuals on creative and production teams. The genre of hyperopera involves the collaborations of a diverse group of artists, which pierce the regimented boundaries of the roles of creators, performers, designers, and producers. In the postmodern tradition of redefining opera, also seen in the work of Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, LeBaron replaced the Wagnerian orchestra with smaller and more specialized forces of instruments and electronic sound for Crescent City, with musicians who move readily among stylistic genres, just as the vocalists do. The opera's theatrical action is refracted through a prism of video work, lighting effects, and performance freedoms and simultaneities. For its world premiere production in Los Angeles in 2012, Crescent City also engaged six visual artists to participate in the collaborative process by designing and building set pieces as various locales in the opera. Directed by Yuval Sharon, Crescent City was the inaugural production of the experimental opera company, The Industry. Prior to the full production of Crescent City, LeBaron composed Phantasmagoriettas from Crescent City, performed by the LOOS Electro Acoustic Media Orchestra and soloists from Los Angeles during the Dag in de Branding Festival in the Hague in 2007.
LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip features microtonal instruments built by Harry Partch. Several staged concert performances have taken place in Los Angeles, beginning in 2015.
Anne LeBaron’s compositions are published by Composers Edition.
Improvisation
As an improviser LeBaron employs a wide array of extended techniques for the harp, including preparing the harp (similar to John Cage's prepared piano) and bowing the strings, as well as a variety of electronic enhancements. Her development of a new performance vocabulary for the instrument began in the early 1970s, when she played in the Alabama improvising ensemble Trans Museq along with Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith. Her career as an improviser has included performance collaborations with such creative composer/musicians as Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Evan Parker, George E. Lewis, Derek Bailey, Leroy Jenkins, Lionel Hampton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Anthony Davis, Wadada Leo Smith, Gerry Hemingway, and Shelley Hirsch. LeBaron's double-CD 1, 2, 4, 3 (Innova 236, 2010) features collaborations with thirteen different musicians in solo, duo, quartet and trio configurations.
LeBaron performs in Los Angeles and elsewhere as a member of the Present Quartet, with Ellen Burr, flutes; Charles Sharp, clarinet and saxophone; and Jeff Schwarz, bass.
