Lila Meretzky

After-Image plots a sprawling journey through New York City-based composer Lila Meretzky’s catalogue. Quartet for strings and percussion draws on exercises given to his students by the artist and pedagogue Josef Albers’ to expand perception of the relativity of color. On Chaconne, percussionist Ji Hye Jung gives a subtractive and plaintive performance on marimba. Themes of memory and longing pervade Don’t look for me where birds sing, a solo percussion and electronics piece dedicated to Bertha Kula, a young immigrant woman who died in the disastrous 1911 Triangle Factory Fire and lived at the composer’s childhood address. For Linda Catlin Smith, written for and performed by the Unheard-of//Ensemble, pays homage to a major influence. After-Image ends with To crave and to have for string orchestra, a slowly unfolding study of luminous colors commissioned by the Next Festival of Emerging Artists and conducted by Peter Askim. These works were born from the contradictions of opposing forces. As the work moves from sound to score to sound again, as eardrums are impressed upon and spring back, awareness of our own changes over time comes into relief.

Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City. She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums, as well as in music for dance, film, and installation. Her work is often concerned with (the warping of) memory and language, and subjective experiences of time. Lila’s music has been programmed and commissioned by leading ensembles and institutions, including Alarm Will Sound, Contemporaneous, Sandbox Percussion, and the MATA Festival. Lila is composer-in-residence with the Cincinnati-based chamber music collective New Downbeat. She has created music for the dance companies New Dialect and the Nashville Ballet. Her film work includes scoring the 2022 documentary A Climate of Anxiety. Paper collage is her primary visual medium. Lila’s debut album Bone Dice, featuring Sandbox Percussion, was released in January 2025.