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Commissioned by Christina Jennings and Bright Music of OK. Performed at over 50 different venues and ensembles. ¶¶Notable performances include The Left Bank at the Kennedy Center for the Arts and Contemporary Music Forum at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wash. D.C, Florida State University New Music Festival, The Empyrean Ensemble and Left Coast Ensemble in SanFrancisco, The American Modern Ensemble at the Times Center, The New Millennium Ensemble at the Princeton Center for Advanced Study, Eighth Blackbird at Contempo Series in Chicago, Orion Ensemble,(arranged for clarinet, violin, cello and piano Chicago,Ganz Hall Chicago, Delfians Project, Cal State Fresno New Music Festival, Juventus New Music, Aspen Ensemble at University of Baltimore, Talis Festival in Switzerland. ¶¶And many more. On Centaur CD: High Wire Acts CRC 3098 Some reviews: -Reviewed in The Washington Post by Joe Banno, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Left Bank Concert Society Evokes the Spirit of Schoenberg “Most intriguing, Laura Elise Schwendinger's 2005 piece, "High Wire Act," seemed to leave Schoenberg out of the equation entirely. Her harmonically free-ranging, tintinnabulary scoring -- with its canny use of violin harmonics and flute phrases played directly into the open piano, to suggest aerialists in flight -- evokes Stravinsky's early ballets. The work gives a vivid sense of what modern music might have sounded like if the spiky, polytonal version of impressionism Stravinsky developed in those works -- rather than Schoenberg's 12-tone method -- had become the template of choice for modern composers to embrace or reject.” -Reviewed by John von Rhein in The Chicago Tribune, 11/16/09, Contempo invites audience to hear the art, see the music. “Schwendinger’s 2005 “High Wire Act” achieved more by attempting less. Inspired by the wire circus figures of sculptor Alexander Calder, the four character portraits, with their high twitterings, undulating arpeggios and rippling figurations, evinced an acute sonic imagination and sure command of craft. The piece was beautifully played by eighth blackbird.” ¶¶Voices of Change Ensemble ¶¶-Reviewed Scott Cantrell in the The Dallas Morning News Classical music review: Voices of Change's concert offerings span the globe “Mexican-born Laura Elise Schwendinger, with a Berkeley doctorate, is a composition professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her 2005 quintet High Wire Act was inspired by Alexander Calder's little wire sculptures of circus performers. The five movements perform their own daredeviltry of skitters, gleaming hesitations and long-strung lines. Schleuning and Markina joined flutist Helen Blackburn, violist Barbara Sudweeks and cellist Kari Nostbakken in another exhilarating performance.” -Reviewed in New York Times ‘HIGH WIRE ACTS: CHAMBER MUSIC BY LAURA ELISE SCHWENDINGER’ Brightmusic; Chicago Chamber Musicians; Duo 46; Christina Jennings, flutist; Greg Sauer, cellist; Katie Wolfe, violinist Centaur) “The chamber works grouped together on this captivating disc show off Laura Elise Schwendinger’s acute ear for unusual textures. In these works, scored for solo violin; nonet; violin and guitar; or a quintet of flute, piano and strings, she sketches musical short stories of somnambulant fragility and purpose. The color palette she draws from these modest forces is varied and expressive — and brilliantly rendered by a fine roster of performers.” Fonseca-Wollheim ¶¶-Review Gapplegate Classical-Modern, Grego Applegate Edwards ¶¶“A new voice in modern music can be an exciting thing, if the person has something to offer. That is the case with Laura Elise Schwendinger. Her recent album of chamber music, High Wire Acts Centaur 3098 gives us a distinctive musical personality...Laura Elise Schwendinger brings us a cornucopia of musical riches on this program. Any connoisseur of modern chamber music would do well to hear it.” -Review from Colin Clarke’s in Fanfare “I like Barnaby Rayfield's description of Laura Elise Schwendinger's music, in his feature article in Fanfare 36:4 as “not girly music”. I would go further and add an emphatic this is “so not girly music”. Punchy, imaginative, subtle, stirring, evocative … all these terms apply. She studied with John Adams, which doesn't seem to have harmed her much. Schwendinger's music is worth more than anything Adams has churned out so far…The 2002 piece High Wire Act was inspired by the circus figures of Alexander Calder. There are five movements. The first, also called “High Wire Act”, is remarkably effective given the careful depictions given by the composer about what the music actually represents—not only the artists themselves but also in the high string harmonics the sounds of the trapeze apparatus itself. The performance itself is acrobatic indeed, and beautifully managed. It stands on its own perfectly without a priori knowledge of the program. The frozen second movement “The Rope Walker” finds stasis perhaps representing the hesitancy of the walker. The writing for the instruments is expert. The third movement, “The Aerialist” is a love song for flute and viola, here played by a real life husband and wife the two, love song and marriage, aren't exclusive in America yet, are they?). A shimmering trapped bird features next, fighting for its freedom: wonderfully written, wonderfully played.” -Review in Fanfare by Art Lange “The album takes its name from the five-movement High Wire Act 2005 for flute, violin viola, cello, and piano. Each movement essays a different rhythmic effect—buoyant contrasts, overlapping and drifting voices, ostinatos, soaring birdsong over animated strings, and the like—and although the composer has attached to them titles meant to suggest circus acrobatics, it’s just as easy to think of them as evocations of Nature, especially as the melodic contours, emphasis on the flute, and the tension between Impressionist and Expressionist perspectives here were, to my mind, reminiscent of the Nature-inspired music of Toru Takemitsu. On the other hand, Schwendinger acknowledges the influence of Bach and Stravinsky on the Nonet 2003 and beyond the vibrant rhythms of the opening and closing movements, there is more than a trace of Stravinsky’s harmonic tang and, specifically, paraphrases from and allusions to Le Sacre du Printemps woven through the hypnotic slow inner movement.” ¶¶-Review of Contemporary Music Forum, by Stephen Brookes in The Washington Post ¶¶"Different but no less engaging was Laura Schwendinger's "High Wire Act," a charming work inspired by Alexander Calder's circus figures". --¶

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