The Barnsdall Art Park is a location in East Hollywood at the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Vermont.  The land was originally purchased by Aline Barnsdall, an oil heiress, who obtained the property for her home.  In 1919, she hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build her home known as the Hollyhock House.  However, she was no longer interested as it was costly too much.  As an art lover, she gifted the property to the city of Los Angeles in 1927.  This was to become in her wishes as a center for the arts.

In 1946, the Adult Center began to offer classes in arts and crafts.  In 1963, the Hollyhock House was declared a historic monument and in 1965, it was declared a culture landmark.
In 1971, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre opened to the public.
Over the decades, this has been a historical landmark for the city of Los Angeles and a center for the arts.  During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the buildings were renovated (The Hollyhock House is still under renovation) and now The Andromeda Electric Orchestra found this location as their home.
To read more about the park and all the buildings and the entire history go tohttps://www.barnsdall.org
AEO is proud to be part of this historical landmark.  We will be starting our concert season with the November 19, 2022 concert Classical Rocks!!!
You can purchase your tickets from our website: www.AndromedaEO.org
Come and see an orchestra of classical music with an electric twist

Bologne was born of French and African heritage in the French colony of Guadeloupe to a wealthy planter and the planter’s wife’s African slave.  He is sometimes known as the Black Mozart, as he was a contemporary of Mozart and just as much of a genius.  He was a virtuoso violinist and an accomplished composer.  He composed and published numerous operas, string quartets, concertos, and symphonies in a short span between 1771- 1779.  
Bologna was a multi-talented nobleman.  He was admired and was also gifted at fencing.  He was involved in politics and in the military.  He did have racial discrimination, for example when he was up for the music director of the Paris Opera house, four singers petitioned Marie Antoinette to prevent from having to “submit to the orders of a mulatto.”  He then went on to be the music director for the private theater of Madame de Montesson.
Bologne’s music is genus and brilliant.   You can read more about his life on the web and particular on Wikipedia.  AEO plans on performing his first two symphonies in the following year.  Below are some examples of his music. 

Marianna Martines was a well established and renowned  famous harpsichordist, singer and composer.  She was an epicenter of Vienna and gained fame thought Europe.  She lived in an apartment upstairs from Joseph Haydn, who at the time was a struggling composer.  He gave her harpsichord lessons and also accompanied her while she sang.  In exchange for this service, Martines introduced Haydn to well established composers of Vienna, giving him the connection and network to move his career.  

She was an impressive musician who gained royal approval of her musical compositions.  The Empress Maria Theresa was so impressed with her that she performed for the Empress on many occasions and even dedicated works for her.
She was one of the greatest composers of her time.  Women composers where known as anomalies- lone women surrounded by men, however this is not true of the case as even though there were more male composers, she was not unique.  There were other prominent female composers in Vienna.  She did not allow this limitation to strive for her career as a musician and composer.  
Martines’s music is outstanding and works of art.  AEO will be celebrating her in the coming season with a performance of her Symphony in C major.  Below are some of her works that you can viewed on YouTube.  

The EWI (Electric Woodwind Instrument) is a musical instrument that acts like a keyboard synthesizer.  Most of them are MIDI controllers that trigger a synthesizer that creates the sounds by use of wind.  The earliest versions of the EWI were developed in the 1960s and introduced in the 1970s.  However, it did not gain popularity until the past decade when it further developed into the modern version.


The EWI is a woodwind instrument which has keys with fingerings like that of most woodwinds, particularly in the finger placement on the recorder (an early version of all woodwinds).  There is one extra button which is used in a similar fashion to the one used on the saxophone.  Therefore, almost any woodwind player can pick up an EWI and play it.  There are several models with different ranges.  Rollers are placed in the back of the instrument to change the octaves.  Smaller models have a range of 3 octaves, while more advanced models have up to 7 octaves.  Given the specifications of these instruments, EWIs can play in every range of all woodwinds.  One other feature of the EWI is the ability to blend notes with ether the note bending pad in the back or by slightly biting on the mouthpiece.  
Some EWIs have their own internal sounds while others do not. Nevertheless, they all have the capacity to be attached to an external synthesizer for more sounds (either digitally or through a physical synthesizer).  With this broad spectrum, the EWI can sound like any musical instrument, digital synth sound or sound effect.  This makes the EWI a suitable and valuable instrument for an electric orchestra.  The Andromeda Electric Orchestra has an EWI section (currently 2 players but planned expansion to 4 players).  AEO has used this instrument for various purposes, including sounding like brass, woodwinds, or synth sounds. When AEO performed the Dr. Who theme, the instrument had a feature of a duet in the piece.  Below are several videos that demonstrate the capabilities of the EWI, including a video featuring Soli Jones performing a piece by Dr. Alfred Surenyan.
AEO’s EWI section is made up of two outstanding woodwind players in the Los Angeles area: Soli Jones and Mark Day.

Welcome to The Upsilon Andromedae Chronicles, the new blog of the Andromeda Electric Orchestra (AEO).  We are excited to bring the community this blog with current information on music, musicians, AEO, and other related topics.  Naming this blog was done very carefully and the first article is about the name.
AEO is named and themed after space and science fiction.  The name is derived from the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way Galaxy.  The Andromeda Galaxy is also part of the Andromeda Constellation.  Although it would have been nice to name the blog after a star in the Andromeda Galaxy, scientists are currently unable to locate individual stars in the galaxy due to the immense distance between that galaxy and Earth. It has been said that one planet may have been found in that galaxy, but as of this writing, it has not been confirmed. Therefore, the next best place to find a star for the naming of this blog is in the Andromeda Constellation.  In this region is a series of stars named after the Greek Alphabet.  Among all of them, Upsilon Andromedae is unique. It is the only one that has confirmed planets orbiting the main star thus far in research.  Due to this unique phenomenon, it was decided that the blog would be named after this star.

The Upsilon Andromedae is a binary star system.  It has both the main star, officially named Titawin and its companion unnamed Red Dwarf.  Titawin itself is a yellowish dwarf star is smaller than our Sun, yet brighter. Titawin is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.  The four planets in this system orbit around the main star, while the Red Dwarf has a gravitational pull, with the main star outside of the orbiting planets.  
The 3 of the 4 stars have been given official names and are gas giants.  The second from the star, in the habitual zone, might have a moon or multiple moons and could be locations for life.  The names of the planets are Saffer, Samh, Majriti, and Upsilon Andromadae e.  Research exists regarding the elements that these planets are made up from and as well as artist conceptions of them.  Below is a video that shows how this star system behaves and how the planets rotate around the star.  An interesting feature is Saffer, the closest planet to the star.  Only one side of the planet is always facing the star and has daylight constantly while the other side is always dark, much like our Moon orbiting around Earth.  Take a trip to this star system in this video. It’s pretty amazing.