“It was a big weekend for LeBaron. Scenes from her provocative "LSD: The Opera" were staged Friday and Saturday at REDCAT in Los Angeles. For her new song cycle, she picked five poems by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet who mingled sensuality with spirituality, his writing sharing, perhaps with LSD, the capacity to alter one's perception of the world by drawing attention to small details.
"The vocal writing evokes the unexpected. Throughout the fives songs, LeBaron's pitches reflect Rumi's new creatures that "whirl in from nonexistence." In one song, a thirsty man picks walnuts from a tree not for sustenance but for the music they make when thrown into a pool. LeBaron has the singers place stones on piano strings and reflect in their voices the haunting string resonances.
"Poems are rough notations for the music we are," Rumi ends the beautiful final song of the cycle. LeBaron let the sentiment resonate, as though it might ring on and on as motto for singers in a celestial SongFest."