Partchworld: The Life, Music, and Legacy of Harry Partch: Part Two

REDISCOVERY AND RENEWAL

1. The Bewitched • REDCAT, 27 June 2026 (Photo: Felix Salazar).

JOHN SCHNEIDER

John Schneider is a Grammy® Award winning and four-time Grammy® nominated guitarist, composer, author and broadcaster. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics & Music from U.C. Cardiff (UK), music degrees from the University of California and the Royal College of Music (London), and is past-President of the Guitar Foundation of America. Schneider is a specialist in contemporary music, and his The Contemporary Guitar has become the standard text in the field. He hosts Global Village on Thursdays, 11am-1pm (Pacific Time), on KPFK FM, Los Angeles.

2. Harry Partch with Adapted Guitar I, 1941.

In Part One of this article I outlined the unique career of California-born Harry Partch (1901-1974): composer, deviser of a new personal musical syntax, and inventor of an extraordinary array of instruments without which it is impossible to play his equally remarkable works.

I also discussed my own growing fascination with and exploration of the full range of his creative output, which brought me to the point in 1999—after hearing his own ensemble in San Francisco—of needing to perform his works myself.

3. Author's copy of Adapted Guitar II.

This meant one thing: I had to recreate the instruments. With that in mind, I and an extraordinary team of various artisans have spent the last 25 years doing exactly that.

Thus LA’s PARTCH Ensemble began in the 1990s as the trio “Just Strings” (4. below) playing guitar, harp, and percussion in the pure-intervals just intonation favored by Partch and his colleagues Lou Harrison (1917-2003) and James Tenney (1934-2006). The only authentic instrument we possessed was a copy of Partch's Adapted Guitar I (2. above right), though I arranged some of his music for retuned harps to mimic his Harmonic Canons.

4. "Just Strings", 2001 (Photo: Robert Hale).

By 2001, with the addition of my new Adapted Guitar II (3. above left) and a copy of Partch's Diamond Marimba, together with the gracious loan of his Kithara I from the Harry Partch Foundation, we were finally able to perform a concert consisting entirely of the composer’s early works. That program concluded the 12-hour Harry Partch Centennial Celebration that I produced at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, which featured scholarly presentations, panel discussions, the composer’s own films, and even an instrument “petting zoo.”

5. © Los Angeles Times.

For the next two decades, we produced new replicas of these marvelous musical machines almost one per year, as evidenced by our annual performances at the REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater) contemporary performing arts center inside downtown LA's Walt Disney Hall complex:

6. REDCAT 2005 (Photo: John Schneider).

7. REDCAT 2013 (Photo: Erin Schneider).

8. REDCAT 2025 (Photo: Felix Salazar).

We have had the great pleasure of sharing Partch’s music with audiences on both coasts of the US, in Mexico, and even gave the first Asian performances at South Korea’s Tongyeong International Music Festival (2023). We have also commissioned new works, either for the instruments themselves or in collaboration with other ensembles (Del Sol String Quartet, the Prism Saxophone Quartet, and The Hutchins Consort), including the new chamber opera LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip by Anne LeBaron (b.1953).

In 2011, Bridge Records began to release our recordings in their Music of Harry Partch series (9-12. below) which have so far garnered a Grammy® Award and three Grammy® nominations, and we have also made videos of our yearly REDCAT concerts that can be found here.

9.-12. The Music of Harry Partch, Vols. 1-4 (© copyright Bridge Records).

In 2023, the California Festival commissioned a two-hour audio portrait of Partch for its Excursions series: “A journey through California’s innovative sonic landscape. Discover the visionary figures and hidden pathways that have helped shape the Golden State’s storied continuum of contemporary music.” This takes you on a chronological survey of this unforgettable repertoire, where you can hear Partch himself both playing and talking about his music.

However, as we all know, music is always best served LIVE—so come say hello to LA’s very own PARTCH Ensemble every June at REDCAT. After all, where else can you pet a Zymo-Xyl or a Cloud Chamber Bowl?

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