On episode 237 of The Quarantine Tapes, guest host Sunita Puri is joined by Jonathan Hepfer. Jonathan Hepfer is a musician and the artistic director of Monday Evening Concerts, a long-running contemporary concert series in Los Angeles.

Jonathan joins Sunita to discuss the history of Monday Evening Concerts and how he first encountered the series. They talk about the role he takes on as a curator and what it means to try to make classical music more accessible. The pair mention all of the influences that have helped them form their love of classical music, and the togetherness we all feel while listening with each other. Finally, Sunita asks Jonathan about the impact of the pandemic on his work and they talk about the healing power of music.

Hildegard von Bingen Canticles Of Ecstasy

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
Gustav Mahler

Harold Budd / Brian Eno - The Pavilion Of Dreams (1978)

Luigi Nono-Luigi Nono: Incontri for 24 Musicians (1955) 

"We make a space inside ourselves, so that being can speak."
Martin Heidegger

John Cage Four Minutes Thirty Three Seconds 4'33

Yves Klein Monotone Symphony

Sunita Puri is an author and the Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Service at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California, where she also serves as Chair of the Ethics Committee. 
She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Anthropology and studied Modern History at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She completed medical school and residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and fellowship training in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and JAMA – Internal Medicine. 
For her writing, she has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, UCross Foundation, and Mesa Refuge. In 2018, she received the Etz Chaim Tree of Life Award from the USC Keck School of Medicine, awarded annually to a member of the faculty who, in the eyes of the campus community, models and provides humanistic and compassionate care. 
Sunita was born in Kentucky and is the daughter of naturalized citizens from Punjab state, India. Her family now lives in Los Angeles.
That Good Night, by Sunita Puri

Johnathan Hepfer is a percussionist, conductor, and concert curator specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. 
Jonathan is the Artistic Director of Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, on which he performs regularly.  He has taken part in the US premieres of major works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Grisey, György Kurtág, Rolf Riehm, Jo Kondo, Aldo Clementi, Klaus Lang, Ramon Lazkano, Francisco Guerrero, Thomas Meadowcroft and Simon Steen-Andersen.  His collaborators have included such luminaries as Marino Formenti, Kim Kashkashian, Alexei Lubimov, Séverine Ballon, Natalia Pschenitschnikova, and Mario Caroli. Of particular interest to Jonathan is the alchemical relationship of language and music.

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team