Origins
While singing (Jen) and playing viola (Diana) at a music festival in Vermont, we met, realized we shared a life-long dream of wearing as many sparkles as possible, and ran joyfully out into a field to celebrate. Our enthusiasm attracted the attention of some rad aliens who invited us to party and jam with them. As luck would have it, they were having a full-on sparkle party. When we woke up the next day, groggy and disoriented, we discovered the rad aliens had left us three parting gifts: a 25-foot long tube, a mission, and several pairs of spacepants. The tube would of course become a central focus of our music-making. The mission, which we accepted, is to wear spacepants while bringing both our own and other earth-bound beings’ works of music, poetry, multi-media, storytelling and art to life. .
Look, we don’t know if we’re doing crystals right,
but we sure try.
WHO ARE WE?!
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Jennifer Beattie sings all kinds of songs. She revels in performing everything from classical repertoire to brand-new collaborations with performance, visual, jazz, folk, and theater artists. She is one half of SpacePants, her intergalacticDIYdada-ist duo with violist Diana Wade, for which she plays an expandable drainage TUBE. She is also co-director of Artists at Albatross Reach, a collaborative colony in Northern California, with her longtime duo partner pianist Adam Marks. Jennifer has been a featured soloist with Opera Philadelphia, The National Opera Orchestra at the Kennedy Center; The Philadelphia Orchestra; The Oregon Bach Festival; the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the Argento Chamber Ensemble at the Park Avenue Armory; The Raleigh Civic Symphony, and with the JACK and Aizuri Quartets. She created the vocal program at the New Music on the Point Festival in VT, where she was Vocalist-in-Residence for 6 years. She has premiered zillions of art songs, operatic roles, chamber works, and really weird pieces written for her voice. She also writes juicy poems that people read, scream, and set to music.
Violist and composer Diana Wade likes to make strange sounds, usually on the viola. In a recent performance of Berio’s Sequenza VI, Diana was praised for playing with “both athletic and operatic ferocity” and “throwing herself into tremolo passages with a physical force that shook her and a sonic one that practically shook the walls” (Mark Swed, LA Times). If that doesn’t ring a bell, you might remember her for saying “Shia LaBeouf” in that video.
Diana enjoys a richly varied musical life in Los Angeles. Not only can she be heard recording for film and television, but also performing with ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Opera, wild Up and appearances in series such as Jacaranda, Tuesdays @ Monk Space, and Monday Evening Concerts. Diana can be heard on recent recordings with Ted Hearne, Pat Metheny, Barbara Streissand, and numerous sound tracks.
Current projects include recording the complete viola sonatas of Paul Hindemith with pianist Aron Kallay, premiering a new concert-length song cycle by Ted Hearne for small ensemble, the premiere of a solo violin work by Diana for Shalini Vijayan, and bi-coastal performances with her duo neogalactic-DIY-dadaist duo SpacePants.