Alexis Alrich
In celebration of the opening of the Artists@Work! exhibition, we took a moment with local composer, musician and Upstate California Creative Corps grantee Alexis Alrich to talk about her background in the arts and her process for creating the Wolf Creek Album.
We asked when Alrich first knew she wanted to be a composer. “My first piano teacher introduced me to composition. I was making up little pieces from an early age, and around age 14 she told me I should consider doing that as a career. From then on I got serious about it…” shared Alrich.
She went on to study composition at the New England Conservatory of Music, California Institute of the Arts, and received a master’s degree in composition with Lou Harrison at Mills College. After graduate school she stayed in the San Francisco Bay Area and was active in the music scene, composing for the Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic, teaching composition in the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and becoming a founding member and pianist for the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.
Later, Alrich moved to Hong Kong, commuting from Berkeley for a few years as the first director of the John Adams Young Composers Program. While living abroad she received major commissions from Premiere Performances of Hong Kong and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra.
After moving back to Grass Valley in 2017, Alrich joined the board of directors of the Nevada County Composers Cooperative. She continues to receive commissions and volunteers as a DJ on KVMR for the show Classics Declassified. Alrich recently showcased new works at the Composers Cooperative Fall Concert at the end of September.
We always ask our spotlights where they draw their inspiration from, and Alrich’s response is no surprise given some of her most recent collaborations. “Nature often inspires that certain inner contemplation, or a sound in daily life, or a powerful emotion, or a purely musical idea for a new combination of sounds.”
A grant recipient of the Upstate California Creative Corps, Alrich has been partnering with Wolf Creek Community Alliance to create the Wolf Creek Anthem. The goal of this project was to celebrate and raise awareness of Wolf Creek, a key component of our local watershed that has been degraded and neglected since the 1850s. “It enabled me as the composer to get to know the creek: its unique beauty, its history, its health and function in the watershed, both where it runs in wild places, and through the town.”
With nature already a primary source of Alrich’s inspiration, she was a perfect fit to compose the new anthem. “For the Wolf Creek Anthem I spent a lot of time at the creek, listening and observing. Then I improvised at the piano or while taking walks to find specific themes and musical ideas: I was looking for a signature melody, chord or sound that expressed the ideas I dreamed up. Thinking of music for the different aspects of the creek such as the ripples, the birds, the currents, was delightful. At that point I was working with pencil on paper. Then I moved to the computer to work on the overall architecture, how to make the ideas flow into a coherent composition. There is a lot of detailed editing at the end to make final decisions, add expression marks, proofread all the notes, and format the pages.”
Wolf Creek Alliance and Alrich ran workshops with children and adults to teach the Wolf Creek Anthem, so the audience could sing along at community performances. “There was quite an emotional response to the message and the music. Our two concerts were well-attended and successful, with tears and standing ovations each time.”
The Wolf Creek Alliance plans to incorporate this music into its yearly schedule of events for Earth Day. “This project enabled the environmental community and the music community to work together, widening both of our circles and creating a thrilling and meaningful project."
In her own words, Alrich is “most proud of giving people moments when they are moved to laugh or cry or dance.”
You’ll be able to check out the Wolf Creek Anthem at the Artists@Work! exhibition opening at the Eric Rood Center on Thursday, October 3, or her newest piece, commissioned by pianist Lynn Schugren, called The Caryatids, in honor of women who are innocent victims of war. It will premiere on November 10, 2024 in San Francisco.
More about Alexis Alrich, her upcoming performances, and how to get in touch, can be found on her website.
This story originally appeared in the October 1st, 2024 edition of the GVNC Culture Connection newsletter.