Dear Friends & Fellow Music Lovers
My name is Jeff Kryka, I’m a composer and UCLA alum (MA 2008, PhD 2011) and currently serving on the UCLA School of Music Alumni Board. I had the great pleasure of working alongside Mark Carlson at UCLA and attending MANY Pacific Serenades concerts, as well as writing a commission for the organization in 2009. I’ve always admired Mark’s unwavering dedication to the promotion of new music through his many years with Pacific Serenades. His mission, along with that of the organization, to present new music as an integral part of our living musical tradition resonates deeply with me.
I am excited to announce, with Mark’s blessing, that we have relaunched Pacific Serenades, beginning with our inaugural concert in the fall of 2024. Our guiding vision is to continue the organization’s legacy of performing newly commissioned works alongside established chamber music repertoire. I look forward to this new chapter with our audiences and bringing beautiful music to life together.
— Jeff Kryka,
President of Pacific Serenades
A Message from Mark Carlson About Pacific Serenades
When I was finishing up as a grad student in composition at UCLA in the early 80s—and already a professional flutist—I recognized that many composers in Los Angeles were writing a very different kind of music than those on the upper East Coast, which everyone assumed then was the center of the country’s classical music world. I also realized that the repertoire of classical music is virtually made up entirely of pieces that were written for specific occasions. Out of this came the idea for Pacific Serenades.
Why not create a platform for which local composers would be given the opportunity to write the kind of music they wanted to write—music in which melody and tonality still played a major role, music freely created out of any number of styles and influences? All the better if it were presented in the context of standard chamber music repertoire played by wonderful local musicians!
And that’s what Pacific Serenades did from its first concert in 1982 through its last in 2016, during which time 113 new works were commissioned and premiered.
I am thrilled and honored to pass the torch of Pacific Serenades to my friend and colleague Jeff Kryka so its mission can continue to live on!
— Mark Carlson
Founder of Pacific Serenades